Construction Stages- Front Cover

Stage 1: 

I started my front cover with a surfing image I took on a trip to the Cornish town, Newquay. I initially chose this image as I could easily create a bright and vibrant colour palette, featuring the red and yellow seen on the surf board. The green of the water made a fresh backdrop, allowing the protagonist to stand out. The model I used was 20 years old fitting with my target audience age range. I wanted to promote a youthful appearance as it would be more relevant to my consumer. By introducing a surfer it showed one of the popular activities associated with Cornwall as well as corresponding with Dick Hebdige's term that "youth is fun". I aimed to positively represent the youth of Cornwall as being active and productive. 

I chose to design my masthead with a sans serif font and incorporate the word 'Cornwall' in the word 'Escape'. 

Stage 2:

The typography design I had featured in the first stage has developed into a more traditional and sophisticated form. I decided to divert form the sans serif font style in oder to balance the relaxed imagery. I added my first cover line which related to Gandal's 2007 'rags to riches theory'. Similarly, I followed the serif font style in my cover line. The lexis i have used if upbeat, relating to semantic fields of success and escapism (Blumer and Katz 1973). I incorporated a bare code which is alternative to the usual feature. I wanted to use this design as it brought something niche to my product, an aspect desirable of my target audience. 

Stage 3: 

As evident when comparing images from stage 2 and three I chose to take a different approach to my front cover. After reviewing my first design ambitions I came to the conclusion that there was not enough flair to entice a young audience. The traditional concept of regional magazines means that the content will be based around the location, however I wanted to prove that this could a fresh, exciting genre as well as being informative. I decide to change my masthead so that the basics of the appearance showed similarity to conventions seen in other regional magazines but yet displayed unexpected visions. I chose to feature both pieces of masthead text in a serif font style. Both where modern and contemporary in relation to the age of my audience. I changed my image to a photograph with a brighter mise-en-scene which introduced a difference range of colours. I colour matched the shade of the surf board in order to create a colour palette with the lime green whilst allowing the ocean blue to be dominant. 

Stage 4: 

I re-touched and edited the levels of the image. Making the surfer more of the main subject to the audience. By brightening the tone and increasing the contrast the photography areas much fresher; corresponding with the look I was aspiring for. I added the content outlines across the bottom, sticking the to serif typography style whilst displaying a common convention seen in other regional magazines such as; Cornwall Today.

Stage 5:
Again, I have made vast improvements to stage 4. I made a change to the name of my product; creating a title with more relevant connotations. I adopted the same colour and font, changing the word and the angle of the text. I developed the cover line and added another one, this made my page have more depth. I used the technique of word painting to label the word 'gold', the colour I used is gold as well as the element including a textured appearance. Since researching into regional magazines I found that stickers and pugs are a popular visual, I chose to use this convention by creating a competition tab. This shows that my product has links to activities around Cornwall and therefore increases the production factor. I chose to include a big number as research shows this is a tactful way of attracting attention form an audience.  I have also improved the content at the bottom of the page to show continuity between my webpages and my print deigns.