3. PC Gamer, general information
PC Gamer is a magazine that was founded in the United Kingdom, in 1993. It is
devoted to PC gaming, and is published monthly by Future plc. The UK and US editions
have became the best selling PC games magazines. The magazine features news on
developments in the gaming industry, previews of new games, and even reviews of
the latest popular PC games. They also feature information on different hardware and
mods. Their magazines also feature info on classic games and other various topics.
4. Examples of different types of PC Gamer magazine
covers and their analysis
There logo which is essentially their font is very bold and large, which makes it stand out. Probably because they want you
to recognize that this is there magazine. Also there is an image of a new, popular game on the front cover, this is to draw
people in who are interested in these games. It is also to advertise the new games out at the current time of the magazine.
They also have lots of ‘subheadings’ on their front cover, this is probably to make people aware that the magazine isn’t
just about that one game on the front cover, and that it has a lot more content inside. On a few of the front covers that I
was looking at I saw barcodes on the front cover, but some magazines have them on the back. This is probably just for the
fact of scanning the product, and buying it. There is also a lot of circular boxes on their front covers which have
information in them. They usually have some text in them, that tells you what is inside the magazine. They also have
information on special deals. They also light blue on the cover a lot. It is usually at the top of the page, or used for the
colour of the circular boxes.
5. PC Gamer magazine, double page
spread
The pages inside of the magazine usually have lots of information, whether that be info on the game itself advertised on
the page, or someone’s experience with the game. The info is alongside pictures of the game, titles, and subheadings,
which are usually bold. My reason for thinking they use bold titles, is that they stand out, and they want you to know
what game it is about. The colours are mixed depending on what the page is about, some pages have bright, warm
colours, some cold colours, and some quite dull colours. However, I have noticed that the colours match the game
advertised on that current page, or match the image. The language of their magazines are sometimes formal and
sometimes informal. It depends on the game they are talking about. They also use sections to split up text/paragraphs,
this is probably not to make the page look clustered. They are also not afraid to leave blank, white spaces, which could
seem a bad idea, but this is probably to make their pages less clustered, and messy.
6. PC Gamer official website
The layout of their website is very professional, and neat. They use their main colour, which is red throughout
their website. They use a mix of informal and formal information, in which appeals to different audiences,
such as the informal info will appeal to younger audiences. Whereas the formal info will appeal to people
wanting to find out info, as well as a more mature audience. The images throughout their website links to
recent games out, or popular games still running with a big fan base. Their website also features images, and
information on PC parts, as the audience of PC Gamer will most likely own a PC or be thinking about getting
one. They also feature reviews on their websites which can be formal or informal. The informal ones are
usually funny, and the formal ones are the more serious reviews. The types of fonts used are very generic
ones, they almost resemble the generic font, that I am using now, Calibri (body).
7. PlayStation Magazine information
PlayStation Magazine is a magazine based in the United Kingdom that covers
PlayStation news. It was originally created in Winter, 2006. As of Issue 7 which was
released in June, 2007, the magazines now come with a playable Blu-ray Disc. This
usually covers PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 games, and material. However it also
also covers PlayStation Vita material. The magazine covers PlayStation lifestyle, as well
all aspects of High Definition media in lesser detail.
8. Examples of different types of PlayStation Magazine
covers and their analysis
The colour scheme of
PlayStation magazines are
usually somewhat the same.
They all have the white bar
across the top of the magazine,
which informs the reader on
what type of Sony console or
product information is in the
magazine.
The colours schemes vary throughout
each PlayStation magazine cover. The
magazine covers that I have chosen,
have a lot of blues in them. The
reason for this could be because,
PlayStations main colour is blue, or it
could just be because the games
shown on the cover relate to that
colour somehow.
The layout in general is
very neat, it lets you know
what the main content of
the magazine is. There is a
lot of information about
what content is inside the
magazine, which most
magazines should have.
9. PlayStation magazine, double page spread
The layout of the
magazine is neat, they
have their text far enough
away from each other to
make it look very neat
and professional. In my
opinion this page is very
bland, it doesn’t catch
your eye, as there isn’t a
lot of colour used. Also
there is a lot of text,
which will put people off,
from reading it. If they
were to change the size of
some of the text, and not
have it all the same size,
then it would look more
eye-catching.
The main colour that they
have used on this page is
blue, which could be
because, PlayStations
main colour is blue.
The main image used on the page
shows the game off, that they are
talking about. It captures a feel for
the game showing what the game is
about.
I think that this page overall could have
done with more colour, as well as images.
