Front Cover

Firstly, I placed my chosen photo for the magazine into photoshop and I edited the levels; light, dark and medium tones.


I then edited the hue saturation and lightness (Command U)







I then place in a drawn copy of the picture. I did this using the light box to get the correct proportions and placements of the outlines. I used black fine liner so that I could then put this into threshold (only black and white)

I then deleted the white, selecting it using the magic wand tool, and placed this layer on top of the actual picture. This meant the picture would show through where the white originally was on the threshold version of the drawing. 

I then added the mast head. I wanted it to be sans serif and bold, but have an original element; the curving of the cut offs point. I also picked the colour from the image of the building. This colour is a less saturated light orange/red, which contrasts well with the blue sky. 

At this point I added a sticker. I chose to use a bright yellow to contrast with the subtle colours of the image and mast head.

I then added the institutional information; issue number, date, price and barcode.

At this point I started to add in the cover lines. I placed a brush effect background to the cover line; an idea and feature I was inspired by when making my front cover copy. I also added 'Dubai Edition' to the bottom of the page. The two fonts were of a similar category but different enough so that they are concordant. Also they contrast with the plain sans serif used for the institutional information.

I then added further cover lines using the contrast of brush strokes and aligned rectangles. Also the contrasting fonts. 

At this point I added in the rest of the cover lines. The main one being 'Fancy a safari in the Sahara'. This is larger to create contrast in size and emphasize the hierarchy. 

I then viewed this piece and critically analysed it. This then gave me the ideas on how to improve it. 

I changed the colour of the sticker as I feel it was at the top of the hierarchy, and I didn't want it to be. I toned the colour down and made it fit to the colour scheme by colour picking the background of the sticker from the photo.

I then changed the fonts so that there were only two contrasting fonts. I feel the ones I originally used made the front cover look too busy, due to too many script/handwritten fonts. These fonts are contrasting as one id bold and sans serif and the other is thinner and serif.

I wanted the mast head to be higher in the order of hierarchy. To do this I needed it to stand out more. I added a white outline to highlight the text and I added an inner shadow to allow the text to appear 3D.

This completed my front cover magazine. Below is my finished piece.