Music Magazine Front Cover

Below is my first version of producing my music magazine front cover. For my front cover I tried to emulate real life music magazine front covers as I could using as many conventions as possible.

I followed my favourite sketch plan which was to have the title of my magazine going in a downward position. I did this because I thought it would look nice and a bit different from most other magazines. I made the R in Respective red because if placed on a magazine shelf the reader would be able to see the R amongst other magazine as it is placed on the left hand side. The font I used was Algerian which I thought again gave it a bit of a different look which fits in well with my magazine genre.

The main image I used as I thought the subject was directly looking down the lens of the camera giving the image a very bold viewing in my opinion. I edited the photo on Photoshop in order to cut the background and make the subject look a lot more clean and crisp that what he did without the edit.

I used conventions such as the main headline which I purposely put it a bigger font size, secondary headline to try and sell other articles that are in the magazine and I used a puff at the top of the front cover.

To keep with my planned house style I also continued with the black border around the edge just like on my double page spread, but I like the black border because it makes it look more complete than what it does without the border. Other features I included to try and make my front cover look better were the yellow circular sell lines. They stand out well and indicate what else is in the magazine.

After looking over my front cover design I still thought it could be improved to make it look more professional and perhaps stand out more to the reader.

To do this on my second version which is shown above, I created a black cover to go around the R of Respective in an attempt to be more noticeable and develop that R into a recognisable symbol for my magazine. The other change I made was changed the stroke colour on the main headline, I changed it to green just like the subjects writing on his top to try and create a better link to show that the main image and the main headline are related which I didn't think was clear enough on my first version of the front cover.

After making these changes I still felt I could improve more. Below is my third version of the front cover.

I made a lot more changes to this front cover which is clearly visible. I decided that in order to make my front cover more professional I needed to clean it up a bit because I came to the realisation it was a bit messy and not clear.

Firstly I changed the main image completely to a new subject, I did this because I thought having a subject that look more of a musician with a bit of charisma and striking poses would look a lot better on a front cover.

I also changed the puff background colour to all black with white text to match my original colour scheme for the magazine. I also incorporated a black curve and that curve I plan to use on my contents page to create a kind of house style curve. I also cleaned up my secondary headlines by making them more aligned with underlines to clear separate the different stories. The colour and font have changed again to make it look more neat and the colour because it fits better with the background colours from the main image, it is easier to read.

My main headline has also changed font to the same as the secondary headlines in order for it to keep to the same house style and if I had to many different fonts it does make it a lot harder to read. I made the text clearly bigger than the other headlines as well as using black with a red stroke. This was all done to make it a lot more easy to read and this version does look a lot more professional than other versions I have produced.

I began to try different things with this version to see how much I could improve it which brought me on to my fourth version of a front cover.

I re-edited the photo of my subject on Photoshop to make him black and white to see what effect that would have on the look of my front cover. I think it makes it look more in depth and is very different to other magazines that usually have a lot of colour on their subject on the front cover.

I also changed the position of the main headline to try and show that the story is about my main subject and I think where it is placed on this version is a lot more clear especially with the bigger text and stroke that I have continued to use as I did with the previous version. My secondary headlines have stayed in the same place but because the colour of the background changed to black and white I wanted to test to see if it was more clear with a red stroke around the white text.

Finally I changed the positioning of the black strokes to cover the puff and bottom of my magazine instead of at the side. I did this because it looks better than a curve cutting into my main image which didn't really look very good in my opinion after testing this version. As well as moving the curve I also moved the position of the magazine title to the top of the page going across the top. Although I did not plan this first of all after experimenting to try and make things fit on whilst looking nice, this was the best way and does look professional.

I came up with one final piece for my front cover.

This is my final version for the front cover and have only made one change from the previous version, although it is only a same change I do think it brings the front cover together a lot more and is still clear to read. All did was take the red stroke off the white secondary headlines and placed a thinner black stroke which is still clear to the reader as it defines the letter a lot better. I maintained the red R of respective as well to try and make that a symbol of my magazine and I continue to make sure it is as far left and to the top as possible without making it go into the border so on the shelf reader could easily identify my magazine. I also shortened my main headline to be more catchy to the reader

Overall as I produced different versions I made it less cluttered each time which is why I think this is the best version, its not cluttered it nice and clean, easy to read with a good main image. It also uses traditional conventions.

 

 

 

After Receiving Feedback

After receiving feedback on my final version of my front cover, to improve I needed to add one more convention. The convention I decided to add was a strapline. To do this as you can see below I removed the top line of my magazine which says 'all rights reserved' and in its place included a strapline related to my music magazine.

In my opinion the strapline makes the front cover actually stand out more and appeal more to the reader. I realise now that what I had before that was unnecessary and with this added convention it improves my work to a better more professional standard.