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Verbose Magazine FMP
2022
GRAPHIC DESIGN
For the Final project of our 2022 school year I decided to revist the idea of creating a magazine and themed it around another topic close to my heart - Video game music. The So I set forth to create a project that used as many skills as possible that I had learnt over my time at Bath College.
Firstly before we do anything we need to start planning and giving things a try - in the beginning I started off by seeing if I could write for this type of content and what I could potentially use, this led to me making a Proposal idea example where I show off what the content could be like. Alongside this I made a FMP Pitch similar to the first year FMP to present the idea to my lecturers and once we received feedback upon it we would need to fill in a statment of intent and project proposal forms similar to the first FMP!
Additionally, I tried my hand at planning single and double page layouts by experimenting in Indesign to become more proficient at using the programme and designing magazine pages.
There are three sets of each to attempt different designs and experiment - in the final product I decided to keep the variation and often used different layouts and even experimented with what I could do with the layout to make it different.
With a general Idea and direction for this project, I started to work on gather research to help support article content as well as inform my design decisions by finding out what people like about magazine design. This can be quite overwhelming so I decided to makee a schedule to keep track of what I was doing - this would help me keep focused on what wwork I needed to do which day as well as what I was working towards.
The first area I worked on was the questionnaire this was essentialy picking questions that felt helpful towards understnading why editors and designers choose to make the design decision they do by seeing what people make of different magazines and so I followed this theme - you can take a look at this questionnaire here - similar to last year I posted in some reddit communities and also went around my class asking for some feedback. This year I only had 15 responses but, that's a lot better than nothing! Later on in the week I then translated the more impactful questions into visual data to practice communication within media.
Secondary research this time around focused on gathering data for articles, so this is essentially looking for anything that composers say in interviews about the tracks or looking at wikis to find any hidden trivia that we could use for the magazine itself to make it all the more attractive to readers. Alongside this I also conducted some research into the game company SEGA to see what I could learn from them, this then acted as my visual research for Secondary data.
From this point onward I began work on my magazine however, I didn't have all the content I needed for it just yet - so one of the first thngs I did was conduct a photoshoot with some friends to get some shots for adverts I could make within the magazine. Additionally I did a shoot out near a local forest at the Landsdown Battlefields to get some more shots of a tape I had made. Both shoot plans have the ideas behind them within their descriptions. You can see these to the sides here.
Along the original website I would divide these into the seperate sections, when I reflected upon the work of the magazine I had made timelapses for the production of the final magazine.
One final area I would like to add on is the inspiration behind the professional design and what I would refer to when I became stuck or lost - this was an now gone magazine called "Official Nintnedo magazine" - the title says all but, it was a magazine that eventually became discontinued around 2016-2017 which I read monthly. When it came to designing structure and adding images this magazine's old copies proved invaluable as a starting point for me. Below are two examples of the structure of the contents and introudction pages (the very first area I became stuck upon) and the inspiration behind what I eventually made for them both. As I went past these pages I would occasionaly refer back to the magazine to see what else I could use, while I did use less and less as the magazine went on - I also tried to maintain the consistentcy of ONM (or Official Nintnedo magazine) does throughout it's pages.
Additionally on most pages I made a conclusion vlog where I'd outline what I had done in eac hsection - for this I'll show you the final conclusion vlog to wrap up. As this was a more recent vlog I don't think my stance has changed much, I think the execution on some parts could be better and maybe pictures could have more room to breathe but, overall it feels very strong and I'm very happy to say I beleive it achieved what I set out to make - an accessible magazine to game music for everyone.
PS Yes i know reflection is spelt wrong, I actually corrected it after the video. Slightly embaarssing mistake there!
Magazine below! (Scroll up for cover in the PDF viewer)
As I mentioned just across the street over to the left, the contents page took a lot of inspiration from ONM's contents page - if you scroll down to the page below the introudction on Verbose, you can see the images have been presented in a similar way with text sitting inside it, the graphics on the top left of the page are in similar places, the magazine cover is also presented here and the boxes notating the different sections of the magazine is also present - however, they aren't exact and the reason is because this is my approach. Inspiration, as I have learned, is not copying - it's taking what has been done and reimagining it to your own standards or ideals and that's exactly what I've tried to do here.
Of course back over the street to the left we can also see the introduction page of ONM. now not a lot has been re-used/inspired from the ONM magazine however, that doesn't mean it didn't help. The one thing seeing the ONM intro page reminded me of how they structured it, an introudction to hook the reader, a more in-depth insight from the editor that builds and develops the extra interest as well as some form of image that compliments the bodies of text. This helped me to get a solid base of what I should do for my introduction page and helped smooth this over - while I don't think it's exactly perfect on my end, I much perfer it than to a picture of a person (no offence ONM).
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