Notes on Kerrang! Magazine

• Kerrang! was first published on 6 June 1981 and was edited by Geoff Barton. Kerrang! was initially a one off magazine in Sounds newspaper.
• Its current total circulation is 52,000.
• It target market is Men but girls also buy it.

Statistics

• MALE 69%
• FEMALE 31%
• AVERAGE AGE 24
• WORKING FULL TIME 52%
• WORKING PART TIME 7%
• STILL STUDYING 29%
• ABC1 65%
• CIRCULATION: 56,284
• READERSHIP: 369,000
• ABCe UNIQUE USERS: 3,501,326 IPC MEDIA . COM

Preliminary Task

My preliminary task was to produce a front cover for a school magazine which had to consist of a medium close up of a student.
I took plenty of pictures of my school with my DSLR and also of the student. Unfortunately when I took the pictures of the school it was a very overcast day but this was all taken care of in Photoshop by using “hue”, “saturation”, “lightness” and “colour balance” to make the sky look bluer and to give the school an improved appearance. The sky ended up looking a much nicer blue and the building looked a little more modern.
Adding the student into the picture wasn’t a problem. I had to delete the background of the student picture and then ‘inverse’ the selected area. Then I had to try and find the right angle for the gradient, so the student would not be transparent, nor a solid object just placed on a page.
The colour of the title, “St Edmund’s News”, is as close to the school’s Crest colour of blue. This is so that the magazine cover looks similar. Looking at our school’s magazine cover now, we saw that the colours were either the same as each other, the same as on the school crest or complimenting each other. This makes it look more professional, so that is why I have copied this idea. The other writing to the top right of the page is the school motto, what term the school is in and the issue of the magazine. I have done this to keep the motto looking important in the school’s life, to state the term we are in and to inform people how many other magazines there have been before this one.
The crest was straightforward to put in the picture. I did it the same way I did the picture of the student but this time I did not change the gradient because the school crest, in my opinion, should stand out. Therefore I made the crest medium sized and put it in the bottom left corner.
I am very pleased at how my preliminary task has turned out.

Myroslava Terlecky