The page needs to show the game off more.
10. Official PlayStation website
The layout of the website is neat and easy to navigate. It looks very
professional and the theme of the website matches the PlayStation
theme. The colours of their website also matches the PlayStation theme.
This is an older version of the official PlayStation website, but it looks
modern with the way they have set it out.
Upon entering there
website you can tell
straight away that it is
the Official PlayStation
website, because of
how professional it
looks as well as the
PlayStation logo and
the picture of the
PlayStation controller.
I like how they have
split the page up
into different
sections. It makes
the page look less
boring, visually. It
also gives the page
that clean look,
dividing it to make
it less cramped, and
messy.
11. Xbox magazine information
The Official Xbox Magazine is a monthly gaming magazine which started in
November 2001 around the launch of the original Xbox. The magazines are
bundled with a disc that included game demos, preview videos, and trailers, and
other content, such as game or Xbox updates and free gamer pics. The discs also
provided the software for the Xbox 360 for backward compatibility of original
Xbox games for those without broadband and Xbox Live access.
12. Xbox magazine cover
analysis
The colours used in the Xbox
magazine are green as this is
the main Xbox colour.
The main image of the cover is
Batman Arkham Knight, which
at the time the magazine was
released, that game was new
out.
The text on the cover
lets the reader know,
what content is inside
the magazine.The magazine has a barcode on
the front which is most likely
just for the magazine to be
scanned and bought.
The cover of the magazine features the Xbox
logo, which lets you know that the content
inside the magazine will be about Xbox, and
products related.
Most of the text on the front cover, is formal
as gaming magazines are usually seen as to
be for a mature audience, because of some
of the content inside which is age related.
13. Xbox magazine, double page spread
The page layout is very neat, and
professional looking. It has lots of
colour, and uses the main Xbox
colour which is green. The
background isn’t just a plain white
colour, it is a black. There isn’t too
little or too much images in the
magazine.
A lot of the text is sectioned
into boxes, I see this as a good
thing as you don’t want the
text to be all in one paragraph,
as it will look messy.
The two main colours of this page are black
and green, I think this is a good idea as, its
more creative than having black on white,
like most magazine pages do.
The pictures used do an okay job at showing the game off. However, I think they
could of got better images that show off the game even more. From the picture the
images look a bit dull, but that may just be the camera.
14. Official XBOX website/store
Overall I think the website looks professional but it doesn’t look very colourful. It wouldn’t draw me in as its quite
bland for a website design. However, this is an older version of the website. The website itself has stuck to the green
and white theme, that represents the Xbox, as they are the two colours associated with that gaming console.
The page itself does have a clean
look to it, and the bar at the top
helps with this, keeping the page
feel less clustered together. The
‘bar’ helps separate the page.
This is one of the elements that
makes the page look
professional.
Image of the official Xbox website/store found on google images.
15. Comparing all three magazines
PC Gamer magazine PlayStation Magazine Xbox Magazine
Each of the magazines have their own colours, which consist from magazine to magazine. PC Gamer magazines generally have their main colour
throughout the magazine which is red and black. The magazine cover that I have chosen for PC Gamer, has the main character for the game that
they are advertising and saying this magazine includes information on “The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt”, layered over the text, covering the “A” of the
word “Gamer”. PC Gamer can do this as they are a well known company that own a website along with their magazines. Therefore there logo is
recognized even with a word or two being covered. Xbox magazine has done the same with the character being layered over the logo text. One
of the characters “Sledge” is layered over the “O” and “X” of the word “XBOX”. However, you can read the letters, as they are only slightly being
covered up. Whereas with PC Gamer you can’t at all. Overall, out of all of the magazines, PlayStation looks the most professional and neatest
one out of the three. But, that may be because of the cover I have chosen, as they are showing off a modern game that has a big story to it. I
would say the least visually appeasing magazine is the Xbox cover, as its not as colourful as the others. It has a plain white background. However,
I think the PC Gamer is the messiest magazine, but I think it still looks good, as it has a lot of colours that look visually pleasing.
16. Inspiration for my magazine front cover
These are some images that I gathered
as inspiration for my front cover of my
magazine. They are from the game
Fallout 4 and are collectible magazines
that you can find throughout the world
known as ‘the wasteland’.
17. I like the style of the magazines, they have a comic book style to them. I like
that they look cartoony, and look as if they have been drawn by hand. I am
hoping to make my front cover look similar to this style, I will draw by cover by
hand then scan the drawn image in, then add colour on Photoshop as well as
start to edit it there.
