Front Cover First Draft

Front Cover Version 1

Magazine Photography Analysis

Magazine Photography

This picture was my initial idea for the front cover, but after taking it, I feel that the dimensions of a magazine cover do not compliment the image very well, so it would not look very good. I may use these photos on the feature article page, but they will not be the dominant image on the cover.

The second two, where they are stood closer together work more, but if I were to use an image, I prefer how they look in the first images, so I would use a photo editing suite to move them closer together, as I still feel they could stand closer. During the photo shoot, they were not able to stand any closer due to the floor dropping off.

I will use these images two images on the contents page as other artists in order to increase the volume of content to seem more realistic. I think the suits are too messy to be usable on the feature article page as the band, but they may look good.

During the photo shoot, I had the idea of having the band wear masks, to maintain their mysterious image, but also be able to face the camera. We found two styles of mask, these deformed orange latex masks, and some solid emotion masks. They are both typically used in dramatic performances, so they fit the idea of the band being "performers". I much prefer the design of these masks, but they did not fit particularly well, so the image looks slightly off. I may use it on the contents page or feature article, but not the front page.

These are the other masks I found, and this is the image I will use for the front cover. I am not particularly fond of the masks, as they seem plain, but it will not be difficult to change their colours using a photo editing suite. Additionally, I would like them to be stood closer together, so they could take up more space on a magazine cover, so I will move them closer in editing. I will also change the background to be something much darker, in order to fit with the "metal" themes of the magazine.

I will use this image on the contents page as another artist.

I will not use these two images, as I have no need for them. I have photos for the contents page and the feature article, so they don't fit in anywhere.

Magazine Layout Plan

Feature Article Draft

Feature Article

Demon’s Blade, or 鬼の出刃 as they are known in Japan, are the black metal power trio from the neon jungle of Kabuki-cho, Tokyo. They consist of guitarist Kazuya, bassist and frontman Tatsuda, and the mysterious drummer and vocalist known only as Oni, or Demon. Having been on the Tokyo music circuit since 2004, they have gained a large following that has stretched as far as mainstream Japanese television. It has not however, spread as far as the West. However, with their newest album, Raid of Sound, Demon’s Blade are hoping to conquer the West and achieve, in their words, “global domination”. We spoke to the man himself, Oni, about the band, Raid of Sound, and his further ambitions.

First of all, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

I’ll start by asking this: How did Demon’s Blade come about?

Well, I’d known Tatsuda since high school, and we’d tried to make some visual kei style music and perform it around 2001, but we could never really make any waves with it. I think our problem was that we didn’t distinguish ourselves from other visual kei bands. We put the idea of being a band on hold until we saw deadman in Nagoya in late 2003. We hitched a ride there with this guitarist who Tatsuda sometimes went to the arcade with. Long story short, that guitarist was Kazuya and we formed Demon’s Blade not long after.

You mentioned Deadman, which is also the title of your first album. Is that a coincidence, or a homage?

Definitely a homage. We released Deadman around 2007, not long after the real deadman split up. A lot of our early stuff was inspired by their sound, so I think we all subconsciously decided to record it as a sort of tribute to our legends.

Is that album the only name of yours inspired by something else, or do you hide a lot of references in your work?

Funny that you ask that. Tatsuda is a complete nerd, and loves video games, which I mentioned was how he met Kazuya. Anyway, whilst we were spit balling about what to call the band, I tagged along to this arcade, ‘cause you could smoke in there. Anyway, there we all were, Tatsuda and Kazuya playing this arcade game, when one of the characters shouts “The power of a demon’s blade!” when he does his attack. We all sort of looked at each other, and decided that Demon’s Blade would be our name. As for any other references, buy our albums and find them yourself!

Were you trying to find a new sound at all for this album, or simply improving what you’ve already done?

I think we’re constantly trying to stay fresh in order to please the fans, as well as not make the same mistake myself and Tatsuda made the first time around. But in terms of this album, I think we definitely didn’t want to experiment too much, to try to expand into new markets. Of course I say that, but we definitely did try a couple new things with this new album.

Could you give us an idea of what they were?

Well, this is our first properly studio recorded and produced album, so we wanted to play around a bit with the new tools at our disposal. One of the big things we did was change the sound of the guitars to be much more intense, as we could channel the raw sound we were outputting better in the studio. We also played around a lot with the balancing, to make it sound really good on a car stereo.

Why was that?

So it would sound better on the radio!

Of course. As a matter I can no longer ignore, what’s with the mask?

