9th January 2014

I started creating my front cover for my magazine. I had a very good idea as to what I

wanted the front cover to look like. This was because I did a lot of planning and looked at a

fair few magazines. This meant that I could get on with my magazine design. Furthermore,

I had a very detailed plan from my proposal so I was able to refer to this to help me out.

Firstly, I thought it would be best to set the background

colour, as this would set the tone to my magazine. I had

already said in my proposal that I would have a dark blue

colour as the background. However, finding the right blue

colour became very difficult. I spent around 10-20 minutes

deciding the colour, because if the background colour was

slightly wrong, it would ruin the design for the rest of the

page.

After choosing the background, I went on to get my

masthead sorted, as this would work with the background

to brand and set the target audience for my magazine. This

was also a very important part of the magazine. So I used

the sit, “Dafont” and I had previously did some research

and found the right font style for my magazine. So all I had

to do was find the font and type in my magazine name.

When I imported the image into the Photoshop, the text

was in black. The only problem was that it didn’t look right

on the page. I experimented with the background colour,

but the problem was the colour of the masthead. So I thought about changing it to white,

however, I had a bit of trouble working out how to change it. After trial and error, I finally

figured out hot o change the masthead to white; I just had to invert the colour of the

image.

The next thing that was logical to do was to start putting in

my header. This was very simple as it was just a grey

rectangle at the top of the page.

The next thing was putting the text on top of the

rectangle. I had already planned on what the text was

going to be, therefore, I just had to use the text tool to

type it out. I then changed the colour to blue to be

consistent with the colour scheme; blue and grey.

To make the header stand out a bit, I put the next part of

the text in a different direction (right to left instead of left

to right) and with the band names, I put them in a cyan

colour to make them stand out.

The final thing I did to my front cover on this day was

adding in a barcode. I copied an image of a barcode off of

the internet and resized it quite small to allow me to fit

more information on the page.

14th January 2014

I was ready to put my band pictures on the front cover

of my magazine. However, before this, I needed to get

rid of the background which was already in the

picture. I did not know how to do this, so I had some

help off of a Photoshop expert, Richard. He was very

helpful and I learned how to get rid of the background

using the quick select tool and the polygon tool. After

this, I put the band picture in the centre of the page

and resized it, so that it was the largest thing on the

page. In my original design, I wasn’t going to hide parts of the masthead,

however, after experimenting; I found that this made the magazine look better.

I added a pug to my front cover to make the

information inside it stand out. Many people from

my survey said that they wanted a free a CD in the

magazine, so I thought putting it in a pug would

make it stands out to my target audience. I played

around with the colours of both the text and the

shape to see which combination worked the best

with my front cover.

I started to create the main cover line shape for the

front of my magazine. I used the line tool to

separately draw my rectangular shape. I couldn’t

just use the rectangle shape tool; because I had an

oddly shaped rectangle that had to be manually

made.

After creating the base for my shape, I filled in the

shape so it was grey instead of black.

I started to add effects to it so that it would look

more appealing and stand out more and most

importantly: you would be able to see it. I gave the

shape an outer emboss to make it look slightly 3D. I

experimented with the effect options to see what

made the shape look better.

After creating this shape, I took an objective look at

the front cover to see how well the different

elements looked on the page. I saw immediately

that I would have a problem trying to fit the other

cover lines on the bottom of the page. Therefore, I

thought it would be best to move the pug I had

created. I moved the pug so that it was next to one

of the band members, freeing up space at the

bottom for my cover lines.

Now that the main parts of my front cover was done,

I could start adding my cover lines to the cover. I did

some research to see how the main cover lines to

some other rock magazines looked like. This gave

me a better idea of the colours I should use for the

text and the content of the main cover line. I noticed

that for some of them, they had the main cover line

in big letters with a bit of information above/below

it.

15th January 2014

For the cover lines, I didn’t need to

do any research for the colours,

because I had already planned out

what type of colours I wanted to use.

This meant I could just type out the

cover lines and add them to the

design.

I asked people from my class on their opinions on my

front cover. I got very positive feedback from them and

very helpful constructive criticism. So after talking to

my peers, I made the header smaller at the top, as this

appeared to be a bit too big for a header. Furthermore,

they had said that the masthead should be a bit bigger

than the original size, so I enlarged it. I also moved

parts of the cover lines over.

Another point that was raised was that I should have

more cover lines at the bottom of the page to fill the

dead spaces. So taking this on board, I added a white

cover line, which referred to discounts for rock

festivals, as I remembered from my questionnaire that

this would be something to draw them into buying the

magazine. I also added one more cover line.

A few of the main important pieces of information that I

had forgotten on the front cover was the issue number and

the price, so I quickly added them to the front cover in a

small font and text size, as this information wasn’t the

most important bits of information.

13th February 2014

On my double page spread and my contents page, I had

spelt the band name differently to how I had spelt it on the

front cover, so I changed the spelling on each page to

match.

27th February 2014

After looking at some other magazines, I decided to take

away the grey shape, as it started to look odd and I didn’t

like it. So I removed it, added a stroke to the text

“Tisiphone” and rnlarged the text. I then did the same for

the text “Rock’s new talent”. Then I enlarged the image

a bit to make the models take up more space on the page. I

then moved the text “Discounts for rock festivals” down

to the bottom and made it only on one line. Adding a red stroke to the text then moving

the pug to its place, I was happy with the design.

What have I learnt?

I learnt that planning and research really helped me a lot throughout the design process,

as I was able to create the front page very easily and without difficulty. Furthermore, I

learnt that its never too late to change what you don’t like. I felt that after taking a step

backward from my work, I wanted to change a few little things.