Final Front Cover

Front Cover Draft



This is the first draft of my front cover.
I have moved the masthead further up the page because it was much too low before, as I have seen that magazines on the market today have their mastheads very near the top of the page. Mine was nearly a third of the way down the page.
Looking at it now, I think that there is too much white space at the top of the page. I need to have a play around and move some of the elements on the page to space it out, as the bottom of the page.
I am also not too keen on having 'Next week £1' underneath the price of the magazine, because as my teacher pointed out to me: no-one would buy a magazine for £1, you would immeadiatly think it was not worth buying.

Final Front Cover

Adding More Coverlines

After I had added the top and bottom cover lines, I needed to start to work around my cover photo and add in the rest of the cover lines. To start with I thought I had better get the main article on the page, so I could then start to experiment with typefaces, colours and font sizes. As I have seen from my research, the main article is always an interview, and the cover line to lure the reader in is almost always a qoute from the interview. As I haven't yet written my double page spread interview yet I am just going to put in some substitute text there until I do. I did not want the writing to obscure Scarlet's face so I made sure that I used up the space below her face, across the collar of her coat.

I have also added in an advert for the article telling you about 50 UK GIGS LISTED!, using another idea from my reserach, of the Union Jack flag to promote it. The colour scheme of this flag is helpfully very complementary to the colours used in my photo.

Starting To Add Coverlines

After I've now adjusted the brightness and contrast on my cover photo, and added in the masthead, I've got to now start to include my cover lines. Obviously my main article is going to be the double page interview with my cover star (who I have decided to give the stage name of Scarlet), but I still need to add in a lot more, as the magazines I have researched all contain quite a lot of cover lines on their front covers.

The first cover lines I added are running across the top and bottom of the page, and they are advertising the article about new underground bands and what else in in this issue. I did these first because it gives me a base to work around for the rest of the page (it sort of gives me a border).

Starting To Design The Front Cover

Using The Photo To Begin To Design Front Cover

The photo I have chosen to be the cover photo is this one:

I have chosen this photo because it has an eerie quality to it, like the photo of the Arctic Monkeys on the NME cover, and she will have eye contact with whoever is looking at the photo making people be drawn into reading the rest of the magazine. From my research I saw that most of the female poses I looked at used their hands in the photo in some way, an idea which I incorporated into my photo shoot. The way that Charlotte is clutching at her hair also goes with the name of the magazine, Frett, because she looks slightly confused like she is 'fretting' about something.

Editing The Photo

I am going to be using Adobe Photoshop CS4 to design the front cover of my magazine. After I had imported the image into Photoshop, it was obvious that the photo needed to lose or change the colour of the background as it was a very dull greyish/white. I decided to edit out the shadowing around Charlotte and then just have a bright plain white background around her, so it will be much easier for me to add cover lines and for the cover lines to be easily read.

I also wanted to brighten up the photo as it is quite dark so I adjusted the brightness settings to create a very modern looking, almost cartoon-like photo.

Photos For Front Cover

Selection Of Photos For Front Cover

Based on the research I have done on the types of poses that female can use on a front cover of a magazine, I went out with my model (my friend Charlotte) and began to take some photos against a white background. I choose to use Charlotte as the model as she does not a have the typical mainstream, popular music look about her; she looks different (not in a bad way, just that she has short, choppy hair, and wears different clothing to the norm). These photos are what we came up with:

I wanted to use a simple, plain coloured background because it then means I can easily place coverlines around the photo without worrying about them not being readable.

The clothes she is wearing go perfectly with the genre of music the magazine will be promoting, and I specifically asked her to wear something with a bit of red in it, as I have seen that that colour works well on covers of music magazines (i.e. cover lines and strap lines).

I used the idea that I got from my research of using her hands to create a pose, which I think works well in these photos, especially the ones where she is gripping her hair. I think that these 2 photos are the best of this selection, as she looks quite sinister looking out from under her fringe, and the pose and look on her face fit well with the name of my magazine 'Frett'. The framing of these shots is also perfect for me to arrange my cover lines around without writing all over her face.

Magazine Name Fonts + Colours

Playing Around With Name/Colour/Font Ideas

After experimenting with my magazines name, I have decided to go with Frett. This is because I feel that the other names have a more mainstream and popular appeal, and the market that I am aiming this magazine at has a more cult appeal. The word 'Frett' is a musical term and is a part of a guitar; this name would obviously strike a chord (excuse the pun) with people who are interested in this genre of music which is my target market.

I decided that Vamp, Synthesize and Crystallize all reminded me too much of electro music which is not the market my magazine is aimed at. Lick was too heavy metal, as it kind of reminded me of the band Kiss!, and I simply just prefered the name Frett to Riff overall.

I chose a completely different font that I hadn't looked at before, because as soon as I found it I could just imagine it looking really good on the cover. I decided to use it for the magazine name because it is angled,ripped and not smooth (smooth, rounded off fonts can sort of remind me of happy, bubbly pop music which is not what I am looking for), whilst the jagged edges of this font goes with the edgy/guitar music of the alternative/indie music scene. I used white for the text colour so that it would contrast and stand out from the black drop shadowing I placed on it. The background of the name is red, because throughout my research I found that red was a very common colour to use in these types of magazines as it stands out and makes a bold statement.

Name for Magazine Ideas

Name Ideas

My magazine is aimed at the alternative/indie music market, so the name of the magazine has to be something that is quite edgy and maybe related to instruments like drums and guitars which are used a lot in that genre of music.

So far I have come up with these ideas:

Vamp

Lick

Riff

Frett

Amplify

Synthesized

Crystallized

Flare

Underground

Off-Beat

Backbeat

Phaser