Draft Front Cover

During my free time, I took one of the images from my framing photoshoot and used it as a main image in a draft of a college magazine front cover. I then played around with the various tools and texts on photoshop in order to get more used to its features and pick up skills which I could then use when it came to creating my final front cover.

I quite liked the black, white and pink colour scheme however, many would argue that this would make it predominantly aimed towards girls and women and so I have decided against using a similar colour scheme in my final front cover. Instead using colours which will make my magazine as gender neutral as possible.

I downloaded a font called 'Headline' to use for the masthead and feature stories. However, I'm not entirely sure about using this same font for the feature stories as it looks a little bit overwhelming so I may change this later.

I wanted the headline to be just behind the head of my subject and so took the opportunity to try different tools and layers on this draft to achieve the effect whilst keeping it looking as realistic as possible. This required me to work with the polygon selection and paintbrush tools, feathering and layers and so these are all skills which can be applied when it comes to creating the final front cover.

Lastly, I also worked with shapes, gradients and opacity for the plug and feature stories. It took me an awful long time before I finally found the gradient tool but when I did, was pleased with the outcome and will definitely apply this to my final front cover as well as the rectangular shapes that make the feature stories clearer to see.