The document provides a development diary of creating a magazine front cover and contents page in Photoshop. Key steps include: 1) Inserting a background image and cropping out white space to isolate the magazine name. 2) Cropping a model from a photo and adjusting her size on the front cover. 3) Adding coverlines, a barcode, strapline and other design elements to complete the front cover. 4) Changing fonts and layouts and adding images and pull quotes to create the contents page. 5) Editing photos using effects like sepia tone and cropping to feature in the magazine.

1. Development diary
Front Cover
First of all I inserted my chosen background into
Photoshop, I then inserted my magazine name as
an image. As the magazine name was an image and
not plain text, I had to crop out the background to
remove the white space.
I cropped out the white background using the
‘magic wand tool’.
After selecting the text using this tool I then cut the
selected text from the background and then
deleted the background layer. This then left me
with the magazine name.
I then chose another photo from my photo-shoot and
cropped one of the models from the picture to use on
my front cover page. I cropped her from the picture
using the ‘magnetic lasso tool’. Once cropping the model from the picture I inserted
her onto my front cover and then using ‘free transform’ I adjusted her size to ensure
she fit well on the page.

2. Once the model had been adjusted to the right size, I
moved her to the left hand side of the page in order to
leave room for my coverlines. This went against my
plans from the mock-ups and the skeleton layouts but
I felt that it would work best this way for my overall
magazine front cover.
I then found an image
online of a barcode to
use for my magazine
and adjusted it to fit. I
decided to use the
same coverlines as used in my mock up front cover
because I felt that they were still relevant to the
genre of magazine and would fit well in the page.
However I changed the name of one artist on the
coverline to link the coverline to the main image and
the bands double page spread feature.
I then added a strapline at the bottom of the page again using the same text found in
my mock up pages as they relate to the features within this magazine.
The insert for the page is also similar to that found on my
mock up, but for this insert I decided to use an exclamation
mark at the end of ‘free’ so that the word stands out to the
target reader, making them want to buy the magazine.
I included the date and issue number in the masthead of the
page in order to convey to the genre conventions of
magazines.
I also chose to include the price of the magazine next to
the barcode so that it is easy for the target reader to find
and it was where I included the price on my mockups.

3. Contents page
For the masthead and the main body of text for my contents page, I decided to
change my font because I believe that it looks a lot more like a font that would be
common features found there.
I included a pull quote from a feature of the magazine in
order to pull in the attention of the reader. This quote
will help to draw the reader into reading that specific
page.
I changed the spacing for this part of the text so that
the text did not look too bunched together and to
make it easier to read. This is important because if
the text is difficult to read then the reader is less
likely to read it.
The first image is the original image taken from
my photo-shoot, the second image is the edited
image from Photoshop, I chose to crop and edit
the colouring of the photo in this way because
the sepia effect was popular in my questionnaire
and it is as convention of the folk genre. I chose
to crop the image so that it would fit better in
the space allocated for it on the page.
These are the
Photoshop effects I
used to change the
original image to
sepia. I chose to use
this method because
it allowed me to
change the strength of
the sepia tone to ensure that it is right for
my magazine.

4. This is the before and after editing of my smaller contents page image. I used a
similar editing technique to my sepia image, but without the orange tone. I chose
not to crop this image because I believe that it is framed well and shows the location
of the image.
I chose to capitalize the listings of m magazine so that they
stand out on the page. I also chose to make the page
numbers alongside the listings slightly larger than the text
and bolder to ensure that the reader knows what page each
feature is on. I ensured that the listings were large enough
to take up a lot of space on the page because it is the main
feature of the page, so should not be overpowered by the
other features within the page.
I chose to put the editors word and staff box within a
coloured shape so that they both stand out against the white
background of the page. I chose to make sure that the
editors word box was quite large because it is the
magazines first issue and it is a convention within the
magazine genre.

5. Double Page Spread
This is one of my photos before and after
editing, as my image was supposed to be of two
people, not 3 I cropped one person out. In also
boosted the colours within the image to make it
stand out.
I put the title at the top of the page in order to conform to genre conventions and I
made it bold and in a larger font size so that it stands out from the rest of the text.
I put my stand first at the beginning of the page so that the target audience knows
what the article will be about and will know the author of the article from the by
line underneath.
I made my drop cap larger as it is a typical magazine convention and it
symbolizes the start of the article so that the audience knows where the
article begins to draw in their attention.

6. I chose to use this a pull quote
because it is a quote from an
interview from the band and
supports what is being said in the
article, it also draws in the readers
attention to the quote and draws
them into reading the article and
finding out why the artist said that.
This is my finished double page spread, I chose to have text on both pages as I
believe that it allows for me to write more about the band rather than having one
large picture taking up a whole page of the double page spread.