Stages of Development- Front Cover construction

8/3/2019 Stages of Development- Front Cover construction

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Stages of Development-Front Cover construction

Original Image:

To start with, I inserted the image of my friend Duaine who I took to a musicstudio and told to put headphones around his neck and stand in front of amicrophone (musical props) to make him look like a more realistic artist:

I didnt like the background, thought it wasnt suitable to be on a front cover,therefore I decided to cut around his body using the polygonal lasso tool:

Stages of development Page 1 of 7 Ferdous Audhali


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Masthead:

Next was the Masthead for my magazine which I decided previously wasgoing to be called the Underground. For this, I wanted to grasp a uniquestyle and font. Therefore, I went onto a site online which offered manydifferent fonts and ended up with this:

This was a bit plain and may not grab attention which is what a magazine

masthead is required to do. (Also it doesnt carry any sort of colour theme thatthe magazine carries on throughout the issues) Therefore I played withvarious effects to try and accomplish this:



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My next step was to play on the Underground theme. Although the LondonUnderground tube service isnt directly relevant with underground hip-hop- the

fact that most of the UKs best Underground hip-hop artists come fromLondon, and the music genres name carries the name of the tube line, Ithought it would be nice to play on this effect:

This was made by simply drawing a red circle and a blue

rectangle and repositioning them.I added the same tarmac/gravelly effect on the


e effect I added to the masthead allowed itcarry a sort of tarmac/gravelly texture whichected on the literal street life of thederground genre which most of thederground artists originally come from. Thew grey to black gradient and red backdropped carry the colour scheme of thegazine.


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Underground sign that I did on the Masthead writing. This was so as to ensureit played along with the colour scheme and joined as a whole with the writingto make one final masthead:

Inserting Caption/Flasher/Footer:

I decided that on my cover I would like: A caption that went under the

masthead, a flasher and a footer. I thought this was all my magazine neededon its cover, as I didnt want to make it too cramped, as this would make itlook messy and unprofessional.

Caption:The use of my magazines caption

REAL HIP-HOP underneath the Masthead, was an idea I had to help thepromotion of this genre. Underground hip-hop pride themselves for the factthat they carry the unique hip-hop that was the prime use and core back in theearly days were hip-hop was used for the oppressed to express themselves.

(Not for promoting corruption and hedonistic lifestyles whichhip-hop has been turned into in these modern days). [Iinserted the text and added effects such as red stroke]


Caption

Flasher

Footer


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Flasher:The flasher advertises a brilliant freebie which many underground fans[Especially for fans of the artist Karma (Duaine)] as it informs them of a freedistribution of one of his mixtapes. This is a major seller and will hopefullybring in many customers.However, through out my research, most of the magazines placed theirflashers in the left third and some didnt even adopt the flasher or rule of thirdstechnique at all. But, due to the angle that my image was shot, I did not wantto cover Duaine/Karmas eyes or face by placing the flasher in the left third. [Iadded effects such as the red drop shadow and grey to black gradient]

Footer:The footer was atechnique I used in the

footsteps of previous magazine I had researched into. It was previously usedto display artists that were featured inside the magazine. Here I displayed topunderground artists which will allow me to draw in their fans and encouragethem to pick up a copy and buy itso they can read about their favourite topunderground rappers.

Main sell line and barcode:

Now it was time to get some sell lines/cover lines on my front cover. Becausethe artist Karma was displayed on my front cover, I made my main cover line

about him (As well as the flasher deal):


This was made byinserting the text andadding special effectssuch as colour overlay,strokes, inner/outer glowsand drop shadows.


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The barcode is the key and essential part to any magazine. Without abarcode, the magazine can not sell. It also carries key information for thereader, as it displays the price, the issue number and the date of the issue

which many regular as well as new readers always find very important anduseful.

Other sell lines:

The other sell line was an EXCLUSIVE sell line, which meant that it was aspecial story which only the Underground have been privileged to have

access to:



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The EXCLUSIVE banner wasa font that made it look like it

had been stamped onto thepage, this creative effecthelped me highlight theexclusivity of the area. Iadded bevel texture edits, aswell as a black colour overlayand white stroke.

The rest of the writing was all in the same font but with different colours. Theblack overlay and white stroke was used for the majority of the writing, butwhen it introduced the artists name SiGuy, then a red colour overlay and

black stroke was used. (All writing had a drop shadow effect as well) The redwas used to make the artists name stand out and be bold amongst the rest ofthe writing.

The picture on the front cover is an image of the artist that isbeing exclusively interviewed by the Underground by the nameof SiGuy who is my Uncle Simon. For this, I inserted theoriginal image into Photoshop, edited it separately, thenimported the new edited version onto the front cover. I cropped itso only a small square of his face showed and then tilted it and

made it sit behind the text. I then finished it off by adding a finalstroke effect to add a sort of frame to the image.


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Stages of Development- Front Cover construction