The document summarizes the process of designing a magazine cover in Photoshop with little prior experience. It describes choosing a dramatic image of a science experiment, brainstorming title ideas before deciding on "Extreme Science", and using the available space to advertise inside pages. While happy with the overall outcome, the author acknowledges the cover image could have been more eye-catching and that further Photoshop skills need developing.

1. • To start with I didn't enjoy working on this task because I wasn't
comfortable with working with Photoshop as I had little
experience on how to use it, but once I got the hang of it I started
to see how I could develop my magazine cover in a number of
ways to make it look professional.
Firstly, I decided to do my magazine based on science as I felt I
could bring a wide range of ideas to the magazine. I started out by
taking a picture of Edward lighting a bunsen burner but making it
seem far more dramatic than it actually was. I took a number of
different shot of this to decide how i wanted to shoot the angle
and later decided on my chosen image. I found it difficult deciding
how to choose, as i thought the image that i did choose would be
too difficult for my skills of editing - because of the person that
was in the way of the image i wanted to capture of the flame.
Initially i decided against this image but after some thought and
encouragement, I went with my gut feeling.

2. • After this, I jotted down some ideas of how to name and what
could be involved on my front cover. Some ideas for titles I came
up with were: Extremisci, Extremi-Sci, Science for the extreme,
Sciextreme, ( As you can tell they all seemed to revolve around
similar titles) But finally I decided with 'Extreme Science' as it felt
stronger, and easier for the viewer to understand what would be
involved in the magazine. I think that this was a good choice as it
makes it seem more eyecatching and the design of the title is well
refered both to the image, and idea of the magazine in mind. The
title also could seem quite persuasive as it has the expanding mist
around the letters which connotates following the same thought
of fire, and explosions therefore complimenting the image of the
large flame, aswell as the connotations of Edwards facial
expression.

3. • There wasn't a lot of blank space in the image as the
flame took up quite a lot of space but I managed to use
the top left hand corner to advertise inside pages I think
reasonably well.
For the writing, I felt I didn't need too complex font as the
audience that I would be aiming towards, generally,
wouldn't be very creative and artistic and would be more
interested in straight forward facts and figures etc.
Following this thought, I decided to go with straight
forward subtitles to lure the reader in (refering to inside
pages) which are related to my target audience. I feel I did
this well.

4. • Overall, I am happy with the outcome of my
school magazine, however I think that my actual
cover image could have been more suited to lure
the reader in because the image is not face on,
therefore not as eye-catching as it could have
been. So overall I have learned a lot
from this exercise. Also my use of Photoshop has
improved however I still know I have a lot
to learn!