This is how I created the Magazine Cover

1. CREATING THE
MAGAZINE COVER
By Samantha Hows

2. • Before creating my magazine cover, I looked at other magazines and photo shoots. I loved
the magazines and articles that didn't look so artificial and Photoshopped, these commonly
came from ‘indie’ magazines and the main focus was on the artist’s personality as opposed
to how beautiful and attractive they looked. Because of our film being of the drama genre,
and our protagonist being quite young, we decided to focus on Mia’s feminine side as well as
her youth rather than trying the make her look sexualised. I think this will be reflected to the
audience through the use of her light makeup and her clothing being very modest and suiting
her age. Even the white colour of her outfit we wanted to symbolise her innocence and her
youth.
• I mainly took my inspiration from a magazine article photoshoot with Brendon Urie, I liked
the use of colours that reflected Brendon’s personality and the new album. I used the idea of
playing around with my lighting to create a magazine cover that could reflect the actress and
also her role in the film.

3. The Photoshoot
• After taking the pictures, I was very happy that I had achieved
my desired effect. To achieve this dramatic lighting, I went over
to the drama studio where I knew we had some L.E.D lights and
I played around with the colours and positioning until I was
happy it flattered Mia and looked interesting. Although, it wasn’t
that easy to find the right balance of colours and I had to get
Emma to help me hold the lighting at just the right angle or it
washed Mia out. I also wanted to take a couple of pictures with
Rasharn alongside Mia, so if I changed my mind and wanted to
have an interview with the two of them, that way I would not have
to redo the shoot and worry about when everyone was free
again. Here are some of the pictures from the shoot, as you can
see many in many of them, the lighting either completely washed
Mia out or were not flattering at all. As this was a magazine
cover, I needed Mia to look attractive and pretty to attract the
audience to the magazine, so I chose lighting that flattered her.

4. To begin editing I used a smoothing tool to smooth Mia’s face to
blend out any imperfections, this was helped by the lighting already
making her skin look smooth. As I felt that the image was quite dark,
I increased the brightness to 5 and the contrast to 0. I duplicated the
image and created another layer and then added a lens filter in the
colour sepia/coffee at a density 25. I also used the effect posterize
at 255. Finally because I wanted a slight white tint to the picture as it
made the image brighter I played around with the curves.
This is the final image that I have
chosen to use as the cover picture on
my magazine. It was the picture where
I feel that I have managed to use the
lighting most effectively. Just before
this image was taken, I applied some
highlighter to Mia’s cheekbones to
make sure that this would be
highlighted in the pictures. Our choice
for Mia’s make up allowed for her skin
to look dewy and glowing, quite
youthful and innocent. I wanted this
image to present Mia as quite young
and feminine, almost innocent and
dainty. The colours that I chose to use
where a red and blue lighting which
when they came together created a
beautiful lilac colour, which Emma and
I had agreed we wanted to have a
strong presence throughout our texts.
Through the use of colour and make-
up, we wanted Mia to look feminine
and soft but at the same time bold and
strong.
A key factor for my magazine was that
I wanted to show the power of women,
and that to be strong you don’t need
to be ’manly’.

5. To create the chalk effect underneath the writing, I used the
brush Graphic soft outline 02, and drew lines that imitated
‘scratches’ in a faint pink colour to further make the
masthead standout from the rest of the cover. To make sure
that the lines complimented the text I placed them one layer
behind the text and increased the overlay slightly.
I decided that I wanted to enhance the colours more to give
a lighter and ethereal feel to the cover image, therefore I
created a quick rectangle, choosing from the pastel swatch
colours selected a lilac then changed it to be a gradient as
used the blend mode overlay. This softened the red tones on
the bottom right to make it look more pink and feminine
rather than a harsh red.
Initially, I started playing around on Photoshop after adjusting the colours of the picture. I
cloned the picture and then added a pink filter. My intention after being inspired by
current magazines was to go for more of an independent magazine style and focus on
feminism due to our strong female protagonist. However I felt that this actually ended up
looking too harsh and unlike a real magazine so I ended up starting again on Serif
Drawplus X6, but taking some of the ideas for the Masthead. I found Serif to be much
easier to work with than Photoshop, as the tools were very simple to understand.
On the second draft of the magazine I took inspiration from the previous masthead as a
had received positive feedback on the name and that the fonts used were nice. I
therefore used Arial in bold and Italic for Rebel, Times new roman for Against, compared
to the first draft I made each word a different font as opposed to he first letter from each
word as this mirrors the mastheads of many real life texts. I decided to work with the
white colour for my masthead to stand out against the pink background. As Emma and I
had already discussed that we had wanted cool tones and soft
purples, pinks and greys.

6. After taking an image of a barcode I settled on a placement where is
does not distract from the main features of the cover on the bottom
right hand side. I then simply put an issue date and price neatly
above this, as these are all present in magazine covers but attention
is not drawn to them.
Sticking to the pastel colour scheme, and after looking at
professional magazine covers, I decided I wanted very simple fonts
and selected Franklin Gothic book in yellow for who/what the article
is concerning. I used this colour for each cover line to avoid using too
many colours which would make my cover look unprofessional.
The name Mia King is to focus of the magazine so needed to stand
out therefore I used a light blue colour in Times new Roman, that
stood out against the yellow text. To make sure that this Cover line
was a focal point I enlarged it to133pt and stretched the text
vertically.
For the secondary information on my cover lines I have used Andre
SF in a darker purple and in a smaller font, so they are slightly
separated from the primary part of the cover line, this is a common
feature on many real texts that I wanted to imitate.
The date and website I decide on a soft grey that does not distract
from the title but is still noticeable so that the audience can notice
and go on the social media pages but does not make the masthead
look too busy . For these I used a very simple font of TW cen MT
condensed, as this complimented the font of the mast head well.

7. • I had shown my first draft of the magazine cover to members of my target audience to gain feedback. The main
feedback that I had received was that my magazine cover looked quite empty, during the creation of the first
draft, I was afraid of making it look too cluttered, but I took on the advice of including one more cover line and
then making the others bigger and this greatly improved how the cover looked.
• After conducting further research I noticed that many magazines followed the rule of thirds, and that in the
second third there would be no text and the focus would be on the cover image, I moved my text to stay within
the first of third section. With the change in font size and positioning, I felt that my magazine cover was
beginning to look more professional.
• Just below the masthead next to Mia’s head I felt that the space looked very empty and much too small to add
another cover line without it looking clumsy and squashed, I looked at features that other magazine had and I
decided to add a small circle feature and slightly overlay the colour so it wasn’t too harsh but then darken the
line of the object so it stuck out and then adding the text ‘Jump into Spring with our new season must haves’ this
greatly improved the structure of my cover. After speaking with my teacher, we noticed that I was missing a key
element, the film title that the magazine would be promoting, so I added this just below the main cover line and
incorporated some linking text. I used the same fonts and positioning for the film title as the poster will have to
ensure continuity in our ancillary texts.
• Again, I showed these changes to my target audience, it was suggested that I made a couple of improvements
of making the secondary text of the cover line slightly smaller to avoid it looking as if I had too much text, as
these did not need to be seen from far away. I also changed the colour of ‘Mia King’ to a purple to match the film
title and to stand out more, and also let it contrast more against the now white and pale purple text of the cover
lines.
• Overall, I am very happy with the finished product, and I definitely think that working alongside Emma while she
created the poster and helping each other, contributed to the fact that the ancillary texts have a lot of similarities
and work well together in promoting the film.