Front cover construction

Front Cover Construction

This was my original flat plan design for my front cover. Since designing this, I have changed it so appeal further towards my target niche market, that is predominantly females, aged 16-24 that are interested in the indie/alternative genre of music. From my research, I plan on using mainly pink, as it appeals and also represents the female gender.

Opposite is my revised new flat plan for my front cover. Since looking at my feedback from my hot-desking, I have made some changes to my front cover design. I have decided to place my main cover line at the bottom left hand side of the page, as we usually read from left to right, so it should grab the attention of the reader. I have also moved my date, issue no. & barcode to the bottom right hand side of the page, so it’ll be tucked in a corner, but still visible for the reader. I have also decided to add an element, such as a puff in the right hand corner to make my FC more interesting & eye catching.

Opposite you can see my original front cover design. But since gaining feedback on this, I have decided to make some changes. For example, I have decided to change my main cover line from its position. I also plan on changing the colour of the font, as it is too similar to the masthead and won’t stand out enough.

Here, you can see the changes I have made. I have placed the barcode at the bottom of the page making room for my main cover line. I have also added my first cover line just below the masthead. I was planning on putting a Puff here, but I wanted this article to stand out clearly as it indicates the age group of the audience, therefor making it clear to the buyer the age group that the magazine has been aimed at.

Also, putting the pink ring around the text makes it stand out further and grabs the eye of the reader. I have taken a pink colour from the playsuit of my artist and used it for the colour of the pink circle. I’ve done this so the colours will tie in together, and look appealing and attractive.

This close up of the circle shows that I have hidden part of it behind the masthead, to create depth and layers within my front cover design. I did this by just placing the circle over the masthead, making the opacity low – so I could see the font behind, and then using the eraser tool to rub out the parts of the swirl that covered the masthead. I also really like how the circle looks hand drawn, which will work well in combination with my main cover line font.

Here is a close up of where I have decided to place my date, price & issue no. I am using the font – ‘OratorStd’. I have chosen this as I think it looks modern and conventional for my genre of magazine. Placing these elements by the barcode is a conventional aspect of many magazines, so my reader will know to look in this area.

Before, I have talked about how there were some parts of my models outline that were too harsh, or I had cut off too much. So, to fix this, I created another gradient layer behind my background, which meant I could rub out parts and still have the same background behind.

You can see here that I have added more cover lines. I looked at the articles that I was going to include within my magazine, and chose the ones that I thought would appeal most to my niche market. To help decide this, I looked at the current music charts and specifically at indie & alternative bands, and Alt-J & The Kooks were within the most popular bands at this current time.

MAIN COVERLINE Above, I have placed where I will put my main cover line. Putting it on the right hand side of the page will grab the buyers’ attention as people read from left to right. The text will be bold and draw the reader in and it will take centre stage, whilst being surrounded by all the other cover lines.

Main Cover Line Editing: Here, you can see the development of my main cover line. Firstly I had to change the colour of my font from black to white, I did this by deleting the background and then putting a colour overlay on the text. Once the font was placed correctly on my FC, I made the edges smoother by using a white paintbrush tool, and then using an eraser tool to get rid of any stray pixels of white – hence the white line around my black text.

I also added a drop shadow behind my font so it would stand out well against the playsuit of my model and also the plain grey background. I also made my font wider and altered the size and dimensions of it so it would look more attractive and better placed on my front cover.

I want my main cover line to be as eye catching as possible and stand out against the rest of my front cover, so to do this, I added in some unconventional components to make my magazine more attractive & appealing to my audience. I firstly added two lines to frame the text and also combining the colours to create a bold and exciting area to the magazine.

I liked my first draft of this design, but I felt that my words – ‘strong mind, strong game’ were not standing out enough against the black of the outfit behind. To overcome this issue I used a spikey style brush, and used a pink from the playsuit to compliment the rest of the front cover. I then used this to create a ‘random’ style paintbrush effect on the page. Once I had placed my text back on the page, I was happy with the result. I added a burn effect to the drop shadow of my text, which created a neon pink colour – making it stand out further against the plain background. I also placed a circle around the text to tie in with the one on the right hand side of the page in the same colour.

Here, you can see the majority of the layers used to create my front cover. Creating these layers has helped me select and deselect what I need to edit easily without affecting anything else on my front cover.

An example of this is shown in the picture above. When I had cut my model out, the line around her head looked harsh and unprofessional, so by creating a layer beneath the background it meant when I rubbed out and edited parts of her hair it wouldn’t rub away any background. The picture above shows the image without the beneath layer, as this is what it would look like if I hadn’t of included this.