Finished Cover

Cover Page Photo-Shoot Model Pose

I made my model sit so that I would be able to place all of her on the cover and to show rebellion (which is stereotypically what people think people who listen to rock music are like), this seems rebellious because most cover pages would have a medium close-up shot of their models, so by doing this I am going against codes and conventions. I also sat her so that she would be able to lean the electric guitar against her, by having the guitar feature in the shot it gives the viewer a general idea as to what music genre she belongs to. Also, the guitar is there because red is part of my colour scheme and I wanted to make it apparent by making this coloured guitar part of the main attraction of the cover. I placed her on the right quarter frame so that compositionally it would look good with the cover lines on the left side, and keeping the model in full view (not much covering her.) The cover lines will be on the left side to stick with codes and conventions.

Digitalizing The Masthead

BEFORE

To do this, I used the top photo and opened it up on Photoshop then did the simplest stage and cropped it to an appropriate size so i could focus on the text.

Then the next step was to make it look more digital so by using the brightness and contrast tool I was able to make the text darker and bolder.

After this is accomplished, I opened a new Photoshop file.

And then I used the magnetic lasso on the individual letters and dragged them over to the new file and positioned them in the places I chose for them to be arranged in.

Then the trickiest stage came next, I had to use the paintbrush and go over all the letter to straighten edges or make them neater or to get rid of any white spots.

The last Z was the one I used for both Z's because it was neater and better drawn and i wanted boths Z's to match so the masthead looked more professional.

AFTER

This was my end result so all I had to do before this was moved over to the cover page was to remove the background layer.

Cover Page Photo-shoot Costume

Cover So Far

This is the basis for my cover, I have placed the masthead on the image in the position which was originally planned and have used an outer glow so that the masthead stands out from the image and is readable because at first it blended in with the image too much because they both use dark colours. As you can see the image has been enhanced like I said it would be, I have brightened it up and added contrast so that the background appears whiter and so that the artist almost stands off the page along with the masthead which looks 3D. I did include the idea of using band names to draw attention at the top and have used purple to match the jeans, this text also looks 3D and has a inner shadow and outer glow. The masthead did not originally look like this; the double Z in Buzz was higher. This had to be changed because it looked like it said Buff because of the font style so by moving the Z's down it now looks like Buzz.

Cover Idea

This is what I want at the top of my magazine, these are the names of already famous bands of the Rock/Metal genre. I am putting this at the top of the cover so that if someone was to wander by the magazine on a shelf the name of one of the bands may catch their eye because they could be a fan which means there is a chance that they will pick the magazine up to take a look therefore widening my audience. The names aren't just there for no reason, they would be names that were included in parts of the magazine.

Cover Image

Cover Image

This is the image I will be using for my Cover, I will place my masthead in the top left corner and will make it overlap the side of the artist slightly because if I made the masthead a lone feature on the page it will make the cover less professional. I have noticed that most Rock/Metal magazine mastheads interact with their main image in some way. My idea is place every bit of text on the cover over the main image but not covering the whole image completely, to be able to do this I will put the text on the left hand side where the area is mostly white. I will be sticking to a colour scheme with my text by using a red much like the colour of the guitar and using purples like the jeans and obviously black to match the masthead and the artists shirt. So as I planned all along I will be using purple and black but also using red so there is a better range of colour. Straight away I see things that need altering to enhance the image, such as smoothing out the guitar so that the fingermarks get removed and brightening the image slightly and adding contrast so that the artist stands out greater.

Cover Page Photo-Shoot Location

I chose to do my photo-shoot in a studio room with a plain white back drop, so that the idea of the white, bleeding background was still being used. I wanted the backdrop and plain background so that my model would be bold and this would also make my cover lines stand out depending on where I position them on the cover page. This also allows my colour scheme to really 'pop' on the cover. I plan to use the plain white background on my contents page also, so there is a running theme of the two pages. Though I plan to have a full image on my double page spread that goes across the two pages.

Cover Page Flat Plan

Masthead Designs

All of my designs will be hand drawn and then after deciding which one to use I will digitalise ready to use for Photoshop.

This was my first of many designs, this one i liked because it looked like caligraphy but after some decision making i decided it wasnt best suited for my genre of magazine because it looked too fancy for a rock/metal magazine.

This was a second attempt at calligraphy type font but more simplistic which brings me to the next image which is my main experiment on simple fonts.

All along I had decided to use black and purple as the main colour scheme for the magazine so here is where I experimented with using purple and black but using simpler fonts this worked quite well on the middle font.

This was inspired by a fantasy feel that I wanted to try out for the magazine, I think it is a very nice font.

From here is where I tried out the more Gothic and modern fonts to fit the genre. I really liked this one but if I was to use I would have to redraw it because the draft is very scruffy and would be difficult to edit on Photoshop without redrawing the image itself. 

I did not like this one from the beginning because the letters were too spaced and would not very good if they were less spaced anyway. As you can see the first letter is purple this is were I also tried out more colouring but after experimenting on this I have decided to just leave the Masthead black.

These two were just more tried on the Gothic look but I don't think this look would work for my target audience and its stereotypical that all people who listen to Rock/Metal music are Goth's, this stereotype is false.

This is my first draft for my chosen masthead for the cover, the 'Z' needs improving on and the 'B' needs to be straightened, to do any of this I will have to redraw the whole masthead.

After redrawing I have come to my final masthead which will be properly photographed and then digitalized on Photoshop. Also, the words at the very top are an idea I had where I would place band names that would be featured in the magazine so that if a reader picked up the magazine they would instantly know what bands were included in the magazine therefore giving a better chance of a person who has never heard of the magazine to try it out.