Magazine Front Cover Development

Jack Dixon

Contact SheetI shot my images at the Bugged Out festival which hosted lots of live DJ’s inside a range of different rooms. Due to the nature of the event I did not have to take any form of lighting myself; the strobe lights and lasers gave me the perfect effect to generate images. As my magazine is a house music/clubbing magazine I wanted to generate images that were familiar to the demographic audience which is why I tried to include clubbing scenes and DJs. I had to take into consideration that the image needed to be portrait and the colours on the image would have to work well with the overall theme of my magazine.I wanted to include some branding in the image whether it was the festival brand or a certain DJ as this would appeal to the target audience.

Making the Front CoverThis is the original image that I chose to use for my front cover. I chose this image mainly due to the contrast between the purple and al other colours, I would also use this purple colour for the theme of my magazine. There is a lot going in in this composition; the crowd can be seen dancing, the DJ is in shot and the depth of field focuses on the Bugged Out text that can be seen in front of the decks. The lighting and colour meant that I would not have to do much editing to the image although it was slightly squarer than I had hoped meaning it would need to be re-shaped.

Mast Head DesignWhen designing my mast head I had to consider the colour scheme, how easy the font was to read and whether it would appeal to my target audience. I began by deciding on a colour scheme; I chose to use blue for the mast head as it stands out and looks good with the bright purple of the main image. Next I had to choose a font, initially I was planning on using a small logo I the top left corner that included the magazine name but I later decided to use fill the top of the front cover with just the magazine name; FADER, I chose this name as it relates to DJ’ing and I also wanted to use a word with the letter E in it as I planned to have the E backwards which is seen a lot in DJ names and clubbing brands. Once I decide that I would use just text I spent a lot of time trying out different fonts and sizes, this is when I had the idea to add a thin border to the text. I decided on this font as it is easy to read and slightly matches the font that says ‘BUGGED OUT WEEKENDER’. Once I chose my final mast head I decide to put both the E and the R backwards to relate to DJ’ing again with the word reverse. I also added a slight blue glow around the text that blended in well with the purple on my front cover image.

Once I had chosen which image I would use for my front cover as well as the mast head that I would be using I had to put the 2 together along with some small sub-headings; I chose to use the same colour font as my mast head for the sub headings with just the main heading in the purple colour to make it stand out the most. I then added a custom barcode to the bottom right hand corner of the magazine as this is the conventional place to find one. I added the majority of sub-headings to the left hand side as this is the direction of which the human eye reads, I added 2 headings to the right hand side in order to balance the content over the front cover. My main heading ‘BUGGED OUT WEEKENDER’ is written in a different font and colour to make it stand out from the other headings, the font used is much more interesting than the other text on the page.

Evaluation of Front Cover