Front Cover - Second Draft

This is the second draft of my front cover. The few changes I made to the original are that I made all the text the same shades of either blue (which I colour picked from the model's t-shirt), pink or purple (my house colours) as this looked more professional. I also made the date line up with the masthead and made the barcode slightly smaller because it is never as big as it was in normal magazines.

In this draft, I experimented with changing the colours of the union jack in the button to my house colours. I felt that this did not work as well as the original colours, so I chose the other option.

Contents Page

I am quite happy with this contents page, as it turned out how I wanted it to. I have made it very colourful to link it directly to the genre of the magazine, which is mostly pop (usually represented quite colourfully- see mood board). I added colour by colour filtering the background to mostly pink and blue, as these are my house colours and they are also quite bright. I also colour filtered the first photo of a radio as this created quite a neon effect on the page.

Most of the layout / font was decided by the results I got from the questionnaire I carried out. I feel that the masthead font works well- the transparency makes the colour come through and it is big and bold like the music in my magazine is.

I chose to take photos of things that related directly to the content described in the text. For example, I accompanied the article 'Katy Perry gives us some guitar lessons...' with the photo of a classic guitar. I chose to use a photo of a guitar taken at a low camera angle as this filled the empty space on the page more and made the page look more interesting.

I made parts of the text red when they belonged to articles featured on the front cover. I did this because it is conventional for a magazine and it makes it easier for the reader to read the magazine, making it more appealing.

If I was to improve my contents page I would shift the top photo and block of text more to the right as they look slightly cramped, and also if the page was on the right hand side in a magazine the photo would be too close to the central fold and quite a lot of it would not be visible.

Contents Page Mockup

Contents Page Photoshoot

These are the photos I liked best from my photoshoot:

1. Radio / Hi-Fi

After I'd 'smart fixed' both photos on photoshop and changed the brightness + contrast, I decided that the first photo (without flash) looked better, so I lassoed out the background and colour filtered it to light blue:

2. Many CDs

Out of these two photos I chose the first one as it came out less blurry than the other one. I also 'smart fixed' this photo to make it even less blurry, and I adjusted the brightness + contrast because without flash it appeared a bit too dark:

3. Classic Guitar

Even though in the planning for the photoshoot I said that I would not use flash for this photo, I found that there was not enough natural lighting to make the image look bright enough. I also decided to experiment with different angles as I thought that this would make the contents page look more interesting. In the end I thought that the second picture looked best on the page as it also filled more space, so I used the 'Magnetic Lasso Tool' to get rid of the background:

Contents Page Photoshoot Plan

Front Cover

I decided that the house colours for my magazine would be purple, pink and blue after carrying out my questionnaire. I therefore mostly used these colours when creating my front cover. With my cover lines, I made the kickers a different colour from the explanatory text because I had seen this done in other magazines. It also made the page more colourful, which related to the genre of 'FUSE' which is mostly pop. Pop is usually associated with multicolour / technicolour (see Mood Board). I feel that the masthead font links in well to modern music theme, so I kept it for the sell line and date because they were close to the masthead.

I managed to give the button the pattern of the union jack using Adobe Photoshop. I feel that the colours of the flag provide a bright, eye-catching contrast to the other colours used on the page.

I also used Photoshop to make the model in the picture's head come over the masthead. I used this technique because many popular magazines do it because they are already so well known that they are recognisable even if part of their masthead is hidden. I wanted this idea to be created on my front page.

I rotated the barcode and put it on the side of the page so that it would not fill up the space needed for my cover lines and so that the right hand side of the page would not be too empty.

In my cover lines I included buzz words such as 'EXCLUSIVE' and 'WIN!' to attract the reader. I also used the words 'SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK n ROLL' in my main coverline because this kind of language will appeal to my target audience- young adults.

I made some slight changes to my mock up. Instead of putting the date underneath the sell line I decided to put it on top of the masthead as I felt this took up less space.

However, all the coverlines are positioned as explained in the mock up. I placed the main coverline in the bottom right corner because I thought it looked good there and I saw this done frequently in other magazines such as 'Marie Claire':

Front Cover Photoshoot