Finished Magazine cover & contents page, along with an evaluation!

My front cover and contents page have been completed and they can be seen bellow. They both use a green colour scheme and circuit boards, which both help to connote the technology theme of the magazine. My cover model is in a medium close-up, and she is posed exactly as I intended her to be. I had photos in a similar frame, but she was forcing a smile, and it did not look natural, so I used one of the photos in which I had made her laugh so that it looked more genuine and realistic. The cover stories were originally going to be some of the others on the contents page, but they were changed to work better with the cover model and give a purpose to the photo. The cover model was edited to give her a brighter appearance, lighten her hair and bracelets, as well as her skin being changed to appear smoother.

I began by creating the banner for the top, which is where the magazine's name would be. it was given a light green background with a darker green frame, though the light green background was soon dropped to add a circuit board to help show the technology theme of the magazine.

The circuit board was added. It is much better than the light green, as it shows the title off a lot better, as well as connoting the theme of the magazine through a recognisable and unique masthead.

The title is now added, in a white font. I was very sceptical about using this colour as the font colour against the light circuit board background, but it turned out well and was much more readable at a distance than a black font colour, so it was kept. I think it fits much more with the colours of the magazine.

A bar code has been added. I started out by placing a green box around the  bar code, and the cutting the bar code's shape out of it, with the bar code on a separate layer. Once the green boarder had been correctly sized, the two were linked so that they could be moved together should i want to re-position them.

A QT code was added to the front cover, and given another green frame. The frame was created in the same way as the bar code's frame was. As the magazine is centralised on a technology theme, it seemed appropriate to have a QT code, as they are designed to take the user to a website when scanned with a bar code scanner app. This website could either be the magazine's website or an entry form for a magazine contest.

I began editing my cover photo's model, and preparing the photo to me used on the magazine cover. Some colour effects were used, and her skin was smoothed a little, but largely remained the same.

The cover photo was added to the magazine. More editing effects were applied, including adding more colour to her hair and skin, as well as brightening up the background. Her bracelets, hair and lips were made particularly more colourful to add a more varied colour palette to the magazine. this makes it more bright and attractive, drawing in more attention that the green colour scheme alone.

As the cover model was being obstructed by the masthead, I decided to cut out her head and hair and move it into a layer above the masthead. this gives the whole magazine more depth, and makes the photo and mast head look more professional. a soft brush was used to feather the top of her head so that no sharp or jagged edges would appear where it had been cut out.

The main cover story was added, along with the QT code's description. Initially, the QT code's description was also going to be placed on a circuit board background, but this distracted from the main headline too much and therefore was dropped in favour of the darker green used for the boarders and frames of the other elements. A price was also added above the bar code, with the same green background as the frames used on other elements.

The contents page was much more simple than the front cover. It did not require any cover photo, and therefore I could do everything as I wanted from the start without having to worry about weather the cover photo fitted in with the rest of the page. The masthead of the page is the same as the front cover for consistency and to fit with the theme of technology. The contents list was mostly made up of original concepts for cover stories on the magazine's front cover. The background photo is exactly the same as the mastheads, except using Photoshop's colour select took to select the lighter green of the circuit board and recolour it to be a more fitting green, then inverting the selection and filling it black. I don't find this too noticeable, and feel as though it fits in with the colour scheme of the magazine.

I have used a lot of the conventions that are normally used in such magazines. The colour scheme is very fitting with the theme, and the font is appropriate. Both are consistent throughout the front cover and the contents page. These conventions have been used to make the magazine seem more authentic and real. I have used Photoshop and the Apple Macs to achieve a professional look in my opinion, and I have used a lot of it's tools which without wouldn't have been finished to as higher standard. The use of these tools is what has allowed me to finish it in such short time, spending only a maximum of 5 hours on the magazine cover, and 1 hour and a half on the contents page.

If I were to do this task again, I would defiantly pick a more focused cover model, as the photo shoot took quite a while due to distractions. I would also use a different cover photo, as I am not completely satisfied with the one I ended up with due to it being somewhat blurry and not taken with a great quality camera. The contents page I would have liked to have spent more time on, and would have liked to have come up with more realistic cover stories and contents page stories. Making my own Circuit board on Photoshop to use as the background would also have been preferable, but i am happy with the overall product.