{Making the front cover

Creating the front cover:

The first thing I do when creating my front cover I transfer the chosen image , over to a A4 Photoshop document .

I want a grey gradient background on my front cover, so I use the gradient tool to create this. And drag the tool from less than half way of the page upwards so the dark grey is towards the bottom of the front cover

I then want to add a shadow to the image, so I double click the layer and then go to drop shadow. The image shows the settings I put the shadowing at. I put shadowing on my image to create the illusion that this image was taken in front of the grey background.

Now I need to create a skyline for the front cover, I will create this by using the rectangle tool and placing it at the top of my page, keeping true to my layout design.

I haven’t made the skyline extremely big as it will not hold a lot of information just a simple sentence that will help draw the audience in.

Whilst creating my front cover the edges of the image looked ‘messy’ which made the cover look less realistic, so to tackle this issue I made the images look more ‘smooth’ and natural by using the brush tool on a low opacity.

I then took my chosen masthead and put it onto the magazine front cover

I added some red to the masthead so it would stay to my chosen colour scheme and link with the red in the clothing used. I also put the masthead layer behind the image as the image overlapping the masthead is conventional for a alternative music magazine.

I also added a slight shadow to the masthead to create more depth for the front cover. I did this by using the layer style section of Photoshop.

I then added the skyline simply by adding font , I used the colour yellow to keep to my colour scheme for the magazine, I also used it as it helps to make the skyline stand out. The anchorage title is created on Dafont.com, I liked this font because it is bold and stands out, I also incorporated the yellow into it again to keep to the colour scheme. I will add the rest of my sell lines using these two techniques.

Changes- When creating my magazine front cover I had to change a few of my original ideas and designs.Anchorage title -I did originally have the Anchorage title ‘THE GIRLS ARE BACK’ however when looking back on my research on alternative magazines such as Q and NME, I found that most of the front covers included the name of the artist/band instead of a title. The text for the title was also a pull quote from the double page spread as this is also quite conventional.Colour scheme- I have slightly changed the colour scheme of the magazine, I have added white to the original main colours of black, yellow and red. The white was added into the colour scheme because it helped to make writing and the plug stand out on the front cover.

There are two sell lines on the right of the page, The font used is ‘Bebas Neue’ This font is from DaFont.com. I have incorporated the colour scheme by using Yellow, red and black for the font. I have also used a Yellow separator between the two sell lines. I have used these fonts as bold simple fonts are conventional for an alternative music magazine.

The skyline uses White and Yellow writing, I decided to Include white into the colour scheme as it helps the writing stand out. The font used is Ariel. The yellow stand out drawing people in.

The anchorage Title and text is in Yellow and white, this is because yellow is the main colour used on the front cover. This is because it ties in with the small parts of yellow on the clothing used.

The plug used is in yellow, white and black which again ties in with the colour scheme. The fonts used are ‘bebas Neue’ for ‘Bad Blood’ and Ultra Condensed Sans Serif was used for the rest of the writing.

The sell line on the left of the page uses red and white from the colour scheme, The font used for the writing in red is ‘Bebas Neue’ This font is from DaFont.com. The font used for the white writing is ‘Bell MT’. I have used these fonts as bold simple fonts are conventional for an alternative music magazine. I again used a yellow separator.

I created the barcode on the barcode option on DaFont.com

The masthead was created on DaFont.com, The font is named ‘Disco Night’ . I made the Masthead half red and black as it ties in with the colour scheme.