Heh, I thought you’d ask about that. Around the same time we created the name, we were looking at the popular visual kei artists to see what we could… take… from their image. We noticed that lavish make-up was becoming more and more common, along with slightly sexual outfits. We were all down for the outfits, but I wasn’t on board with the make-up. As we were thinking of something cool and original I could wear instead, we walked past a costume shop that had a demon costume on display. The mask was cool, so I bought it and just started wearing it when we performed. To answer what will likely be your follow up question, we decided to wear suits when we make appearances off stage to seem professional, but to keep the stuff on our faces to stay recognisable.

That’s actually really cool. As you’re not particularly well-known here in the UK, are there any bands that you take inspiration from that could entice potential listeners?

Well, I think most of the bands we’re really inspired by are just as unknown as we are in the UK, but if anyone has heard of X Japan, they’re our main old-school influence. On top of them, we’re really big fans of Concerto Moon, and while they’re pretty unknown now, put out some really solid stuff that we want to build on. Of course, we want to emulate the greats, like Slayer, Cliff Burton’s Metallica, Motörhead, stuff like that. Though I think the best way to imagine us is if you took BABYMETAL, removed the whole kawaii pop s***, and replaced the vocals with James Hetfield. Then you’ve got our basic sound down, but we try to change the formula for what people expect from metal, and try to fuse a lot of other genres into our work, so you can’t get a perfect idea of our sound without hearing us!

Gnarly. How often do you guys do live performances, and is there any chance of a UK tour?

We love doing live performances, so we end up doing them quite a bit! I think we do our best stuff when we’re playing off an audience, and we all enjoy being on stage, so we end up playing maybe 3-4 nights a week. It sounds like a lot, but we do a lot of supporting act style stuff, along with playing some smaller bars and such. We’re usually based in Tokyo, but we quite often play in Nagoya, they’ve got a great music scene over there. As for a UK tour, we’re planning on doing a full world tour if we get enough interest in this album, and we’ll definitely throw at least three nights in the UK on there.

So lastly, is there anything you want to say to our readers?

I’ll say this – if you want something completely different from the norm, something that is so far from the pop charts that it’s unaware of their existence, check us out. If not, simply rock on.

Raid of Sound, by Demon’s Blade, is available now on Spotify and iTunes, with a limited physical distribution of CDs and Vinyl available December 8^th.

Photography Planning

Photography Plan

For the front cover, the band will be stood in suits against a dark background. This will create the ominous and mysterious atmosphere that the band wants to have. The image will cut off at around the neck line, so that their faces cannot be seen. The obscured faces of the bands will be a running theme through the images, in order to make the reader intrigued as to what they look like. It will also draw in people who may not necessarily want to listen to a foreign band. Images for the contents page will have the band facing away from the camera, to again make their identities mysterious for the reader. The images for the feature article will be similar, but will feature the blue mask that Oni wears in some capacity.

Feature Article Artist Planning

Artist Plan

The Band

The band Demon’s Blade have exceeded far past their origins of Kabuki-cho, Tokyo. A black metal band, Demon’s Blade consists of three members, who don themselves in lavish makeup, a homage to their hometown known for its over-the-top performances. There is the guitarist Kazuya, the bassist Tatsuda, and the drummer and vocalist Oni. These are all stage names, another by-product of the birthplace of Demon’s Blade. Their strange infusion of folk melody with wailing guitar and oppressive bass invokes feelings of bands like Kiryu and Ensiferum, but the screaming guitar solos bring obvious influence from bands such as Slayer and Cannibal Corpse. They manage to fuse old and new in a way never seen before, bringing a fresh sound to the metal landscape. Demon’s Blade have released two albums so far. Their first was recorded in Kazuya’s garage, which encapsulated the raw, violent sound of black metal. Their second was studio recorded, and perfectly infused their now iconic sound with the production quality of a chart topper.

The Members

Guitarist Kazuya is a performer, plain and simple. He feeds of the crowd’s energy in order to create his magnificently epic solos, while keeping the crowd’s attention the entire time. His stage presence leaves viewers in awe and shock, and his skill on guitar impresses his peers and idols alike. Off stage, Kazuya takes a much calmer approach. His warm personality and light sense of humour make him popular with people of all ages, and his appearances on Japanese television reflect this.

Bassist Tatsuda is a similar character to Kazuya. He projects a presence on stage that has not been truly seen since the great Cliff Burton. His style drifts more toward crowd hype than pure, face-melting bass, and this creates an incredible alchemical fusion of energy on stage. Tatsuda knows exactly what to say and do in order to really rile up a crowd, a skill that is under-appreciated by many modern bands.

