The document describes the process of designing a magazine cover over multiple sessions. It involved planning colors, fonts, and layout. Choosing the right blue background color took 10-20 minutes. Formatting the masthead and header required experimenting with colors, fonts, and positioning. Feedback from peers prompted changes like enlarging the masthead and adding more cover lines. Overall, thorough planning and research helped with the design, and it's important to be open to changes based on stepping back to view the work objectively.

1. 9th January 2014
I started creating my front cover for my magazine. I had a very good idea as to what I
wanted the front cover to look like. This was because I did a lot of planning and looked at a
fair few magazines. This meant that I could get on with my magazine design. Furthermore,
I had a very detailed plan from my proposal so I was able to refer to this to help me out.
Firstly, I thought it would be best to set the background
colour, as this would set the tone to my magazine. I had
already said in my proposal that I would have a dark blue
colour as the background. However, finding the right blue
colour became very difficult. I spent around 10-20 minutes
deciding the colour, because if the background colour was
slightly wrong, it would ruin the design for the rest of the
page.
After choosing the background, I went on to get my
masthead sorted, as this would work with the background
to brand and set the target audience for my magazine. This
was also a very important part of the magazine. So I used
the sit, “Dafont” and I had previously did some research
and found the right font style for my magazine. So all I had
to do was find the font and type in my magazine name.
When I imported the image into the Photoshop, the text
was in black. The only problem was that it didn’t look right
on the page. I experimented with the background colour,
but the problem was the colour of the masthead. So I thought about changing it to white,
however, I had a bit of trouble working out how to change it. After trial and error, I finally
figured out hot o change the masthead to white; I just had to invert the colour of the
image.

2. The next thing that was logical to do was to start putting in
my header. This was very simple as it was just a grey
rectangle at the top of the page.
The next thing was putting the text on top of the
rectangle. I had already planned on what the text was
going to be, therefore, I just had to use the text tool to
type it out. I then changed the colour to blue to be
consistent with the colour scheme; blue and grey.
To make the header stand out a bit, I put the next part of
the text in a different direction (right to left instead of left
to right) and with the band names, I put them in a cyan
colour to make them stand out.

3. The final thing I did to my front cover on this day was
adding in a barcode. I copied an image of a barcode off of
the internet and resized it quite small to allow me to fit
more information on the page.
14th January 2014
I was ready to put my band pictures on the front cover
of my magazine. However, before this, I needed to get
rid of the background which was already in the
picture. I did not know how to do this, so I had some
help off of a Photoshop expert, Richard. He was very
helpful and I learned how to get rid of the background
using the quick select tool and the polygon tool. After
this, I put the band picture in the centre of the page
and resized it, so that it was the largest thing on the
page. In my original design, I wasn’t going to hide parts of the masthead,
however, after experimenting; I found that this made the magazine look better.

4. I added a pug to my front cover to make the
information inside it stand out. Many people from
my survey said that they wanted a free a CD in the
magazine, so I thought putting it in a pug would
make it stands out to my target audience. I played
around with the colours of both the text and the
shape to see which combination worked the best
with my front cover.
I started to create the main cover line shape for the
front of my magazine. I used the line tool to
separately draw my rectangular shape. I couldn’t
just use the rectangle shape tool; because I had an
oddly shaped rectangle that had to be manually
made.
After creating the base for my shape, I filled in the
shape so it was grey instead of black.

5. I started to add effects to it so that it would look
more appealing and stand out more and most
importantly: you would be able to see it. I gave the
shape an outer emboss to make it look slightly 3D. I
experimented with the effect options to see what
made the shape look better.
After creating this shape, I took an objective look at
the front cover to see how well the different
elements looked on the page. I saw immediately
that I would have a problem trying to fit the other
cover lines on the bottom of the page. Therefore, I
thought it would be best to move the pug I had
created. I moved the pug so that it was next to one
of the band members, freeing up space at the
bottom for my cover lines.
Now that the main parts of my front cover was done,
I could start adding my cover lines to the cover. I did
some research to see how the main cover lines to
some other rock magazines looked like. This gave
me a better idea of the colours I should use for the
text and the content of the main cover line. I noticed
that for some of them, they had the main cover line
in big letters with a bit of information above/below
it.

6. 15th January 2014
For the cover lines, I didn’t need to
do any research for the colours,
because I had already planned out
what type of colours I wanted to use.
This meant I could just type out the
cover lines and add them to the
design.
I asked people from my class on their opinions on my
front cover. I got very positive feedback from them and
very helpful constructive criticism. So after talking to
my peers, I made the header smaller at the top, as this
appeared to be a bit too big for a header. Furthermore,
they had said that the masthead should be a bit bigger
than the original size, so I enlarged it. I also moved
parts of the cover lines over.
Another point that was raised was that I should have
more cover lines at the bottom of the page to fill the
dead spaces. So taking this on board, I added a white
cover line, which referred to discounts for rock
festivals, as I remembered from my questionnaire that
this would be something to draw them into buying the
magazine. I also added one more cover line.

7. A few of the main important pieces of information that I
had forgotten on the front cover was the issue number and
the price, so I quickly added them to the front cover in a
small font and text size, as this information wasn’t the
most important bits of information.
13th February 2014
On my double page spread and my contents page, I had
spelt the band name differently to how I had spelt it on the
front cover, so I changed the spelling on each page to
match.
27th February 2014
After looking at some other magazines, I decided to take
away the grey shape, as it started to look odd and I didn’t
like it. So I removed it, added a stroke to the text
“Tisiphone” and rnlarged the text. I then did the same for
the text “Rock’s new talent”. Then I enlarged the image
a bit to make the models take up more space on the page. I
then moved the text “Discounts for rock festivals” down

8. to the bottom and made it only on one line. Adding a red stroke to the text then moving
the pug to its place, I was happy with the design.
What have I learnt?
I learnt that planning and research really helped me a lot throughout the design process,
as I was able to create the front page very easily and without difficulty. Furthermore, I
learnt that its never too late to change what you don’t like. I felt that after taking a step
backward from my work, I wanted to change a few little things.