20. Summary of Research
Overall I found that my research went very well. The research that I found has helped me decide
upon a genre of magazine. I decide upon Gaming as there is lots to talk about. The research also
helped me with creating my practice version of my cover, double-page spread, and website. I found
the research easy, as the genre I have chosen, gaming, is a worldwide hobby. Therefore information
was easy to gather on it. The research has helped me look at magazines that I have never looked
before, it has helped me discover a wide range of gaming magazines as well as other magazines. The
research part of the project helped me to realize that the main gaming magazines are all very similar
to each other. When looking at magazines in general I found that the computer hardware magazines
have similar parts in they’re magazine to PC Gamers, pc parts section.
24. Front Page Test
I made my front page using Adobe Photoshop. It is only a
practice though, therefore I don’t need to go back and
edit it in the future. My opinions on this is that it looks like
a very cheaply made magazine cover. If this was my final
design I would change the whole design of it. I think that
the strengths of this work is the custom image I created
on Photoshop for the cover. It is of The Witcher 3: Wild
Hunt. I took one of the Witcher 3 covers and cut the main
character, Geralt out using numerous tools such as the
magic wand. Then I resized a image that I found from
Google of the Witcher 3’s landscape. My biggest weakness
is not adding enough text to the cover along with other
mini images. Even though I wanted to keep the cover
minimal and not clustered. I think that I should have
added more to the cover as it looks very bland and cheap.
I have learned that I need to spend more time on my front
page, looking at real, gaming magazine covers whilst
creating my own for inspiration.
25. Double Page Spread Test
I made the practise, double-page spread using
InDesign. I had never used InDesign before, so I
wasn’t too good at it. However, I learnt the
basics whilst making it. The strengths of my
work was that I included a title, an image, and
text. The weaknesses of my double-page spread
was that I didn’t include a lot of variety. It all
looked very plain and boring as it didn’t have
the text and images spread about. I have learnt
that I need to make the images vary in size as
well as the image itself. I will need to make sure
that the image isn’t too similar to the others I
have. I have also learnt to make the page look
like a gaming magazine page.
27. I made my website using Wix.com, I found the
website complicated at first, but once I got the
hang of it, I found it easy. I chose a specific
template then started to edit the template to a
gaming website. I would say one of the strengths
of my website is the colours I have used
throughout the home page. There is a consistent
colour combination throughout the site. Another
strength is that I have made it look very
professional in my opinion. However, one of the
weaknesses is that I only made a homepage.
However, this was only a practise task that I was
asked to do. When making the website I used
‘Lorem Ipsum’ which is filler text and makes no
sense at all. This was a quick and easy way to fill in
empty spaces in the website, where I would want
information to go if it was my final design. From
making the website, I have learnt lots, that will
benefit me for the future, when I make my
website. One of the things that I have learnt is that
I must be visually appealing as well as make my
website look very professional. I need to
remember to reflect my gaming magazine
company, ‘BrainDead Magazines’. I will need to
use a good use of colour like in my practice
website as well as text that can be easily read. I
will need the website to have high resolution,
high-quality images. This will be a step closer to
making my website looking professional. I have
also learnt that I will need to make my website
easy and simple to navigate.
29. Flat Plan, double-page spread:
IMAGE
Text
IMAGE
IMAGE
Information on the game, text.
IMAGE
30. Flat Plan, cover:
Name of my magazine company, my brand.
IMAGE
Title of the game advertised
Information
Information
Information
Small Image
31. Flat Plan, Website:
Name of my magazine company, my brand.
IMAGE
Title of the game advertised
Information
Menu
Information
Small Image
Top bar, dropdown menus
Image
TEXT
Coming Soon with images
and text
Text or images
BrainDead text and or logo
32. Style Sheet:
This will be the main colour of
my magazine and will be used
as the colour of the font.
This will be one of the main
colours I use along with white
and yellow. I will use this for
page backgrounds.
This will be another colour
that I will use a lot. I will use
this for may things in my
magazine, and website.
Curse of the Zombie font from Dafont.com
Creepsville font from Dafont.com
Infringement font from
Dafont.com
Zombie font from Dafont.com
Young Frankenstein font from Dafont.com
Mars Attacks font
from Dafont.com
Dark World font
from Dafont.com
The
Enemigo
font
33. Home Page of
BrainDead magazines
News Best of Reviews Contact
Meet the team
Contact
methods
About
This months
Past reviews
This month
This year
PC Gaming
news
Console gaming
news
Hardware news
34. Evaluation of my magazine cover
Once I finally gathered enough research, looking at other magazines and creating my own practise version I was
ready to begin my final magazine cover. Overall, I am very happy with the way my cover turned out, I personally
think that I have done a good job at creating a gaming magazine cover. However, there are still some things that I
would change if I were to do it again.
