My practice front cover, double page spread and contents page
This is the front cover that i made today. It is still a working progress but i am quiet happy with the way that it turned out. I like the use of the colors even though it took me a while to make them match the magazine. I also like the layout of the front cover, and it is very similar to my flat plan but i have changed a few things around such as the issue date and the sell lines. I did make some changes to the main image, i made it much bigger than it originally was by using photoshop, so that it would cover up most of the A4, and i used the 'paint brush' on photoshop to make it look like my model had black nail varnish on as i just think it added that bit of extra detail and it linked in with the fashion of my target audience. Also, instead of an issue date/number i just put a monthly and year banner at the top as i think it looks better on my front cover. At the end i did change the barcode and made my own on 'barcode generator', just to make it more personal. (I have changed the issue date to '2016' because one of my articles didn't match the date of '2015', this is just a basic mistake that i realized and shortly changed.
To improve, i might change the mastheads font because you can't really see what it says, and i think that it needs to be a bit bigger to fill up some space. I might also alter the main image and move it about just to see what differences could be made with the position of it.
I tried to add a bit of color so that it didn't look dull with the clothing and the masthead being quite dark. I think the pop of color creates a good effect as it stands out a lot more. for example the main sell line is in a totally different color to all of the other cover and sell lines. I purposely done this so that it would stand out to the target audience.
This is my contents page. The colors of the font have changed slightly but i think that it goes well as it creates character. At first i never had the purple masthead, but then i compared my contents age to the front cover and i noticed i didn't really have any bright colors so then i changed the color to the purple so that it will all match and be color co-ordinated.I do have some similarities that include the font being the same as my front cover. I may change or alter a few things but for now i am quiet happy with the way that it has turned out. I never really used many tools on photoshop to create this because i didn't really have to do anything to the main image on this contents page other than making it smaller.
To improve i think that the image could be made a bit bigger but then again, it would mean less text. The only reason i used more text is to fill in the gaps and make it look less boring having just all images. (even though some of the target audience might looking at additional images).
This mage below shows how i have changed stuff around a bit. I have included boarders around the boxes and image just to make it stand out that little bit more.
I think the colors i have chose reflect on my genre of music. From research i have done, i have found that magazines that match my genre use quiet dark colors with a pop of colour. I have used this research to help me choose colours for my fonts and backgrounds which will compliment each other and make my front cover and contents page.
