Creating, planning and draft of my front cover

My next step was to take a picture of a student. I asked my friend who was sitting down in a class room, doing some revision if I could take a picture and he agreed. I used a medium shot for my camera angle and cropped out the background because I wanted the main focus to be on him reading a book not the class. This shows that he is a hard working student which will give a good impression on the college and also influence other students to study. For the costume, he is wearing normal daily clothes, which is relevant because you are able to tell that he is a college student.

This image shows what shot I have used and other types of camera shot. I then sketched out how I wanted my magazine to look with the picture I have taken.

Sketch on my front cover

After I sketched my front cover I then had to create this same design and manipulate it on Photoshop then using InDesign to do my cover lines, masthead, selling lines, date line and barcode.

Before uploading my picture I had to first create a background for my cover. I opened adobe Photoshop CS3 then created a new file document. I named my file and set it to international paper and chose A4 page and I clicked saved.

I was now able to start my background by using the rectangular box in the tools and I drew it over the page with my mouse, then double clicking the background colour light blue. I chose this colour because it stands out from the orange jumper my model is wearing and also it’s really eye catching and I thought other colours made the cover look dull.

Background  

 I then went to edit, fill, background colour, ok. Finally I named the new layer ‘bk’ and unlocked it. I was then able to place my image by going to file open, click the picture that I needed then ok. Using my lasso tool, starting with my magnetic tool, I cropped out the whole background only leaving my model and his book.  Every time I selected an area to crop with my magnetic tool and later with my polygonal tool to eras the area that my magnetic tool couldn’t get to. I had to click feather-ok- then delete the area and then pressed Cntl D. The background that I have selected appeared behind it after erasing the background of the picture. I used the polygonal to fine the tune parts of my picture. By using my magic wand tool and selecting the area I wanted to subtract and then I right clicked select inverse and edit copy, edit paste. I name my new layer ‘j’, created new layer for my background alone, edit fill-ok then naming my new layer again. Now I’m ready to use InDesign.

In InDesign the first thing I did was to create a new document and when it finally opened I drew on the blank paper with the rectangle box tool across the paper and a layer was created and I named it ‘bk’. I also created other layers for my cover lines, masthead, selling lines, date, and main cover line. The next thing I did was to bring my picture and background in to InDesign by selecting the layer ‘bk’ clicking on file, place and then fit to frame. I then right clicked and pressed display performance and I set it on high.

The next thing I did was to use my text tools to create my cove line, masthead and other lines. The font I used for my title was Broadway, the reason why I selected this font was because it was simple not too complicated and appropriate for my cover design.  I did not want my mast heading to be any other colour but black because having any other colour would not make it professional. It’s not in your face but still eye catching.

When designing my selling line I used the same font but made the size small because selling line are not meant to be the same size as the masthead. However the selling line is as important as the masthead. Underneath the mast heading on the right I placed the date and on the bottom right I placed the barcode and price. All magazines have a date line and a barcode so that’s my reason for also putting then on my magazine. Doing my cover lines became very complicated and difficult, not knowing where to place them without the cover looking over crowded. I had to remember that I couldn’t cover his face. This was challenging because it took me the longest time to do. I had to choose different front colour that was presentable and not too wild. I chose the colours, white, yellow, because they stood out the most from the background colour, orange because I didn’t want to lose the theme of Halloween, Pink because I thought that the magazine was becoming too masculine as the background was blue and my model was a male so using the colour yellow, white, black and pink will relate to both male and female.