Stages of development: Front Cover

Elliot Hardy.

The first thing I did when constructing my music magazine was making a vibrant masthead with a contrasting background. Using the rectangle tool to create two rectangles; one large one to cover the whole page to set a colour of a dark blue. Then another for the title of the magazine to lie. Then I inserted some text saying NRG in my chosen font and added a drop shadow to get the black effect in the background.

I then inserted another rectangle using the rectangle tool and then added a stroke to it with a large ‘size’ so that I got a heavy black line so it would stand out. I then used the

eyedropper tool and selected the same colour as my title for the fill of the rectangle (using the fill tool). Also I inserted the main image and I used the 'polygonal/lasso

selection tool' to select the Model's head/hair and 'feather' it down so it wasn't so rigid. Then I used 'edit levels' to alter the darkness levels and contrast within the hair to

make it more vibrant. Also I chose to make the model overlap the title so that it’s the next thing you see when looking at the title and subconsciously making you want to

pick up the magazine and carry on reading.

I then added in additional objects such as guitar images that I took and used the lasso tool to cut away the background from the picture I wanted. I used the Text tool to add in some text such as tagline, issue number and prices and also some bands along the header that were shown as popular in my questionnaire.

Next I inserted the content for the footer and a barcode that I made myself. Using the text tool and blending options I put the ‘Oasis…’ text and put a stroke and drop shadow to give it some recognition on the page so it can stand out. For the bar code, I used mixture of the rectangle tool to create individual lines with various widths then merged them all at the end so that they moved as one.

Next I began to start adding my cover lines; my main feature and main-image-relative sell line was added as the second largest text on the page so that the eyes would be drawn toward it. I then placed an image I had already created and transformed into a JPEG which was the album-art for Abbie’s supposed

album. I, once again, used a stroke and drop shadow and continued to use this throughout my magazine for most text. Once all in place, I merged all layers so

that they would also move as one around where I wanted.

Another cover line was added below the last of another artist: Ollie of band: The Martyrs. I placed an image of him upon the heading and used the polygonal/lasso selection tool to select the background around him and take him out of it so that he could be in the sell line. Here I once more ‘eye-dropped’ the original colour for the text to follow the house style and used drop shadow and stroke to bring it off the page and to contrast the blue background.

Not following my original house style but to bring an alternative colour to the page, I added a flash near the top, overlapping my masthead so that people

would see the masthead upon the shelf and also see the flash and want to pick up to read on. I used the ellipse tool to make a circle and chose for it to be yellow

(due to not having yellow anywhere else for contrast (opposite of blue)). The use of and ellipsis also, makes the reader intrigued to read on so I included that as

well as another picture of an insight to what the article is about (person shown in image). I once again used the lasso tool to select only the model and copied her

out so that the back ground was gone.