2. I opened the image I decided to work with for my front cover in Photoshop. I then cropped the black line at the top out and brightened it slightly using the curve tool.
3. Using the magnetic lasso tool I drew around the person in my image, I then inverted the selection and went to filter > blur > Gaussian blur to blur the background. I did this because I wanted the person in the image to really stand out and also because I didn’t want the background to stop the text being properly viewable.
4. I’d already decided that I wanted to use the font ‘hand of Sean’ so I went to www.dafont.com and entered the text for my masthead ‘college files’ I then copied a print screen into Photoshop, using the magic wand tool I selected the text and coloured it white – I used the paintbrush tool to do this. After I’d placed the text where I wanted it I double clicked on the layer and added a drop shadow effect.
5. I searched for barcodes on Google images and copied one from there onto my magazine. I placed it in the right hand corner so it isn’t interfering with any other design aspects of my cover but can still be clearly seen.
6. I used the same font on my contents page however I changed the colour of the title and added navy boxes behind the white text so that it would be visible. I used pictures from my photo shoot and put them into Polaroid photo templates. On the bottom of each image I put the page number that the image relates to. Once I had finished adding all the text and images I decided that there were several white spaces that looked out too blank. I copied a pattern from Google and placed it in these spaces.
7. Evaluation I really like the contents page I've produced. It's eye catching, serves it's purpose and I think it looks professional. My favourite parts of the design are the Polaroid pictures along the side - they're very effective and without them the page would look too plain and the pattern because it adds some detail to the page. My front cover is eye catching and has a professional feel to it. However, I don't feel it looks as professional or effective as my contents page therefore if I was to do it again I would try to keep with the theme of my contents page. Also, I would change the font colour so it's easier to read.
