'Gradient Map' Idea

I wanted to try out different effects on my magazine cover, so for a tester I chose a random photograph of myself and used the tool ‘gradient map’, which let me choose different parts of my image and make those parts black and white. So I decided to make every part of myself like such, whilst leaving the parasol I was holding in my image in colour. I did this by using the magic wand tool as well as the lasso tool so I could select particularly difficult parts with ease. Overall, I definitely was pleased with the outcome and I am sure to use this in my overall magazine draft/finished result.

Front Cover Inspiration and Ideas

Confused with where to head next for my front cover layout, I have researched some modern magazines and logos which have a rather retro appeal throughout their looks. What attracts me most to these is the originality; I know I want my masthead for example to be in a bright red, with a rather simplistic yet old style font. Like the Slam Dunk Festival logo, I was really appealed by the quirky and original style of such; it has given me a lot of inspiration further for the look of my magazine's front cover.

The theme, I want, is definitely old rock and roll, but with a range of different artists. I find that NME and Q have this appeal in their style and layout too; they're minimalistic, but because of their choice of colours, they give off a retro vibe.

The other element which really appealed to me was the fact that most of these magazine covers have their model in a close-up shot, which emphasises their persona, so I find that I may use this in my own magazine layout.

Unwanted Draft of Magazine Cover

After choosing a suitable photograph for my magazine cover, I realised that this image would be suitable as the background had very similar colours which would be easier to edit out. So with doing so, I began to add text as well which tied in with my magazine rationale, and this I chose from dafont.com. The text I chose was something with a retro twist, which I found really blended well with the ‘Slam Dunk Festival’ logo. I downloaded this font into my texts on Photoshop so that I could use this whenever I want. I changed the colour to red so the colour was more applicable to my rationale as well. I done the same with the band’s name, and used the same font for subtle effect.

The last feature I added to this draft was the star icon on the masthead. I edited it to only have a small yellow glow around the outside of such, but I realised that it looked very unprofessional and didn’t really make my magazine look intended for an audience with a passion for rock, punk-pop music genres etc.

Overall, I don’t want to use this image, text or icon for my magazine cover, therefore I will try to find more suitable features that tie in with it even more.

TIME MANAGEMENT

From now, I know that I have to be quick and on task with my ideas; I can't simply mess around with some and then choose a random outcome that I may not like. From here, I am intending to focus fully on what makes a good magazine cover, and look at other images of my own which may come in useful for my final product.

Planning of Magazine Cover

To begin with my magazine cover draft, I used one of the images from my original magazine ones. This one stood out to me at first because it was the most relevant pose in relation to my cover rationale, and the way in which I was looking at the camera resembled ease in my opinion.

So when I began to crop the background from my image on Photoshop, I used the lasso tool as well as the magic wand tool, which I found was very useful when wanting rid of huge and needless chunks in my work. However, after cropping out the background as a starter I realised that I definitely didn't want to use this even for my first draft. The background was very hard to delete therefore the model looked extremely distorted around the edges and very unprofessional. So overall, I plan to use another image for my draft and this has helped me to realise so far that the background needs to be around the same colour for easier editing.

Original Images (Front Cover)