Film Magazine Front Cover Key Terms
Introduction
Introduction found in presentation.
Conclusion
Conclusion found in presentation
Front Page Analysis
Introduction
Analysing the front cover of several magazines will allow me to grasp a solid understanding of what makes a successful and conventional magazine that will appeal to the audience, and therefore achieve good sales in the shops. The analysis of this will then be put towards my own magazine design.
Conclusion
I have found some key differences and similarities in each of the three magazine covers I took a look at, and I now have a good idea of what to include in mine in order to get the right mix of convention and individualism. For example, I've found that all magazines take advantage of a main cover image, which is crucial to catch the audience's eye. Things like the puff and pug and thumbnail images are more selectively used between the magazines, suggesting that they are more of a stylistic choice and not essential when creating a successful magazine. It will be up to me to decide whether they will suit my magazine style or not.
Style File
Introduction
Introduction found in presentation.
Conclusion
Conclusion found in presentation.
Idea Mind Map
Introduction
This task will allow me to have early visulisations of how I want my magazine cover to look without committing to a final design at this early stage. I will be listing down some fonts and colours to potentially use in the front cover, which will help me make a more solid decision in a quicker time.
Conclusion
Now that I have had a visual brain storm, I am now able to have a much clearer idea on what I want my magazine front cover to look like. This will save me time in the tight time frame that this course has to offer, and will allow me to think more upon my design and refine it, rather than spontaneously creating a design if this task wasn't carried out.
Draft Layout
Introduction
For this task, I had to come up with some more definitive design ideas for my magazine cover that I would put forward to use for my final design.
Draft Written Content
Photographic Thumbnails
Introduction
This section of the blog is to document my progress on going from a couple of photos taken in a studio to creating a fully-fledged magazine cover.
Adjusting the main anchorage
By pure nature, the studio facilities in Manshead provides a very warm and yellow colouring to pictures taken, mainly thanks to the studio light facilities emitting a low colour temperature. Below here is the original picture; notice the very warm tone to the picture.
Final Result
Introduction
This is the final result for the magazine cover that is designed to compliment the teaser trailer that was produced for the fictitious movie, 'Dilemma'.
Overall, I would say that I am satisfied with the end result once everything had been put together. I found it to be fairly risky to adopt the blue, black and white house colour theme, but I think it has paid off.
I chose the colour blue because it compliments the main anchorage very well, thanks to the colour of his shirt and eyes. It allows for a cleaner look as opposed to a magazine which is bright and 'in your face'. I went in this direction because upon my research I found that movie magazines tend to be more simplistic and almost artistic in style compared to other lifestyle genres that can be found.
My font choice was a middle ground between conventional magazine and the simplistic, elegant look. Therefore I chose a variety of sans and sans serif fonts that create this mix, and therefore hopefully doesn't alienate the audience either end of the spectrum. Blocky sans serif fonts were used to draw the audiences' eyes to main pieces of the text, such as the masthead and the main selling points of the print (such as the list underneath the buzzword). Sans fonts were used to compliment the more simplistic nature of the magazine overall.
If I had the chance to improve on the magazine cover, I would alter a couple of things. Firstly I may want to consider re-styling the pug/puff by removing the dull matte blue colour and replacing it with something more standout. I originally stuck to the basic blue in order to keep with the simple theme. I may also want to make the shadow slightly more prominent.
I would perhaps also alter the gradient of the background and the lighting effect that has been applied to the magazine cover. The gradient was included to make sure the background wasn't just a plain white, but all the while I didn't want it to be too dark. I feel that along the top it's just ever so slightly too dark for the masthead to properly stand out the audience, which is especially critical if this magazine was to be standing in a newsagent trying to catch someone's eye. The gradient can be kept, but I would make it slightly more subtle. The lighting effect has also dulled out my header slightly more than what I would've wanted, but this is an easy 2 minute fix if needs be.
Conclusion
With all that in mind though, I am still pleased with how the overall image came out. I had two ideas (see above), and my other option was far more conventional. I decided to go down the more unconventional route, and I subjectively believe that it has paid off - mainly because this is now a magazine cover that stands out more rather than blending in with the rest of the products out there.
Introduction
Introduction found in presentation.
Conclusion
Conclusion found in presentation
Front Page Analysis
Introduction
Analysing the front cover of several magazines will allow me to grasp a solid understanding of what makes a successful and conventional magazine that will appeal to the audience, and therefore achieve good sales in the shops. The analysis of this will then be put towards my own magazine design.
