Front Page

This is the original picture that I took to go on the front cover of my magazine. I did not want the photo on the front cover to have a background to it, as many magazines in the music industry have a plain background. Because of this, I placed the photo into Photoshop where I edited it. After editing, the final product was what is seen on the left. To achieve this (the cut out without the background) I used the 'magic wand tool' to cut around the outside of the model. It was tricky to do so as the colour of his hair was similar to the bricks behind him, and the computer could not recognise that the hair and bricks were two different things. This meant that I had large areas of brick on the picture and to resolve this, I had to zoom in and use the 'eraser' tool and rub out the bits that were not needed.





The picture above is the first stage of the music magazine front cover. As you can see, I have placed the photo on to a white background and desaturated it. I did this so as I could bring out the colour in the guitar. In order to do this, I used the 'history brush tool' to paint over the area that I wanted to appear in colour. After I was happy with the picture and the colour that I wanted showing, I added the title. The title is written in a font called Futura, taken from daFont.com. As well as this, I decided to make the colour of the title the same colour as the guitar so as it did not look strange to as why the guitar was in colour. In order to do this, I used the 'colour picker' tool and filled the text in the colour I had just found. I wanted the picture to be in front of the magazine title. I wanted this because all magazines do this and I wanted to follow this convention. To do this, I had to drag the layer that the picture was on and place it above the layer that contained the writing for the title. As well as this, I inserted two black bars to the cover. I did this so as to fill in blank gaps at both the top and bottom of the page and also because I have seen other magazines that have followed this convention in order to add cover lines. The black bars were created using the 'rectangular marquee tool'. Both of the boxes were filled with black and moved in to position at the top and bottom of the page. They had to be created on a new layer so as when they were moved, nothing else moved with it.





The next thing to do was to add cover lines to the magazine cover. I started with the 'Nick Woods' as he is the main focus of the magazine. I wrote his name in the Futura font and made it white in colour as white is the obvious colour to go against black. Below the name is a quote from the magazine article I have written. The colour of the writing is the same colour of the title here. I did this to sort of mirror the colours and vary them around so as not to use all white thus making the cover appear boring to the consumer.The speech marks at either end of the quotation were difficult to produce. Initially, the whole quote was on one layer, however with the speech marks at either end, there was a large gap between the two lines. To over come this, I had to put both lines of the quote on to separate layers, and add the speech marks on in another layer. By doing this I was able to position the text and quotation marks in a place that looked the best and most professional. The two other cover lines I added were put in yellow and white. The yellow has been used to highlight the name of the artist and I did this so as you are drawn to that first. The large '+' sign was added on a separate layer and made big so as to draw the reader to it and make them see what else they are getting in the magazine apart from the obvious story about 'Nick Woods'.





The next stage of the creation of the front cover was to add more cover lines and authenticity. The new cover lines are the yellow writing in the black boxes. They simply tell the reader what else to expect in the magazine. The major addition to the magazine at this stage was to introduce the barcode section. It was created. in Photoshop with different shapes and tools. The first thing I did to create it was to create an outline that would bee used so as I knew what size to keep the box. I did this by using the rectangular marquee tool and made very thin lines. After I had an outline of a box I started adding text and other boxes. The top part was created by making a text box and writing inside in a yellow font. The second part meant that I had to create a yellow box via use of the rectangular marquee tool again. Once I had filled it in yellow using the bucket tool, I again used the text box to create more words and this time put it white in colour.

The barcode underneath the yellow box is something that I took from the Internet. I probably could have made one on Photoshop however it would have taken a very long time and a great deal of patience and time using different brush sizes. The only other thing that took some time to create was the selection of rings next to the word 'com'. I had to make a variety of circles both black and white and placed them in order to create the effect I have.







This is the final draft for the front cover of the magazine. I have added an Issue number and a date in the top left and right corner to add that extra authenticity. As well as this, you can see that all of the text is in line with each other and justified. For example, the left hand side is all aligned; the end of Bruno Mars, New York and Takeover are all in line with the end of the title page. It is essential that most of the text is aligned so as the magazine face does not appear too scrambled and confusing.