Horror magazine production

Making the

magazine cover

To begin with Zoya looked at a range of different covers of Empire magazine as after analysis of other horror magazines we thought that this one looked the most professional.

Next she added in the ‘Empire’ masthead which is a common convention of the Empire house style. This makes it instantly and easily recognisable for viewers.

Next I took a range of different photos that could be potentially used as the cover image. The protagonist is the main focus of the magazine cover as that is a common Empire convention.

She then decided her favourite three of the photos that I had taken. After thought she picked the middle image and added it as a layer on photoshop which she was using to create the cover.

After sharpening the image to make the edges look sharper and more professional, she manipulated the picture by changing the light intensity and saturation.

She then continued to manipulate the image by playing around with the eye colour, eventually brightening the blue to a piercing colour making a bolder look.

She then went on to dafont.com and found a font that worked well with the features and house style of the magazine cover. This happened to be the ‘Bebas neue’ font and after she had found this she typed up cover lines mentioning magazine features.

To make the masthead tie in better with the other texts we had created, Zoya added in a torch glare as the torch was the main icon used not only in the images but also in the fonts.

She then added in typical magazine features to give the cover a more realistic appearance and feel. These included a barcode and a 5 star rating and circle graphics. To tie in with the genre of horror she added a red blood stain as this is a typical convention of horror.

As the cover image looked similar to that of the poster it was suggested to us to change the image being used in order to create some variety. To overcome this Zoya changed the image but not to the stage where the main linking icons were.

This is eventually how it came together with all the graphics and cover lines added in on the new image.

She finally finished the cover by neatening up the coverlines.