Magazine Cover Evaluation

My magazine cover is aimed at teenagers aged between 15 and 18, who are interested in indie pop and alternative genre of music. I made the colour scheme orange, as I feel it will catch the eye of my target market and it stands out. When designing my magazine cover i took into consideration what types of thing my target market would be interested in and what they would hope to see in a music magazine. I thought very carefully about what type of magazine I wanted to create, my sell lines and what type of image I would use for my main image. I did this while creating my flat plan. This was so I could get all my ideas and thoughts down together to see what I was doing and how it was going to look.

Before putting my magazine we had a photo shoot. I had previously thought of how I wanted my model to look and what I wanted her to do. I told my model what type of clothing I wanted her to wear, how I wanted her make-up like and also her hair. I briefed her a couple of days before so she could come prepared and ready to shoot the photos straight away. I also showed her various different example photos of what I wanted to accomplish from the photo shoot and this also made her and I know exactly what was going to happen. This saved us a lot of time before the shoot. I used manual focus and learned that how to use the zoom and focus rings on the camera. I learned that you had to turn the zoom ring to find how far or close I wanted to be to the model, I then I had to twist the focus  ring to find where I could get the best quality image. If I had done this the opposite round and used the focus ring first instead to the zoom ring, then my photo would have most likely been out of focus. When taking the photos I found myself wobbling or moving the camera when taking the image, so I learned the T-stance. I learned that the T-stance helped to keep my balance and helped me not to move around when taking my photo. I was able to bend down and get shots upwards and also without moving. It was important that my photo was in portrait as magazines are portrait and not landscapes. I learned that to do this without having to crop and edit the photo afterwards I had to hold my camera upright instead of the normal way. In some cases I took a few photos in landscape model forgetting that I had to have it in portrait. This caused a problem in that I had to go back and retake these photos, when I could have been taking different photos elsewhere. I felt that the majority of my images were in focus and looked professional; however there were a few photos that were out of focus. This was because I had either not used the focus ring before taking the photo properly or the model or I had moved when taking the photo. I also learned about the different lighting you have when taking a photo. I learned about the back, side and front lighting. I took various amounts of photos with taking all of these different lightings into consideration. There are a few photos that I took where the eye level of my model was too low and this meant that it would not be in the right place for the magazine cover. So again I have to go back and retake these images. I spent a lot of time thinking about the background of my model. I chose to have a few different backgrounds so I could later have a choice of what background I wanted. I took photos with a background of a brick wall, greenery and a set of stairs. I finally decided on the background of the greenery. I feel that I handled my subject very well and feel that my subject did everything I wanted and everything that I was looking for.

After the photo shoot I then went to put it altogether on Photoshop. I used many different tools in Photoshop, the first being that I put my chosen image onto a new page and I edited the image by clicking on adjustments. I made my image black and white to give it more of an affect. I then added my masthead by clicking on the 'T' sign down the left hand side. I selected my font, size and colour at the top. I used the text tool many times when creating my magazine cover. I also used the move tool. This allowed me to move my text wherever I wanted on my magazine cover. I used the shape tool, which allowed me to add a button cell to my magazine cover. I also used the rectangular marquee tool. This allowed me to add a sky line at the top of my magazine. This made my magazine look more professional. I used the fill tool too colour my button cell and also my sky line. I also learned how to rotate my text, so it did not have to be on a straight line all the time. Lastly I used the eye drop tool, this is so I could ensure that I used the same shade of colour throughout, and instead of one text being a different colour than I wanted. I found some of the tools were hard to use, for example the eye drop tool was hard to position in the right place. I also found that it was hard to get a perfect circle, until I learned that you could hold the shift button down and it would give me a perfect circle. I found most of Photoshop relatively easy to use. I felt that I controlled my text very well and that it was all in the place I wanted it to be. They also added an outer glow, drop shadow and bevel and emboss to my masthead, this was to ensure that it would stand out as the masthead and not just some other text on the cover. I did this by double clicking on the 'T' sign down the right hand side; it then appeared with a box where I could select what kind of effect I wanted to add. I downloaded various amounts of different texts from 'dafont.com'. I did this by selecting which font I wanted and then I clicked download. This then came up with a box asking me to either save or open it. I clicked save, where this then saved in my selected folder. I then right clicked on the folder with the font in and clicked 'Extract all' I went through the process of extracting the font and then copied and pasted the extracted font into the Local drives. I chose the fonts I did as I thought it would make my magazine stand out. I chose various different texts so that my magazine would not look and be boring. The fonts were all different and I think they all appealed to my target market as my magazine was not boring with only one font. My colour scheme was oranges. I chose orange as I feel it stands out and appeals to both male and female audiences. I also used the colour white as it stood out from the main image and made sure that my magazine was not over loaded with the colour orange. If I could improve my magazine I think I would add different shapes to the cover and also more images of different people and make the cover more interesting. I think that the strengths of my magazine is that it appeals to my target market well and I also think the colour scheme I have used works well with the main image and stands out really well. I think this magazine would catch the eye of my target market. I also think that my sell lines are another strength as I have used the ideas of the profession sell lines. I have used alliteration, ellipsis, exclamatives and offering exclusivity. I have also taken into consideration the sentence types that create a hook, for example, a quote headline. Overall I feel I have learned a lot about photograph and using Photoshop and the different tools I can use to help me create a magazine cover.