Front cover draft

I have attempted my first piece of work, copying a magazine online to create a front cover.

A lifestyle magazine online My re-draft

I was given the task of re-creating this professional magazine and for my first attempt, I am pleased with the outcome. Despite copying the original layout, I am still unhappy with how disorganized the text looks but this is not how I intend to lay my own cover so it isn't a main focus. Furthermore, the font and the background is completely different but I gained experience in working with colour gradients for backgrounds. I tried my best to replicate even the minor details such as the barcode and the copyright sign and the pose that my model stood in. I have never used photoshop before so it took a lot of tries to adjust the drop shadow on the text and to successfully remove the background which still has a few flaws that I need to improve.

In creating a draft like this in such an early stage of the production process, I have realised that its necessary for me to create a detailed plan beforehand to ensure the creation of the final piece runs smoothly and so that I can first play around with layout in baseline sketches. In relation to my own magazine theme, the layout will take on a different form in comparison to one with a female audience and the colours will vary as well. I want to make use of darker tones and shadows and this is something that I will need to reinforce in my model's costume and setting.

I decided to come back to front covers and do another coordinating front cover to match the last one. this allowed me to duplicate all the text layers to re-use so that I can refine how long it takes me to create a two structurally similar covers. I changed the background colours and the contents of the text boxes to make it appear as a similar but adapted edition.

I am aware that there is a lot of unused negative space over the cover which I wouldn't allow in my final piece and that the costume and background colours don't match as well as they could. This will be thoroughly thought through before my photoshoots.