Front cover (2)

Front cover (2)

• 1.
  9th January 2014 Istarted creating my front cover for my magazine. I had a very good idea as to what I wanted the front cover to look like. This was because I did a lot of planning and looked at a fair few magazines. This meant that I could get on with my magazine design. Furthermore, I had a very detailed plan from my proposal so I was able to refer to this to help me out. Firstly, I thought it would be best to set the background colour, as this would set the tone to my magazine. I had already said in my proposal that I would have a dark blue colour as the background. However, finding the right blue colour became very difficult. I spent around 10-20 minutes deciding the colour, because if the background colour was slightly wrong, it would ruin the design for the rest of the page. After choosing the background, I went on to get my masthead sorted, as this would work with the background to brand and set the target audience for my magazine. This was also a very important part of the magazine. So I used the sit, “Dafont” and I had previously did some research and found the right font style for my magazine. So all I had to do was find the font and type in my magazine name. When I imported the image into the Photoshop, the text was in black. The only problem was that it didn’t look right on the page. I experimented with the background colour, but the problem was the colour of the masthead. So I thought about changing it to white, however, I had a bit of trouble working out how to change it. After trial and error, I finally figured out hot o change the masthead to white; I just had to invert the colour of the image.
• 2.
  The next thingthat was logical to do was to start putting in my header. This was very simple as it was just a grey rectangle at the top of the page. The next thing was putting the text on top of the rectangle. I had already planned on what the text was going to be, therefore, I just had to use the text tool to type it out. I then changed the colour to blue to be consistent with the colour scheme; blue and grey. To make the header stand out a bit, I put the next part of the text in a different direction (right to left instead of left to right) and with the band names, I put them in a cyan colour to make them stand out.
• 3.
  The final thingI did to my front cover on this day was adding in a barcode. I copied an image of a barcode off of the internet and resized it quite small to allow me to fit more information on the page. 14th January 2014 I was ready to put my band pictures on the front cover of my magazine. However, before this, I needed to get rid of the background which was already in the picture. I did not know how to do this, so I had some help off of a Photoshop expert, Richard. He was very helpful and I learned how to get rid of the background using the quick select tool and the polygon tool. After this, I put the band picture in the centre of the page and resized it, so that it was the largest thing on the page. In my original design, I wasn’t going to hide parts of the masthead, however, after experimenting; I found that this made the magazine look better.
• 4.
  I added apug to my front cover to make the information inside it stand out. Many people from my survey said that they wanted a free a CD in the magazine, so I thought putting it in a pug would make it stands out to my target audience. I played around with the colours of both the text and the shape to see which combination worked the best with my front cover. I started to create the main cover line shape for the front of my magazine. I used the line tool to separately draw my rectangular shape. I couldn’t just use the rectangle shape tool; because I had an oddly shaped rectangle that had to be manually made. After creating the base for my shape, I filled in the shape so it was grey instead of black.
• 5.
  I started toadd effects to it so that it would look more appealing and stand out more and most importantly: you would be able to see it. I gave the shape an outer emboss to make it look slightly 3D. I experimented with the effect options to see what made the shape look better. After creating this shape, I took an objective look at the front cover to see how well the different elements looked on the page. I saw immediately that I would have a problem trying to fit the other cover lines on the bottom of the page. Therefore, I thought it would be best to move the pug I had created. I moved the pug so that it was next to one of the band members, freeing up space at the bottom for my cover lines. Now that the main parts of my front cover was done, I could start adding my cover lines to the cover. I did some research to see how the main cover lines to some other rock magazines looked like. This gave me a better idea of the colours I should use for the text and the content of the main cover line. I noticed that for some of them, they had the main cover line in big letters with a bit of information above/below it.
• 6.
  15th January 2014 Forthe cover lines, I didn’t need to do any research for the colours, because I had already planned out what type of colours I wanted to use. This meant I could just type out the cover lines and add them to the design. I asked people from my class on their opinions on my front cover. I got very positive feedback from them and very helpful constructive criticism. So after talking to my peers, I made the header smaller at the top, as this appeared to be a bit too big for a header. Furthermore, they had said that the masthead should be a bit bigger than the original size, so I enlarged it. I also moved parts of the cover lines over. Another point that was raised was that I should have more cover lines at the bottom of the page to fill the dead spaces. So taking this on board, I added a white cover line, which referred to discounts for rock festivals, as I remembered from my questionnaire that this would be something to draw them into buying the magazine. I also added one more cover line.
• 7.
  A few ofthe main important pieces of information that I had forgotten on the front cover was the issue number and the price, so I quickly added them to the front cover in a small font and text size, as this information wasn’t the most important bits of information. 13th February 2014 On my double page spread and my contents page, I had spelt the band name differently to how I had spelt it on the front cover, so I changed the spelling on each page to match. 27th February 2014 After looking at some other magazines, I decided to take away the grey shape, as it started to look odd and I didn’t like it. So I removed it, added a stroke to the text “Tisiphone” and rnlarged the text. I then did the same for the text “Rock’s new talent”. Then I enlarged the image a bit to make the models take up more space on the page. I then moved the text “Discounts for rock festivals” down
• 8.
  to the bottomand made it only on one line. Adding a red stroke to the text then moving the pug to its place, I was happy with the design. What have I learnt? I learnt that planning and research really helped me a lot throughout the design process, as I was able to create the front page very easily and without difficulty. Furthermore, I learnt that its never too late to change what you don’t like. I felt that after taking a step backward from my work, I wanted to change a few little things.