Front cover

My front cover was the most challenging for me. Firstly I decided to use the whole image I had taken of my artist and to fit the text I needed around it and by using colours I had decided to use throughout, red, black white and grey. The photo itself I had edited, originally it was colour, but edited it so that the picture was black and white, and my artist being in colour so that it stands out, espectially since it was my main image, and the only image I planned to have. I also used a focal zoom for the same effect. After creating this I used my plan to see if my text and such would work. Due to the Harlow Town side above my artist I decided beforehand anyway to have the main headline below but did have second thoughts to have it above, but kept to my plan to keep it at the bottom. Due to the bollard on the left hand side I decided not to have any left thrid, although this could be a bad move in sence of advertising if it was on a rack stand it could intrege the buyer to what is on the page, and keeps more focus on my main image.


After this was done I decided to put in my title, I decided it to be red as it will be a very strong contrast on the background, obviously the title needs to be big, so set the size to be 320 pt, I used Rockwell as the font for in my opinion seemed fitting for this genre type. After creating the title I felt that it wasn't enough, it seemed to plain, so went into the effects I could have and chose a drop shadow, inner shaddow and glow, and a bevel and emboss, these gave me a very different looking title and seemed more 'indie' so kept it like that.

The next step was to add my main headline, barcode and date/selling price. This for me was easier for most parts, I decided for my main headline to first have a quote from the interview for the double page spread, starting with this would bring readers in to wonder what this quote 'no one knows the real me', I used a different font too for the same effect. The underneath and using a slightly larger font size and red to go with the theme I put the artist's name, 'Greg' so if 'Greg' wasa  real artist people would be able to recognise and interact with the idea that this is the main feature of the magazine. Then using white and slightly smaller having the cover line 'reveals all' would attract anyone into what 'Greg' has to reveal, if someone has a particular musical interest they would be interest to know more about him. Underneathe and as said without clashing with the coverline/headline I put the barcode in the right hand corner, and with the selling price/date of sale framed around it, I have set the price as £3.50, this is quite reasonable price for a monthly magazine as after some research I found that some can be up to £5.

The final step was to add cover lines to the bottom of the page, selling line underneathe the title and a competition I decided to feature. I used white for my cover lines to contrast with its background, and using a star as a separtor you could presume gives a 'rock' feel, I added the names of people I will mention in my contents page so it interlinks and not there just to feel space, I made the writing at 70pt with the same font as the title to continue the theme. The text at this size fitted well as I didn't think I would have enough room for the names I wanted to feature. For my selling line to put underneath my magazine title I decided to use an italic, more rural font so contrast and give a more sophisticated feel, my selling line was what my title 'M.I.E' means, 'music is everything', I made the font alot smaller than the title to emphasise the title. For my compettion I decided to put it in the top right hand corner, I used the shape tool on photoshop and chose a triangler shape, I used red again for theme and contrast, and used white font for the same effect. My competition was to win tickets to V! festival, which features alot of rock and indie bands so would be of interest to my target audience.