Front cover11/12/13I used the font "Hard Rock" which I downloaded from dafont.com for my masthead. I chose this font because based on the results of my questionnaire, my target audience really liked the distressed and rugged effect and I preferred this font the most when I was in the stages of choosing a font. I have aligned my masthead to the left because it didn't manage to fit across the whole width of the cover and I thought this would make it look a bit more interesting. I preferred how it looked when it was aligned to the left rather than the right, so I just decided to fill out the empty space on the right with the puff I was going to include about winning tickets to Warped Tour 2014. I made the font size 160 because I knew it had to be big in order to attract the audience's attention.

11/12/13After adding a circle using the Ellipse Tool, I added a 21 black stroke around it and placed my text on top of it. I used the font "The Blood Shack" and adjusted the horizontal scaling of the text to 80% so that the text width wasn't so wide. This font is very similar to the quite popular "Font 1" I used in my questionnaire. Rotating the puff makes it a little bit more different and visually interesting, also I plan to add a drop shadow along with other details to make it stand out more. I have kept all the colours on the front cover black, because I find it easier to add and change details once the main image is on the front cover so that I can make sure that it all looks well put together.

11/12/13For my tagline, I used the font "Marble Wasteland" and placed it below the masthead. I think that because the letters don't lie in a straight line, it gives the front cover look a little bit more creative. Since the font of my masthead is distressed and rugged, a little part of it was obstructing the tagline so I decided to make a new copy of the masthead and rasterize it so that I could just use the Erase Tool and get rid of some of the font fragments that were in the way.

11/12/13I used three different fonts for my main headline. Firstly, I used "Distort You A Lesson" for the text "Exclusive!" which looks very appropriate for the rock genre, specifically because it gives-off a punk-rock vibe. Secondly, I used "Future Rot" which is a very legible, but still slightly distressed font. I chose to use this font for my other headlines as well because I thought that, unlike the other fonts I've used so far, it wouldn't look too overpowering if used quite often. And Lastly, I used the font "Forever Black" because it is bold and eye catching. I used the font size 120, making it the largest font out of the three texts because I wanted this to be the one the stands out most and be the most important.

11/12/13Then I placed the other headlines on the front cover and roughly arranged them to where I wanted them to be. I used "Alte Haas Grotesk Bold" for the text after the headlines because I wanted a simple font to balance out all the other stylistic fonts on the page.

08/01/14I changed the headline fonts to “Dirty Headline” to match some of the text in my contents page and added a barcode to the corner of the front cover. I used an image of a barcode I found online and just used “Arial” to add some extra information to make it look more genuine and believable.

12/01/14I added my picture to my front cover and was able to edit and create the little details of the cover. Firstly, I changed the main headline to suit the new artist on my front cover. Secondly, I added a skyline. I used Adobe Kuler to look for colours that would complement my image and chose one to be the background colour for it, and another to be the colour of the little guitar picks in between each band. I used the font “Future Rot” for the text in the skyline.

Then I decreased the size of my tagline so that it didn’t obstruct the singer’s head. I also changed the font colours from black to white so that they would stand out against the dark background of the picture and added a black outline to my main headline and masthead to make them stand out more. I also rasterized my masthead so that I was able to use the erase tool to erase the part of my masthead which would’ve otherwise obstructed my main image.

Finally, I decreased the size of the barcode and added the issue information beside it.

13/01/14I changed the colour of my headlines and masthead to red and also added a red puff. I made the circle shape a dark red (just like the small guitar picks on my skyline) to show that it’s an accent colour and to break up all the other identical shades of red.

For the text in the puff, it was originally supposed to all fit within the circle, but that left a lot of empty space around the edges of the shape and after seeing a front cover from Kerrang magazine that had its’ text go over the restrictions of the circle, I decided to do the same to eliminate the empty space and fill a larger amount of the shape instead. I duplicated the text layer and added a 4px dark red stroke around the top layer, and an 8px light red stroke around the bottom layer to make the text stand out even more and give it the illusion of greater dimension.

For my main headline, I just decided to keep the font colour as white and just change the “Exclusive!” text to red.

I have also added a headline for Nothing Yet? which is the band I have interviewed for my double-page spread article. I made the text bigger and the font colour different so that it stands out more compared to the other headlines, whilst not taking away too much attention from the main headline. I have also placed a white box behind it with an opacity of 77% so that it still stands out can be read against the singer’s light coloured shirt.

Finally, I moved some the image higher, and also moved around a lot of the headline. Because the main image now covers more of the masthead, I have decided to change the issue information of the magazine to a much later one making the magazine more well known and therefore allowing me to cover more of the masthead.

22/01/14Firstly, I edited the headline about Nothing Yet? I used the font “Benny Blanco” for the “Spotlight” text and placed the masthead above it.

I also lowered the image a little bit to reveal more of the masthead, since it does have to be the first issue of the magazine, and also moved around some of the headlines.

I added a banner by duplicating the skyline and making the red box taller. I used the font “Broken Detroit” for the “Plus” text and “Future Rot” for the other text in the banner.

Lastly, I decreased the size of the barcode and placed the issue information on top of it instead of having it going down the side.

13/02/14For my final, finished, Front Cover, I changed the tagline to: New music, New sound, Amped up. Adding the commas prevents the reader from misreading the tagline or reading it incorrectly. Also, changing ‘amplified’ to ‘amped up’ makes it relate back more to the title of my magazine.