When I started the construction of front cover, I had a good idea of what I wanted to design. However, as Photoshop was new to me I did not have enough knowledge which allowed me to portray my ideas straight away. Firstly, I found an image that I like and that would be suitable for my front cover. This happened to be one of the first pictures I took in my photo-shoot in the studio. In previous planning I had made the decision to test the typical female main artist, featured on most front covers, I had organised for a male model to be my main artist. Nonetheless, I thought further into this idea and came to the conclusion that my female model would fit the criteria more successfully. I positioned my female model, with the according clothing and props ensuring the music element of the magazine would be easily identified to my audience. Therefore not mistaking it for the likes of a fashion or lifestyle magazine. I knew that the composition of the shot wasn't what is typically found on a pop magazine cover, taking this into account I cropped the image to fit a tighter shot type.
After choosing my masthead title, I went on to pick an appropriate font. I then placed my masthead design behind my protagonist, to do this I used the lasso and magic select tool to outline the head of my model, so that I could cut that bit of her body out then reorder the layers. I changed the shot composition to a closer, more compacted medium shot. Despite it still not fitting the common conventions of the pop genre, as they usually feature close ups, I thought that I would go on to challenge the audiences expectations. In my research it was evident that Pop magazines tend to mainly use serif font for aspects such as artist names, quotes or important facts. So tried to re-create what is commonly seen in other magazines from this genre. By putting my text into a vibrant shade of blue, this meant that I could now introduce more colours in order to create a clear colour palette and house style to my product. Originally, in my flat plans I had come up with the name Jodie Baxter to use on my front cover, subsequently I changed my mind and decided to value a different name, Lily England. My reason behind doing this was that I felt my second chose was more girly and fitted with the pop genre more than the first.
Shortly after, I changed my mind about the blue text. I felt the font and colour didn't really work together. Despite stating what I found in my research, I went against this and used a sans serif font for the artists name, as I thought this looked better with the other features of my magazine. I chose to put the artists name in white, I did this as I later planned to add other colours to my colour pallet. I moved my protagonist down slightly so that my masthead could be read and seen more clearly. It is important that my masthead is recognisable for later purchases.
I used the gradient tool to break up the solid blue of the background. I felt this really emphasised the happy, excited vibe that comes from the pop genre. I chose to change the font of the artists name, as I felt it needed to be bolder and have a more intense effect on the reader. I went with a font called Impact, then changed the qualities of the letters themselves. I did this to make the text seem taller and thinner, showing a clear different between the masthead. Throughout my research I had seen the 'plus' feature added to a lot of front covers. I really liked the idea so decided to apply it to my own design. I colour matched a part of the guitar, in hope that this would enable to host another colour for my colour pallet.
At this stage I added all my cover lines, changed one of the main colours as well as adding the finishing touches such as the bare code and price. I decided to have my colour lines all in the same shade, which was colour matched to a different part of the guitar than before. The reason I changed the initial colour was because I found that original the burgundy was too dark, and did not fit with this type of magazine. So, I altered it to a lighter, pastel, peach, which evidently complimented the page considerably more; increasing the production values. Most of the cover lines replicate the shape that my models body creates. On the bottom right hand side of the page I added a barecode, showing that my product is professional. In this area I also added the issue date, emphasising this point. I also created two web links, that co-inside with my magazine, this creates a multimedia platform for my product and encourages internet users to buy my magazine.
I added another cover line which linked to my double page spread article. Showing intertextuality within my product. Increasing the quality of my production values, making the audience more susceptible to purchasing my magazine.
After reviewing my front cover further, I made the decision that my cover lines looked messy and jumbled. Despite this being a common convention of most pop magazines, I wanted to portray this aspect in a more subtle way, however I felt I did this by the use and positioning of the colours I used. So I edited ,y page, by moving all my cover lines to the right hand side of the page, then aligned then using the grid tool. This gives my magazine a unique image as the righting it situated 'back to front'. I also added more text to some of the cover lines, making it more clear as to who the story was about. Since looking at magazines aimed at my target audience, I noticed that a number of them had festival adverts. I thought this was a very useful marketing technique, as my target audience find this type of event entertaining; therefore want to know more about it. I chose this particular festival as it is popular and well known to a lot of people. I also felt the that the colour of the logo, clashed with my colour scheme however in a good way, creating a wider more 'popish' feel to my design. By adding the two little captions underneath the image this allowed my page to look fuller as well as inciting the audience with a snippet of information, without giving the whole story away. A tactic that makes the consumer want to read on and gather more details.
Finally, I made my masthead slightly larger to make it stand out more so that it becomes more recognisable to the audience. I continued, then used the eraser tool to get ride of the background surrounding the V Festival logo. The reason I did this was simply because the white became too distracting from the rest of the page, which took away the importance of the other elements of the magazine. Afterwards, I then rearranged the positioning of the barcode and informations around them. For example I changed the qualities of the date so that it was the same length as the barcode itself, so that it looks more appealing.
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