Front Cover Step by Step

I have created a R&B magazine for my AS Media project. I created my front cover on photoshop. The first thing I did was open an A4 spread. Next, I added a black and white gradient to the background as after looking at other R&B magazine, the majority featured black and white or a gradient background. I then opened up a photo of my model which I took and I used the magic wand to cut out the background, I made my model where a black jumpsuit as I thought black was the most popular colour for a female R&B artist and a jumpsuit was appropriate. Throughout the process of my image I changed the contrast, brightness, vibrance and colour balance after adding it to my magazine cover as the main image. I then, after downloading different types of font from dafont.com, added the masthead 'Drive' where I adjusted the spread and thickness of the letters, and the space between each letter. After deciding from a range of masthead titles, my audience through social media decided that Drive was the best name. I then added a red and black gradient to the masthead to follow the colour scheme of red, black and navy. The next thing I added was the top banner which is "30th Anniversary Collectors Edition" which presents the magazine as popular and ongoing. Again, I used red to follow the colour scheme and downloaded the font from dafont.com. Within the articles, which is the next step I followed using font from dafont.com, I added them down the side of the model using different colour of red and black to make certain things stand out. I then added the release date, using blue to make the release date more noticeable against all the red, also again using font from dafont.com. I then added the bottom banner again using blue to make that part of the magazine stand out against all the red as it is a magazine offer which will make the buyer want to buy the magazine more. I then added the name of my model which is 'Bethany Brandy' as I felt the alliteration and the use of the last name makes a popular artist name. I used a drop shadow of the colour blue to make a glow around her name, this again made the name stand out as the name is the main coverline, I also again downloaded the font from dafont.com. I then added the graphic feature which is the green/blusish circle that appears on the cover where I used the same font as I used on my articles. The reason I used a different colour is because this point of a magazine is a big feature to R&B fans to a tour featuring in 2015 therefore it is a selling point for my audience. I then added the selling line/slogan which is 'Ride and Rhythm', as my magazine is called Drive, Ride and Rhythm fits with the masthead and genre as my genre is R&B. I next added a small menu strip to the right side, this opens up my target audience to a wider range as I have included a big company (MTV) and other feature artists which opens up my magazine to their fans. I have made this black to stand out and again used font from dafont.com. I then added the barcode which is an important feature as to buy a magazine you need a barcode. The next thing which I did was add the cost of the magazine. As you can see I have added it in dollars and pound as I want my audience to be open to a wider international range of people. I have used blue for this and used the same font as my top banner. I then changed my image as I felt the image I added wasn't strong enough for an R&B magazine. I dressed my model up in a better outfit to fit the genre more, I added a gold watch to her look to show connotations of wealth and fame as gold costs a lot of money. I used the magic wand to cut out the background of my model and I added her to the cover. I again used brightness, contrast, vibrance and colour saturation to adjust the image of my model. I also used a white outer glow to make my model stand out more as the main image. Then I added the issue number which I placed under the slogan in blue and made it smaller but used the same font. I then made all my article text in line and made the main cover line (Bethany Brandy) in line. For the final part of my of my progress, I changed the colour on some of the articles to grey, I again messed about with them and moved them around, and I changed the colour of the release date bar to yellow.