The drummer known only as Oni, or Demon, is the real draw of the band. Having founded the band in 2004, he has managed to stay completely anonymous to everyone except his two band-mate. His ability to meld explosive drums and haunting vocals with Kazuya’s symphonic guitar has captured the attention of metal fans across the world. Oni never takes part in interviews or TV appearances without his signature blue demon mask, creating the sense of mystery that fuels the band’s popularity in the Japanese underground music scene.

Their Appearance

The band takes a lot of visual inspiration from their home in Kabuki-cho, and from the very popular Japanese genre called ‘visual kei’. For their live performances, the band dresses in lavish garb predominantly made of leather, the colours mainly being black with highlights in a brighter colour, like purple or green. Both Kazuya and Tatsuda wear makeup in the ‘visual kei’ style, while Oni wears his blue demon mask. In photo shoots and TV appearances however, they choose to wear suits and ties in order to look professional, while still wearing their makeup and masks respectively in order to keep up their mysterious image.

Why are they appearing in my magazine?

Dragon’s Blade are releasing a new album, titled ‘Raid of Sound’, and are hoping to use it to kick-start their careers in the west. They believe that appearing on the cover of and being featured in a magazine will give their band the coverage they need in order to sell their album, and perhaps organise a world tour.

Other band names for contents page and front cover:

Laceration Plague - A metal core band from the USA, popular for their high-energy live performances

Edition - A popular British metal band that has found some chart success.

Cobalt - An Eastern European metal band that produces albums with no lyrics. Popular among avant-garde fans.

Crescent Sun - A Mexican band that fuses mariachi with metal. Their music never sells particularly well, but their fun attitude is popular among most music fans.

Magazine Colour Scheme

Colour Scheme Planning

Looking at the results of my survey, I can see that the most popular choice of colour scheme was a combination of black, white, and yellow. Therefore I have decided to use these colours as my house style.

Black - I will use this as the base for backgrounds in my magazine. This is so the "dark" atmosphere created by the Metal genre is carried throughout the magazine through the visual style.

White - This will be used as the typeface colour, as it contrasts with the black background without being tacky.

Yellow - I will use this to highlight certain areas of my magazine, such as titles, sub-titles, and other areas like banners.

Red - This will be used to highlight small areas where the yellow would not stand out enough

Orange - This will be used for page numbers, website names etc.

House Style Font Planning

Font Planning

Title Font:

Body Font:

Masthead Ideas And Designs

Mastheads

I have created four possible masthead designs and analysed how good they would be as a masthead. I outlined my choice at the bottom

I like this mast head design. The typeface is easy to read whilst still popping out at the reader. The Gothic styling fits with the tone that the magazine should set, and it also reflects the tone of the material being discussed within the magazine.

The typeface in this design is much too ‘fancy’ and uses too much embellishment. This makes it hard to read, so I am definitely not considering using it as my mast head. I feel that it is so inconvenient to read, that I will not be able to use the typeface anywhere in my magazine whatsoever. The preview of this design looked much better than the result.

I don’t think this design could work as my mast head. While I like the way the typeface looks, the ‘worn’ texture of it makes it too hard to read. This may be useful as a smaller typeface used in another area of the house style, but it does not work as a mast head.

I like this design, as it is similar to the first, but I feel its less blocky design makes it too plain so it does not stand out as much as the first design. However, as the typeface is very similar, it would be very good to use this typeface for titles and such, as it will look very similar to the mast head without being the same.

I have decided to use the first design as my mast head as it conveys the style of music through its gothic appearance. The blocky style also makes it seem more raw, without being unreadable.

Ideas for my magazine's name

Name Ideas

Rocknroller – This name will grab the attention of both rock and metal fans, however as I am making a metal magazine, it may not properly convey the genre to potential buyers. I feel that, given the chosen genre, this name is too vague and generic.

Metal – This name is much more accurate to the genre covered, however it is a bit ‘on the nose’. It does not have any nuance or personality to it, and this could put off some of the target audience, who may want a magazine that feels like it has a personality and is ‘different’.

Black – This name has a bit more nuance to it. It refers to a particular sub-genre of metal, called ‘black metal’. This name would convey the genre, but only in the context of music magazines, and it is also quite plain.

Obsidian – This name is similar to ‘black’, and carries the same dark connotations without being quite as literal. It is also specific enough that it can be used as a brand, like Q. It is also not as broad as ‘Rocknroller’, so fans of rock and other genres, aka those outside the target audience, are less likely to buy it and be dissatisfied.

Pickup – This name refers both to the component of an electric guitar, and what you want people to do with your magazine. However, I feel this is too vague and could possibly get confused with the confectionary of the same name.