The main strength I had when it came to using Photoshop was that I knew how to use, as we had used it
throughout every project so far. One of the main tools I used was the magic wand tool. The magic wand tool is
especially helpful when it comes to deleting parts of images that you don’t want for example a white, square,
background on an image. To use the magic wand tool, you need to first make sure you have selected it, then from
there click on the parts you want to delete, then hit delete. However, this doesn’t always workout. I used this tool
for almost all of my images in my cover. I found this part of the project quite easy, because of all of the research
we did and the practise version.
If I were to go back and do it again I would of probably make the text easier to read, as some people may not be
able to read the text, because of the bright colour combination that I have chosen. I could of easily put a box or
another shape under the text, this would make the text easier to read. However, I am quite happy with the way
my magazine cover turned out.
The way that I created my cover was complicated as I left the cover to the last minute, but we did only have a
week and a bit to complete our production side of things, and I couldn’t do any at home as I don’t have the right
software. I first started by creating a general layout of where I want things to be. I did this by getting images that I
may want to use and creating boxes and other shapes using the rectangle, ellipse, and line tool. This helped me
get a feeling of where I want certain things to be on my cover. I also added random text boxes filled with random
words for a general layout idea. Once I was happy with the way of the layout I started making it look professional,
and how I wanted it to look. I gathered the images that I wanted to use and started editing them either to make
them sharper and good quality. I also changed the shape of one of the images that I used to a circular shape. That
made my cover look more like your average gaming magazine, and makes it look more professional. I also found
a font that I liked and I thought would be suitable for the title of my magazine. This made my cover look more
unique as well as an official brand. If I had some more time I would have created a logo for my brand, to make it
look more official as well as professional. When creating my magazine cover, layers were very important as I had
lots of images, shapes, and text that used, and I didn’t want it to all be clustered up together as it would look
messy. Therefore, layers were very important and useful as it helped me make my magazine look professional
with lots of different sections, not looking the same.
35. Comparing my magazine cover to PC Gamer’s magazine cover
Looking at PC Gamer’s magazine cover, it looks very organised and professional whereas my cover looks more messy and
harder to read. However, my cover looks more like it’s based for teenagers. One of the similarities of our covers is the main
image of the game we are trying to promote and draw the audience in with. First of all it’s of the same game but, it’s the
centre piece to the cover, this is the image as well as the title that draws the audience in, it’s the image that makes
someone want to read the magazine, as they know that info on that game will be in the magazine. The location of the title is
also in the same place at the top of the page. This is the case with most magazines and one of the reasons I chose to place it
there is because, readers usually start from the top and read down meaning that the title is one of the first things that they
will see along with the main image. Even though our titles are in the same place, PC Gamer’s title is under layered behind
the Rainbow Six Siege character, Mute. They can do this because there brand is now a worldwide brand that can be
recognised from around the world. Therefore, they can cover part of their logo/title up, as it will be recognised either way.
If I were to do this with my cover, know one would know who the magazine is by. Another difference is that my cover has a
barcode on it whereas there's does not, I would expect a professional magazine like PC Gamer to have a barcode on it, but
it doesn’t.
36. Evaluation of my double-page spread
Overall, I think that my double-page spread looks very professional. I have followed a similar layout to a PC Gamer magazine layout design as they are a
big gaming magazine company. I think that my double-page spread has turned out better than my practise version, as I have put more effort and time
into it since its my final design. I tried to keep it consistent at looking professional as I wanted to give my double-page spread a neat and organised look
whilst making It still look visually creative. I am very happy with my design, however if I were to change or add anything else to it, I would make it a bit
more colourful as well as collecting all of the images myself. I did get some images myself but not all of them as I would not be able to get as high quality
images as the ones that I found.
