Prototype Cover Design

This is the design process for the main cover of my magazine.

This the first draft of my music magazine's main cover. I have implemented the 'Soundcheck' masthead into the design, placing it on the upper-left hand side of the image, much like a majority of the magazines which I have researched previously. I stuck to the layout of my final flat plans, and placed all of the key items in their planned locations, with only a few slight variations. I have not included an image yet, and just wanted to get the basics onto my magazine first before I introduce the image. I added a stroke effect to the white text at this stage so that it stands out against the currently white background. I hope to either remove this or reduce this in future versions of the magazine cover. I added the necessary information to the left of the barcode, all of which is located in the lower-right hand side of the image. I set the price as £2.99, as this was the price that was voted as the most reasonable by the participants of the Audience Research survey.

For now, I inserted a placeholder image which will serve as the image I finalise my main cover with until I have my own final images to use. I decided to use this image as it is not dissimilar to the one which I wish to use myself. It features a dark setting where the subjects are lit so they appear to stand out against the comparatively dark surroundings. I also added a white-transparent radial gradient effect to the upper-right hand corner of the image. This gives the image some light where there otherwise would have simply been darkness. This 'false light' gives the impression that all of the frame is illuminated, giving the cover's subjects as much focus as possible.

In the previous version, I felt that the main sell line and regular sell line did not stand out on the page, so I decided to add a black stroke effect to both of them to ensure that the text stood out against the dark background. 

In this final version of my prototype version of my cover design, I have moved the 'Unlikely Contender' text so that part of it appears behind one of the subjects of the article, and one part appears in front.