Loud Sound – This is a simple but effective title, it quickly conveys to the reader the contents of the magazine. I feel that this name could be good, but does not convey any specific genre past the fact that it is a music magazine.

I have decided to use the name Obsidian, as while it does not directly convey that it is a music magazine, it does imply the genre when taken in the context of music magazines.

Magazine Readership Profile

Readership Profile

Character Profile:

David is a Sixth Form student studying a wide mix of subjects. James feels that music is a big part of who he is, as he enjoys being creative, but he also enjoys appreciating a well-made piece of media, like a film or album. He thoroughly dislikes pop music, as he feels it is “overproduced” and “doesn’t require any talent”, so James listens to less mainstream genres, but his favourite is metal. He mainly listens to music on his phone, as the bands he listens to are not popular enough to be sold in the shops, as they are either incredibly unknown or from a different country like Finland, Sweden, or Japan. Therefore he spends the money he earns from his part-time job on concert tickets or equipment for his guitar, like effects pedals. He enjoys playing and writing music with his guitar, and spends most of his time either playing music or talking to his friends, who have a similar taste to him.

Mood Board:

Initial Ideas for a Music Magazine

Initial Ideas for a Music Magazine

My chosen genre for my music magazine is at the bottom of this post.

Idea 1 – Metal magazine:

• ·         Target readership is slightly wider than the usual for a music magazine, as it is males between the ages of 16-35. This is because a lot of metal bands have been consistently making albums since the 1980’s (such as Slayer and Cannibal Corpse), who still have a large amount of fans. Additionally, there are new bands who appeal to the younger generation, and traditionally these are both covered by metal magazines, as only covering one limits the target audience too much to be profitable.
• ·         The style is usually darker than most music magazines and creates a brooding atmosphere. This is because the aesthetic of metal is almost always dark, and often has satanic undertones (or overtones depending on the subgenre).
• ·         The colour scheme is dark, and predominantly uses black with white for text, and washed out colours to highlight feature articles and the mast head.
• ·         A metal magazine’s articles would mainly be about new albums from artists, either reviews or features. There would not be any gossip, as metal fans are not interested in it. Articles may also cover older albums, either to talk about what made them successful, compare them to newer material from the same artist, or to review how well it has held up over the years.
• ·         The font is usually quite Gothic in order to fit with the dark theme.

Idea 2 – Rock magazine:

• ·         The target readership for a rock magazine is younger than that of a metal magazine, and it can also be aimed at both males and females between the ages of 16-25. This is because many modern rock bands are focused on their image as much as their music, which appeals to younger people more than older people.
• ·         The style is usually very bright, to create an exciting tone to the magazine. Almost all of the material covered in a rock magazine is new, so the exciting tone links to and reflects this.
• ·         The colour scheme is usually very bright for a music magazine. A common colour scheme is white or light grey for the backgrounds, black for the body of text, and red for mast head, titles, and highlighting. Red is often used as it as multiple meanings, it can either be love or passion, or it can be danger, or excitement.
• ·         The articles in a rock magazine are almost all about something new, whether that be a new artist, or a new album from an already famous artist. Older material is almost never covered outside of “special edition” magazines, as new material is what sells.
• ·         The font in a rock magazine is mainly simple, perhaps with more exciting fonts for the mast head or the titles of articles. This is because the tone is mainly set with the colour scheme, so the font is kept simple so it is easier to read.

Idea 3 – Pop magazine:

• ·         The target audience for a pop magazine is usually quite young, to reflect the age group that pop music is aimed at. This is usually males and females between the ages of 14-21, perhaps more toward females than males. This is because pop music traditionally uses techniques that are pleasant to listen to, such as generic chord sequences, and younger people are less likely to be bored by this, compared to other age groups.
• ·         The style is usually very exciting, to fit the almost flamboyant atmosphere that modern pop music artists convey.
• ·         The colour scheme uses a myriad of colour in order to seem exciting, so colours like red or blue are sometimes used as background colours, with text in either black or white. The mast head and feature article titles could be any colour, but it usually fits in with the colours used in the rest of the magazine.
• ·         The articles are always about new artists or albums in a pop magazine, as older albums are no longer popular, and do not appeal to the audience who would potentially buy a music magazine.
• ·         The font in a pop magazine can vary from ‘incredibly eye-catching but hard to read’ to ‘very easy to read’.

Looking at the survey from my research, the most popular genres are Metal and Rock, however as there are very few Metal magazines compared to rock magazines, I have decided to create a Metal magazine.