I found the production side of things very easy even though I have never used InDesign before. I started by getting the layout of my images in a similar
layout as a PC Gamer magazine once I did this I fitted my text in around the images, making it look more professional. I was asked as homework to write
something around 700 words on an article related to my magazine, so I decided to write this article on ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’ as that is a game,
therefore it relates to gaming. I pasted this into text boxes that I laid out on the page in different sections. This gave my double-page spread a
professional gaming magazine look. Once I finished laying out the images that I gathered and placed them into a suitable location as well as the text
from the article I had written, I started on the little details such as the dividers of the text as the text box's lines will not be there when it gets printed
out. I also added a small box that runs along the bottom of the page going up the left side of the page, I got this idea from a PC Gamer’s magazine page
that I saw when I was doing my research. It makes my double-page spread look more professional. I am very happy with my double-page spread,
however if I were to do it again, I would add some more little touches to the pages. One of them would be adding a little info box about the game I am
talking about like you see in professional gaming magazines such as The Official PlayStation magazine. I would also add some more info on the
screenshots I had gathered and taken myself. I did this for the big screenshot, I wrote what the image showed, so if I had more time or I were to do it
again I would add some more text for each of the screenshots that I had taken or gathered.
One of my main strengths was that I didn’t over do it with colour, images and information. I kept it looking professional like a PC Gamer magazine would
be. I also would say that the layout of my text and images is one of the strengths of my magazine as it looks very neat and organised as well as easy to
read. One of the weaknesses of my magazine’s double-page spread is that it doesn’t have enough colour, as when I look at another gaming magazines
double-page spread some of them have an image as the background. I think if I were to do it again I would do something like that as I think it’s more
visually pleasing. Another weakness would be that not all of the images that I have gathered are my own, only a select few. One of the reasons for this is
because, my screenshots are not as good as ones that I found on Google images, as the quality of my screenshots are not the best. Another disadvantage
to my double-page spread is that the product I have chosen to advertise, talk about aren’t new, recent games that have came out, they are games that I
have chosen because, of how much I like them. Therefore, its easy for me to talk about them. Therefore an advantage of my double-page spread would
be that I have lots of information about the games I am talking about because they have been out for a while as well as I play them a lot. Overall, I am
happy with my double-page spread as I think it looks like it would be in a gaming magazine.
37. Comparing my double-page spread with PC Gamer’s double page spread
One of the similarities that my double-page spread has with PC gamers is that they both have white areas,
they are both not afraid to leave blank areas. I think that this makes them both look more professional.
Another similarity is that we have both used dividers to split our text up, this is so the text doesn’t look all one
mess. One of the differences is that I have more images whereas PC Gamer has a select few. They also have
more variation in terms of colour as there background has different shades of grey.
38. Evaluation of my website
After finishing my other products I moved onto the website. Now I have completed my website I am very happy with it, this took me the longest out
of all of the final things to do as I had never used Wix.com before as well as never created a website before. Overall, I enjoyed making the website, I
found it to be quite easy and I could get a lot done as I could log into Wix at home to do some more work on the website. Research and the planning
before the website helped me a lot with the website. The flat plan helped me get a general layout of my site.
I started by making an account on Wix.com and then choosing a template, which I chose to make my own template as I thought that would be easier
to start from scratch rather than choosing someone else's website design then changing certain things. I first started on the home page trying to
make the design that I had in my head. I then added some more pages. From there I designed each page trying to keep the design that I wanted,
which was the neat clean and organised look.
One of the advantages of my website is that its very organised and neat, when creating my website I tried to stick to the clean, neat look, but still
keeping the gaming look as well. I did this by making the text a size that’s easy to read and not too big, so it doesn’t take up lots of space and look
untidy. I also chose to have a very modern look to my website, this helped me keep the clean look. Another advantage of my website is that it is easy
to navigate and that I have stuck to one theme throughout the website which is the black and white colour scheme. These are two colours that I
chose and knew I wanted to use before starting production. I would say that one of the disadvantages of my website is that some of the text is hard
to read because of the colour scheme I have chosen along with the images that I have chosen to use. If I were to change anything I would make the
text more visible by either changing the colour of the text itself or adding a shadow behind it making it more easier to read. Overall, I think that my
website is very good, and I am happy with all of it. There are some things I would change like I stated, but I would say that this has been my favourite
part of the project as I found it quite enjoyable, as I was aloud to be creative with my website.
40. Comparing my website with PC Gamer’s website
Overall I think that my website is better, that may be because I created my website, plus its my website. However, I think that my website is
more organised, has a better colour scheme, displays information like news in an interesting way, and is more neat and tidy. One of the
disadvantages that my website has however, is that it doesn’t have as much information like news and reviews as PC Gamer. But, they are a
professional company. I would say that our sites are very different from each other, but we still do have some similarities, such as the top bar
that shows all of the pages we both have news, and reviews, but then again I would expect every gaming website to have something like
that. Both of our websites have both the latest information and similar articles.
