Making the contents

Importing the image

The first thing I done for my contents was imported the image.

The second thing I done with my image was I changed the level of brightness and contrast.

By changing the brightness and contrast this would help me to achieve a more interesting/sharper image.

I wanted to make the bright colours look eccentric and really stand out.

Adding text

I needed to add text to introduce the contents. Now a lot of magazines use “Contents”, but I tried this and it did not look nearly as good as when I used “this issue” and even better “this week”.

To make it stand out I used a drop shadow effect and used the “angle”, “size” and “distance” effects to tweek the writing just the way I wanted it.

Another option I had to consider was the colour and I thought that keeping it black would match up with the guitar and not make it the main focus. I want people to look at the image first, to captivate the reader, and then to read the writing second.

Print screening

I print screened the front cover and free transformed it (ctrl + T) to make it smaller.

I done this so that I could write like a small editors comment.

This introduces the magazine and gives the reader a place to start. It allows them to get a feel for the magazine and know the nature of it. (If it is going to be comical serious etc).

A more simplistic reason for the editors comment and the picture is that it helps to take up a lot of space, giving a more interesting feel.

Adding text

There are 3 layers of text that have added in here.

They all had to be on their separate layer, because I wanted “February issue”, to be in a different colour.

I needed “editors comment”, in a bolder/bigger text.

And I needed the rest to be in a different opacity of black.

By reducing the opacity of the text I was able to produce this cool light grey colour.

This dimmer grey colour, takes the emphasis off of the text, meaning it is not of great importance, but it is there for those interested, and this is true about the editors comment it is there if people are interested but lets be honest that’s not the reason people read the contents, they read it to find out where the best parts are.

Styling

There are certain little bits that you may not think about when reading/looking at a magazine.

One of the little bits of styling I have added to my contents is the red bar

I would write “features” inside this and this would highlight the main articles.

The “eraser” option enabled ne to take a semi-circle out of the end of the bar.

Now I will be completely honest I don’t know why I decided to design it like this, it just worked for me.

Adding text

I needed to start adding the text for the articles and headlines.

I used the curve of the main image, around the leg and the body to add articles.

I put each one on a separate layer and then moved them into the write position.

The idea was to keep them short and simple, again to draw in the reader. Another couple of things about these bits of writing

was that they had to be bolder than the other bits of writing because they are the most important thing about the contents page. Also I used san-serif texting to make the magazine come across as less formal.

Adding text - Numbers

There are 2 sets of numbers I have added here:

-Page numbers for the articles

-The individual page number

The numbers are simple, it would make the magazine more easy to understand and in turn the magazine becomes more accessible.

In order to make the numbers easy to read and easy to understand, they had to be; the right style, the right size, the right colour, the right position. Considering all these I made the article numbers red, this theme of black and red I have included, contrasts well with the guitar in the main image. This links all aspects on the contents page together well.

Final text

The last text to add, was a little bit about each article.

This needed to be a slightly lighter tone compared to the bold title.

I could have used a different to do this, but I think that reducing the opacity again does this really effectively and after comparing the results, opacity was the best option to make the writing a lighter colour.