A concept design is a fundamental groundwork underlying a technically strong design idea, refining it until its execution and fulfilment.” (J. Relić, 2022)

J. Relić (2022) What is a Conceptual Design? Meaning, Uses, & Processes. Available Online: https://www.designrush.com/agency/product-design/trends/what-is-a-conceptual-design [Accessed 31/10/2023]

Good Design

For this magazine cover, one of the clearest reasons that this is an electronic music production magazine is because of the main image. It shows a robot/machine that seems to be using a musical instrument. This clearly depicts the idea of Electronic Music, as the robot shows many exposed wires and mechanical parts to connote the electronical part, and then the keyboard/synth with it shows the musical side. The keyboard could actually be attached to the robot which further implies that it is electronic music. The head of the robot covers up part of the masthead where the word “Electronic” is. This further connotes that the robot is there to show the electronic side of the music. There is a lack of text throughout the cover, this could be implying the simplicity of electronic music production. 

The whole background of the cover is a very prominent yellow. This could have been used to make it stand out on shelves much clearer than other magazines. The yellow also connotes the feelings of happiness/positivity which could be implying that electronic music production is a positive thing to advance into. This is also implied by it being referenced as “The Future”. One problem however, is that there is no clear logo for the masthead. It could be called “Electronic Sound”, but there is nothing to determine whether it is a headline or a masthead. 

Bad Conceptual Design

The magazine’s masthead is ”Sound on Sound” but has a missed opportunity of layering one Sound on top of the other. Instead, it gives the first letter of each word a red background, making the clear initials ”SOS”, which to me, abbreviates from ”Save Our Souls/Skin”. I don’t really understand why this is done as I can‘t see any relation to these initials. The red background does make the heading a lot clearer without putting it behind all the letters, the more subtle approach also doesn’t take away from the rest of the content on the cover. It is however, clearly shown to be about Electronic Production as the middle is largely taken up by a mixing device. Your focus is drawn towards it also by the darkening vignette around it. 

Redesign

In my design, the main thing that I have done is I have layered “Sound on” on top of the other “Sound”. I have also changed the single letter red backgrounds to the whole thing having a red background. Because this logo does not stretch across the whole page, it could work being towards the top left or top centre, but it would need to be made a lot smaller however because the background is all red it is still clearly visible by contrasting the dark background of the whole spread. I’ve tried to keep close to the original serif font as that matches the classy, clean look throughout the overall cover. I’m not too sure on the shape for the background that I’ve used but it does create a uniqueness that the original did not have. 

However, after a while I felt that altogether it was not conceptual enough, so I decided to imply that the last “D” is a speaker by adding a sort of sound wave design to it. I used black to contrast the white text to not confuse the reader into thinking it was part of the name. These waves also help to fill up more space without making the masthead messy.

References

Electronic Sound Magazine (2023) Issue: 100. Available Online: https://www.newsstand.co.uk/192-other-magazines/23278-subscribe-to-electronic-sound-magazine-subscription.aspx [Accessed 02/11/23]

Sound On Sound (2022) Issue: June 2022. Available Online: https://www.soundonsound.com/magazine/2022-06 [Accessed 02/11/23]