Preliminary Task, First Try at Magazine cover

This week I have been working on my preliminary task of creating the cover of a 'school magazine'.

The first step of my process was the photo-shoot, I took about thirty pictures of my classmate and picked one that I thought was most appropriate for a cover shot.

This is the photo I decided to use.

This is a mid-shot, which is very common for magazine covers. I chose to include glasses and a book for props as they are objects typically linked to education and school. The editing software I used was Photoshop Elements 10. As I am fairly new to photoshop; I decided to use this task to teach myself how to edit the model, the props and the text. 

I blurred the background to highlight her facial expression, particularly her smile, as it would show that she enjoys learning. The fonts I used are mainly bold and brightly coloured, this is another convention of magazine covers. 

The colour scheme of my cover is white and yellow, these are colours commonly associated with lightbulbs which are representative of new, bright ideas. This links to the image of a lightbulb which is a part of the masthead also. I used "Change the world." as my tagline because I would like readers to feel encouraged to use their views and ideas to change the world. As this generation is commonly referred to as being open minded to change.

I also added a barcode, issue number, date and price to make the cover look more realistic.  

I used two different fonts which looked like handwriting, this is relative to the theme of my magazine as  students in write in their notebooks etc. I used different fonts to add movement and character to the page and to avoid looking dull as otherwise it would possibly not interest my target audience of 16-19 year olds. The image of the rising sun was used primarily as a filler, although it does link to the idea of a new day and new start which promotes a positive attitude for students.

I added doodles to empty parts of the page to emphasise the 'notebook' theme, however, I used pictures that are commonly linked to school.

Overall, I am happy with the end result. I still have to improve my editing skills but I believe that this is a good first attempt as I had applied magazine conventions and tried to create a product that my target audience would appreciate.