My magazine front covers

Here is my final magazine front cover. After experimenting with lots of different effects and photos, I finally managed to produce a music magazine front cover that I am happy with. I used effect called 'Cross Process' and I feel that this is the best magazine front cover I have put together so far. The effect that I have used allows the audience to clearly see the actual content of the magazine front cover, without losing the initial focus on the people on the cover itself. I have maintained the same font throughout the cover and have used italics to make important words stand to the audience. I kept the original editing skills (blurring the background behind the title) as I thought that this was effective in making the name of the magazine stand out, without making the cover look messy. I only inserted the bar code onto the cover after I had edited the photo so that the colour of the bar code itself does not change. I ensured that the text stayed on the sides of the front cover only, rather than physically on top of my talent, like I conveyed in the first draft.

Second Draft for Magazine front cover

After looking at other Hip hop music magazines, I decided to change the magazine front cover entirely.As you can see, this second draft is already an improvement from my previous draft. I say this because this cover has a bar code and I have used text that continues throughout the cover so that the house-style continues. I have highlighted information on my front cover that I think is most important and will appeal to the audience. An example of this is in this draft would be the words 'Exclusive Interview'. Again I have used 'Picmonkey' to edit this cover and I feel that I have made improvements to this front cover compared to my previous draft, despite it not being perfect! The effect that I used for this was called 'Dark Edges' and as you can probably see it has done just that. even though I was happy with this cover, I still found that I was not completely happy with the cover as I felt it looked unprofessional and unsophisticated.

Here is my first ever draft for my magazine front cover. As you can see, the font and text that I have used does not fit with the overall theme of the magazine and therefore does not go with the house-style.
The colours used make it difficult to read the text and I have not included a bar code. This front cover does not look realistic and the effect that is used make the whole page look messy. Having said this, there are some positive things that this front cover has, in order to make it look real. For example, I have blurred the background behind the title in order to make the name 'Renegade' stand out. The photo that I have used allows the audience to put most of their attention on the people on the magazine front cover itself. Looking back at this first draft I have realised the obvious mistakes that I have made and I am now aware that everything needs to be taken into consideration, including the size and colour of the font as well as the editing effects that I have included. On 'Picmokey' I used a tool called 'Frost' and I have now become aware that this was not the right effect to use. I say this because this 'Frost' effect makes the people on the cover of the magazine look blurry. This is not what I am aiming for as I would like the audience to be able to understand what the magazine is about just by looking at the people on the cover.
I have also realised that I have not included enough information on the cover in order to make the magazine appeal to the audience. I knew that I was not entirely pleased with the cover that I had started to produce, however now after working on editing the cover I have realised what I needed to do in order to make the cover look of higher quality.