Step 1:

A gradient using the colours white and dark grey has been used on the front cover. This effect gives the magazine a professional and simple look and these factors are two of the main aims I intend to achieve when designing my magazine. It also helps to emphasise the brutal look that the masthead manages to put

The masthead has been decided as ‘U.T.I’ which is an abbreviation for ‘Under the Influence’. This was chosen purely on gut instinct and initiative as although some other names proved to be popular from market research, I feel this is a suitable, unique and ‘stand out’ masthead for my hip hop magazine. The metallic effect on the text gives it a rather brutal and tough look which reflects the nature of hip-hop. To create this effect I had to create two layers, one being black and the other was used to create the metallic effect. A gradient overlay style was used and then the clouds filter was applied. The final ‘noise’ filter was added right after applying the Gaussian blur filter