Magazine Front-cover Write Up
Photography Skills
Firstly, when taking the image for my magazine front cover, I tried to frame the image in such a way that would enable me to add text within Photoshop. I made sure that there was a reasonable space to the left and top of the model for headlines and sell lines. I tried to shoot some images with the camera tilted up towards the model in order to give connotations of rebelliousness and power. It was quite difficult to control my model in terms of getting him to pose in a rebellious pose but I made sure his body language was the way I wanted with the right hand held up and the mixer in the other. In magazines, the eye lines are generally quite high to make the model seem dominant so I tried to incorporate this within my image. I wanted to shoot against a fairly plain background to make it easier to place text on and to make sure it wasn’t too distracting. I chose a brick wall which I think works quite well. The image I chose to use doesn’t have any major problems in terms of exposure, sharpness etc. however some of my other images were too dark or had large shadows because of using flash. The image was shot outside where there was plenty of light; therefore I chose a low ISO value to give optimum results with low grain.
Photoshop Skills
I used margin guides to create a professional looking front cover. I used them at common borders at the left, top and right like most magazines do. This means that all the text and images are aligned and look much more professional. The exception to this is the masthead which runs from edge to edge. I downloaded the font for my masthead from www.dafont.com. I chose the font ‘Star Avenue’ because I felt it looked a similar style to other fonts on similar music magazines and it was clear to read. I chose the name of magazine ‘storm’ partly because of this font as I liked the way the ‘s’, ‘t’ and the ‘o’ joined together. I used this font again for ‘first major interview since his debut single’ to link the cover together. Other fonts I used on the cover are fairly simple so they’re easy to read but I also used a graffiti looking type text ‘Grafitrk’, downloaded from http://www.dafont.com/ for ‘what really happened on tour’ and ‘Glastonbury’ as it links with the background of a brick wall and again adds to the rebellious connotations.
The main selling point of a magazine is normally the model pictured on the cover so I made his name large in order to stand out. I used a solid top and bottom page border to make the cover look more ‘neat’ and create places for text to stand out.
I used two shapes within my cover. Firstly I used a lightning bolt to come off the ‘s’ in the masthead as it fits with the name, makes the cover look more visually appealing and it also links with the general rebellious feel. I kept it black to match the masthead making it simple but effective. The other shape I used was a circle to create a button sell.
I had to think about colours when editing my cover. I wanted to use a limited colour pallet as this is what most magazines do to make it more readable. The main colours I used were orange, black and white. I think that these colours are fairly gender balanced as the magazine is supposed to appeal to both sexes and they all contrast with each other making the text easy to read. I chose the colour orange on my cover to compliment the background colour of the wall. Once I had chosen the shade of orange I wanted to feature, I used the eyedropper tool to select the same shade for key text. I made the circular button sell bright yellow in order to catch the reader’s attention by standing out.
I wanted to have the top of the model’s head in front of the title of the magazine as this is a common feature in magazines as it makes the main model stand out and give them connotations of power. I used a Photoshop tutorial to learn how to do this. I duplicated the image layer then used an extraction filter to isolate the top of the head from the background and then placed this new layer in front of the masthead. To make the cover look realistic, I found a barcode from the internet and added it to the bottom right hand corner and added a date and price. I also changed the model’s top from blue to black by selecting this with the magic wand tool and then using the lightness controls in image adjustments, hue and saturation. As a result his top fitted within my chosen colour pallet. I also got rid of the logo on the top by using the clone stamp tool as I felt that the logo was too distracting.
Connotation Creation
I tried to use teasers within my headlines such as ‘Biffy Clyro reveals...’ in order for the audience to want to read on to find out. I also used language to suggest the magazine is a ‘must have’ by using ‘preview special’ and ‘first major interview’ to make the audience want to have a copy of the magazine. The main selling point of a magazine is normally the model pictured on the cover so I made his name large in order to stand out.
Targets
The main feature of my cover I’m not happy with are the pose and facial expression of my model as I don’t think it really fits the brief of a rebellious pose. Therefore a target for next time would be to control the model better through more careful posing and direction. Also, I would like to experiment using studio lighting instead of natural lighting and learn more skills within Photoshop, especially around extracting images from their backgrounds.
