Preliminary Work: Magazine Cover & Contents

In class, we first had to create on paper a copy of a design for our magazines, which we were to later use to assist with the creation of our Photoshop-Based magazine. I first thought of a genre to base my design on. I chose music as I thought this would appeal to many college students, aswell as the fact there is many existing magazines of this genre for inspiration. Here is a copy of my initial design:

*Scanned image of hand drawn design*

I then came to creating my magazine cover on photoshop. My first step was to take, and import an image of a classmate. I chose to take my image of James, with a simple mid-shot against a plain background. My reasons for this were the fact that the brief stated it must be a student (and a mid shot), and also that it would be easier to 'cut' around the image and then use it as a layer.

Here you see my original image (left), and my image after cutting it with both the magnetic lasso and magic wand tools, and adjusting the contrast/brightness and saturation etc. I also changed the background to a pale grey, as this is a neutral colour, which doesn't clash - meaning I can use a range of colours for the rest of my elements I add.

My next step was to add a masthead. I first had to decide on a font to use. My original inspiration for this was 'Complex' magazine, however, after browsing 'dafont' for a style to use, I found 'Bomb Font'. This appealed to me as it was similar to the style used by artist 'Kaws' in his work, so I decided to use this. I imported the text 'LC Music' and then edited it, by adding shadows, colour overlays, and lighting effects until I got a final product I was happy with.

I then carried on this process similarly throughout, importing elements and then customising them to my taste. I decided to follow magazine conventions with many of the elements, such as a central masthead at the top, barcode in the bottom right, and so on. I chose to do this, as I feel it gives the magazine credability - as it has features similar to existing, successful magazines.