House Styles

So, I had a lesson today and we were continuing to work on our house styles. My teacher looked at the first draft of my proposal, and said that it was really well done. However, I needed to write a bit more about what would be included in the magazine in terms of regulars, and write a bit more about my target audience. Therefore I added a few things to my proposal and changed it a bit, and now this is my proposal:

Ps23 is a CCM magazine - Contemporary Christian Music - focusing mainly on pop rock and some heavier rock. We hope to include artists from both sides of the Atlantic, from American hard rock bands such as Casting Crowns to British folk-rock bands such as The Rend Collective Experiment, and propose regulars such as reviews of albums and singles, annual reviews of CCM festivals such as Soul Survivor & Momentum and Big Church Day Out, and interviews with new artists. It is also possible that there may be a regular section for those aspiring to be worship leaders themselves. Ps23 is unique as there is currently only one CCM magazine available in the UK, and even this is difficult to buy, therefore there is a gap in the market for this type of magazine.
The ideal target audience for Ps23 is Christians aged 16-30 living in the UK. Our audience will likely be those in E and D class (though some of our older readers may be in C2 class) and we aim to appeal to those with a taste for more contemporary music inspired by the Christian faith. The ideal publisher for Ps23 would be the Bauer Media Group, a publisher who already publishes two music magazines (Q and Kerrang!), both of which cover the genres that Ps23 will feature, in their secular form. We expect that Ps23 will be the Christian version of these magazines, and therefore feel that the Bauer Media Group would be the right publisher for the magazine.
 

I also began drafting some masthead designs. I went on a few font websites, but none of them had quite the right font that I was looking for. Therefore, I went on Keep Calm-O-Matic, a website which enables users to create their own Keep Calm poster. I typed Ps23 into the form and created mastheads in a variety of colour schemes, cropping out the 'Keep Calm and'. I used the same font in each - Avenir LT 65 Medium - as this is not the 'traditional' Keep Calm font and therefore is less conventional.

This is the first masthead that I designed. I kept the traditional background colour of the Keep Calm posters i.e. the default on the website, but changed the font colour from grey to black. This makes it stand out more and also follows the traditional colour schemes of rock magazines, which are conventionally black, white and red.

This is the second masthead that I designed. I changed both the background and the font colour in this masthead. The green background and blue font not only are bright colours which reflect the upbeat, positve message of CCM, but these colours also continue the 'inside joke' of the title. Ps23 is based on Psalm 23, which mentions "pastures green" and "still, still waters". Therefore, this colour scheme reflects the meaning of the title of the magazine more.

This was the final masthead that I made today. This is clearer and sharper than the others and I think will be easier to be made into a brand than the others because of this. This was inspired by the masthead used by Q which I studied in the Case Studies Task. Therefore, I think that this will fit the rock genre of the magazine better, however I am reluctant to use this as it may take away from the main theme of the music that the magazine will feature, which is Christianity.