1. The document describes the process of designing an AMPED magazine cover and inside pages featuring artist Luke Combs. Key steps included cropping Luke from background images using masks and brushes, adding motion blur and adjusting colors. 2. For inside pages, additional artists were cropped from images and layouts were created featuring articles. Type was styled and pull quotes, social media icons and competitions were added. 3. Small tweaks were made such as changing colors, adding page numbers and adjusting text wrapping to complete the magazine pages featuring Luke Combs.

1. AMPED
CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

2. I began by finding a few
suitable fonts that I liked from
Dafont.com. I then applied the
same yellow to red gradient
and black stroke to each to
make it a fair test. I eventually
chose the middle one as
incorporates an almost
animalistic look and was far
less boxy than the other two
fonts.

3. I imported my main image of Luke in to the
project. I then proceeded to rasterise the
image and loosely cut out the image with the
lasso tool, finally creating a mask for the
layer.
I then proceeded to use a mixture
of black and white brushes to
carefully wipe out any parts of the
background I did not want, or bring
back parts of Luke I accidentally
masked.
After finishing this process of cropping
Luke from the background, I imported
another copy of the image and used a
motion blur filter to add some depth to
the main image and make Luke stand
out more.
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4. I also used the image
adjustments menu to apply a
black and white effect to the
image. I felt this would define
the genre and make the other
colours pop out at the audience.
I decided to use a yellow glow
to make the masthead further
stand out on the cover. It would
also later help to improve its
visibility on the other pages.
The rest of the cover was
composed by using the regular
text tool and using effects to
change colours and such. The
same was done with various
types of copy from Dafont to give
a lot of diversity to the page. I
even decided to use the
microphone as a makeshift puff
instead of making a shape layer
in photoshop.

5. To start the contents page off, I imported
the masthead from the cover and used the
same Dafont font for the copy ‘contents’,
using the effects menu to make a metallic
gradient and a black stroke. I also made a
basic layout using the shape tool and by
copying in some social media icons from
google. I also began typing in the cover
lines to gauge how big the font could be.
I imported an image of Luke
into the project and used the
same method as the cover to
crop him from the background
using a mask and brushes and
proceeding to blur another
copy of the image. This time,
the blur actually came out
looking like a sun damaged
photo which I thought looked
quite interesting.

6. BEFOREAFTER
I replicated the same procedure
with George as I needed to split
him from the background to alter
the background to a bleaker grey
colour by altering the colour
levels.
The differences are quite clear
between the before and after stages. I
did add some anchoring and cover
lines using the same techniques as
those used on the cover. I also moved
the images a little to make room for the
third image.

7. For the final image, of Steph, I
used the same cropping method
as with the other two images.
However, this time I used a
seperate image as the
background to provide the image
with more colour than the other
images of the males, offering a
more positive representation of a
female artist.
I made couple of
adjustments to the hue
and saturation of
Steph’s layer to make
her look more
realistically in tune with
the background, as if
she was being lit by
the lights in the
background.

8. I made some final
adjustments such as adding
copy to each image to give
some context such as
names or the article they are
related to. I also cleaned up
the layout by eliminating
white patches towards the
bottom, colouring the in red
and adding a few
subheadings to eliminate
empty space from the page.

9. I began the DPS in
photoshop, cropping the
final image of Luke. I
decided to use the lasso
tool on the buttons and
switch their colour balance
to make them a more
orangey colour to match
the ring on the
microphone, as well as the
masthead.
I created an InDesign project and imported
the masthead and the image of Luke. I also
made a text box, splitting it into 3 columns
and pasted the articles into it.
I then used the drop cap function to increase
the size of the drop cap on the L to 3 lines.

10. I pasted some Dafont copy
into photoshop so that I
could stylise the headline. I
also copied in the top end
of the DPS so that I could
work with a sense of scale.
I imported the headline into InDesign
and added a pull quote using the normal
text tool. I used the text options to make
it white with a black stroke and made the
text wrap, so that the text in the article
would dodge it.
I also realised that the text wasn’t
wrapping around Luke, so I changed the
frame so that the text would avoid the
box of the image and wrap right up to
the image itself.

11. Nearing the end of the dps, I added a
social media section to fill a mass of white
space on the page. To make the icons
look like they matched up properly, I used
the curved square tool in photoshop and
used a custom gradient matching the
colours found on each social media logo.
For example, the yellow to purple found
on instagram. I did, however cut out the
main logo from the real deal, which were
then made white, to put on my custom
backgrounds.

12. To reach the final DPS I had to make a lot of small tweaks. The social media section
was made black to make it stand out from the rest of the page. Realising that the cover
mentions a competition to do with Luke, I filled further white space with a social media
oriented competition. I also changed the colour of the pull quote to orange to add some
appealing colour that was not outside the main house colours. I also altered the
headline to make it match the masthead’s gradient and make it more appealing than
just plain black. I even noticed, before finishing, that I hadn’t added any page numbers
to the pages and are now placed at the very bottom of each page.