Front Page Construction
First of all construction began on 850 x 1200 blank canvas.
Then my masthead was applied and placed in the correct position in which I wanted, the choice of text used was bold and sharp bebas neue coloured in an off white.
With my masthead where I wanted it to be I proceeded to cut out my chosen image and place it upon the page, to cut it out I used a magnetic lasso tool to cut the whole silhouette out followed by me zooming on the image and then using a standard lasso tool to cut the excess pieces out. In terms of photo editing a drop shadow was added to allow my artist to stand out from the background colour as he is wearing a white t-shirt.
Next was the insertion of my main story I decided in my plan that I wanted it to be the same colour as the masthead in comparison to the cover lines as I wanted to make it known to the audience that it is the most important story. A size 72 bebas neue font was used for the lettering to follow the house style I was following.
With my stories and cover lines now sorted out it was time to place my barcode, date and price. I decided that I wanted it to be camouflaged within the front cover and not to vibrant so that it sticks out, so it was coloured off white wanted them to all be situated together so I integrated the date and price neatly below in a black bebas neue font to suit with the magazine.
To add more information to my front cover I included a sticker referring to the live music content within my magazine. To do this used the shape tool on Photoshop and selected the rounded rectangle. In addition to that I wanted the colour of the sticker to specifically match the masthead and main story, to do this I selected the colour sample tool on Photoshop and then sampled the colour desired. Furthermore in terms of the content included it refers to the hip hop artist EARL SWEATSHIRT at the boiler room, a legendary venue situated in London.
Then the main overall background colour was laid down using a colour fill in very light shade of blue.
I felt that having just the masthead left like that was not enough, I needed something to contrast the white around the lettering which could set it off and really make it stand out towards the audience, so I added another colour fill layer in supreme red beneath the masthead and above the background colour. To make sure that I used the right shade of red for my masthead I used the colour sampler tool to sample the colour the lettering on my artists t-shirt, therefore allowing me to have an exact match of colour for the masthead, allowing me to have an accurate colour scheme for my magazine.
Now it was onto my cover lines, I decided that I didn’t really want to overwhelm the front cover with loud and vibrant cover lines, this is because I thought that is something that pop magazine would do. So I decided to go with four clean cover lines situated on the left hand side neatly next to the main image. With the choice of font I decided to go with sharp and crisp geosanslight font in a black, this is because I felt that it really goes with that mature and factual hip hop style that I want my magazine to demonstrate.
Following the main story was addition of the tag line for the main story, this was inserted below to the right coloured in black also using a bebas neue font.
With the feeling that my front cover still had plenty of free space to be taken up I decided that a banner placed above the title would be a good idea. Therefore by using the text tool on Photoshop I inserted in a black size 14 geosans light font two more artists (Isaiah Rashad and Ghostpoet) that would be in my magazine. Furthermore I also included the word “exclusive” within the banner to demonstrate how my magazine includes special content in comparison to the other hip hop magazines out there. To make sure that the use of the word “exclusive” was effectively put to use I coloured it the same colour as the main story as it will then be able to be easily noticed within the front cover, allowing target audience to be easily navigated around the content of my magazine.
To add a nice flow to the overall design of my magazine I decided to match the masthead border to the sticker by rounding it off. To do this I used the shape tool in Photoshop and selected the rounded rectangle as it was used for the sticker. It was then measured to the dimensions of the existing border and placed.