Conclusion
I have found some key differences and similarities in each of the three magazine covers I took a look at, and I now have a good idea of what to include in mine in order to get the right mix of convention and individualism. For example, I've found that all magazines take advantage of a main cover image, which is crucial to catch the audience's eye. Things like the puff and pug and thumbnail images are more selectively used between the magazines, suggesting that they are more of a stylistic choice and not essential when creating a successful magazine. It will be up to me to decide whether they will suit my magazine style or not.
Style File
Introduction
Introduction found in presentation.
Conclusion
Conclusion found in presentation.
Idea Mind Map
Introduction
This task will allow me to have early visulisations of how I want my magazine cover to look without committing to a final design at this early stage. I will be listing down some fonts and colours to potentially use in the front cover, which will help me make a more solid decision in a quicker time.
Conclusion
Now that I have had a visual brain storm, I am now able to have a much clearer idea on what I want my magazine front cover to look like. This will save me time in the tight time frame that this course has to offer, and will allow me to think more upon my design and refine it, rather than spontaneously creating a design if this task wasn't carried out.
Draft Layout
Introduction
For this task, I had to come up with some more definitive design ideas for my magazine cover that I would put forward to use for my final design.
Draft Written Content
Photographic Thumbnails
Introduction
This section of the blog is to document my progress on going from a couple of photos taken in a studio to creating a fully-fledged magazine cover.
Adjusting the main anchorage
By pure nature, the studio facilities in Manshead provides a very warm and yellow colouring to pictures taken, mainly thanks to the studio light facilities emitting a low colour temperature. Below here is the original picture; notice the very warm tone to the picture.
This is a RAW photo, meaning it has not been compressed by the camera into a common .jpg file. Photoshop CS6 has a special built-in application that opens automatically with RAW pictures called 'Camera Raw'. With this, I was able to remove the yellow feel by automatically adjusting the white balance and colour temperature. I also artificially boosted the saturation and vibrance to give it a more punchy and eye-catching look for the magazine. Here is the end result:
As you can see, the subject looks far more eye-catching, thanks to the white balance fix and the boost in saturation. The saturation boost gave him really orange skin, but this can be balanced out by raising the colour temperature and introducing more blues. The refine edge tool was used to accurately remove the background without crudely cutting out his hair in a jagged style. This was achieved by using the 'smart radius' function, and raising the smoothing and feathering. The end result is wisps of hair left with such accuracy that no manual method could match. The spot healing brush was used to get rid of a vast majority of the facial imperfections, since most magazines feature people with smooth and Photoshopped faces. I was careful not to go too over the top with the brush, because otherwise it has the potential to look even worse.
It was then time to export the main anchorage.
Introduction
This is the final result for the magazine cover that is designed to compliment the teaser trailer that was produced for the fictitious movie, 'Dilemma'.
Overall, I would say that I am satisfied with the end result once everything had been put together. I found it to be fairly risky to adopt the blue, black and white house colour theme, but I think it has paid off.
I chose the colour blue because it compliments the main anchorage very well, thanks to the colour of his shirt and eyes. It allows for a cleaner look as opposed to a magazine which is bright and 'in your face'. I went in this direction because upon my research I found that movie magazines tend to be more simplistic and almost artistic in style compared to other lifestyle genres that can be found.
My font choice was a middle ground between conventional magazine and the simplistic, elegant look. Therefore I chose a variety of sans and sans serif fonts that create this mix, and therefore hopefully doesn't alienate the audience either end of the spectrum. Blocky sans serif fonts were used to draw the audiences' eyes to main pieces of the text, such as the masthead and the main selling points of the print (such as the list underneath the buzzword). Sans fonts were used to compliment the more simplistic nature of the magazine overall.
 |
| Original finished product |
 |
| New finished product |
If I had the chance to improve on the magazine cover, I would alter a couple of things. Firstly I may want to consider re-styling the pug/puff by removing the dull matte blue colour and replacing it with something more standout. I originally stuck to the basic blue in order to keep with the simple theme. I may also want to make the shadow slightly more prominent.
I would perhaps also alter the gradient of the background and the lighting effect that has been applied to the magazine cover. The gradient was included to make sure the background wasn't just a plain white, but all the while I didn't want it to be too dark. I feel that along the top it's just ever so slightly too dark for the masthead to properly stand out the audience, which is especially critical if this magazine was to be standing in a newsagent trying to catch someone's eye. The gradient can be kept, but I would make it slightly more subtle. The lighting effect has also dulled out my header slightly more than what I would've wanted, but this is an easy 2 minute fix if needs be.
Conclusion
With all that in mind though, I am still pleased with how the overall image came out. I had two ideas (see above), and my other option was far more conventional. I decided to go down the more unconventional route, and I subjectively believe that it has paid off - mainly because this is now a magazine cover that stands out more rather than blending in with the rest of the products out there.
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