The document discusses the process of designing a magazine cover in PowerPoint. Key steps included: 1. Changing the background color to an off-white yellow to complement an eerie background photograph. 2. Using the opacity slider to make the background photo fainter so attention is drawn to the cover star. 3. Choosing a gold color inspired by Empire magazine to contrast well with cover imagery. 4. Carefully removing the background from a photo of actress Lizzie using selection tools to make it look professional.

1. I decided the best application to use for creating the magazine
would be PowerPoint as it is the application I am most comfortable
and confident with due to having previous experience with, First I
opened an A4 document which automatically presents a white
background in A4 size, the first thing I did was change that
background colour to something off white and slightly yellowed.

2. The reason as to why I chose the off white colour was due to a photograph I had taken, which was quite eerie and I thought
would make for a good background , and I wanted to experiment with the opacity to make the background slightly fainter so
that all attention and the focus of the viewer would be on the cover star.

3. Here is the opacity slider to gain the effect that I was
going for. Making the image opacity lower by over 50%
allows the background colour to seep through and to
tone down the image with it still being noticeable.

4. One of the empire magazines that I had
looked at and was inspired by was the
minimalistic approach Empire took
when the release of “Skyfall” saw
Empire remove their house colour of red
that they are stereotypically known for
and opt for a gold colour that contrasts
well with the image. I thought a colour
similar to this gold would work well with
the imagery I have chosen for the
magazine so, I used the eyedropper tool
to get the exact colour that empire used
and began tweaking the colour, slightly
choosing a different variation for our
magazine.

5. Choosing a more formal photo of our featured actress Lizzie was a vital part
of the magazine as I didn’t simply want the actress wearing normal clothes I
wanted the cover to feel more professional. I used the following tools,
Magic Wand, Magnetic Lasso and the eraser tools to carefully remove the
background of the photograph leaving just Lizzie.

6. After removing Lizzie out of the background, I
wanted to remove some of the jagged edges
that were somewhat noticeable, I used a soft
edge eraser brush and carefully smoothened
out any of these edges to give the image a
more seamless and professional look.
I also used the clone stamp tool and
some of the colour slider options to
remove the actresses braces and also
to brighten up and add more colour to
the bouquet of flowers in her hand, I
decided to do this as again I wanted
the image to look as professional as
possible and also wanted the image to
really contrast with the background
image.

7. Following a techniques that seemed prominent in almost all
magazines I researched, I followed the same gold used for the
Masthead when creating headlines, sub headlines and also a
puff for the cover, to advertise other content in the movie which
would be advertising upcoming movies and other movie related
features such as the Oscars. Using the same colour also allows
the text to stand out and grab the readers attention.