Creating the Front Cover of my magazine is what my target audience will see first and therefore be one of the biggest selling points for my magazine. The front cover not only needs to look attractive and appealing but it also needs to have a unique selling point such as the articles and the content so that my potential audience will pick my magazine over a competitor. So to start with I choose out a really eye catching image that will stand out to my potential consumers and also show off the location. The image will contrast what is actually inside the magazine so a nice portrait image of the sunset will tell the audience of what they would expect inside the magazine. The photo was originally a landscape but I changed I cropped it so that I kept the sun and the sunset glimmering down onto the sea. I also kept in the man sitting down on the left to give the image a bit of live and some visuals.
The next aspect I added was the masthead. Originally in my flat plans I was thinking about having a white text concept that would be used through all three of my products but for the masthead I wanted it to stand out so having a different colour font would make it stand out more. Additionally the black font would also be bold which would really dominant the upper third of the front cover. As the background colour here is a soft orange a black font would stand out more against this than a white one. The other bonus was I could use a white text for my articles and any other texts so this will contrast against the masthead and give it more of a dominance figure. I put in my first article to see what it would look like and the white seemed to work well on the front cover. As I have two lines of text for this article I decided to have the main headline in a strong bold white text and the underneath having a softer white text so the texts could contras each other and stand out. The article name I went with was something that would directly relate to the image used on the front cover. So I went with are article which I named 'Summer Sun' because of obvious reasons likes with my main image.
After reducing the gap between the lines of the text on my main article I added in my remaining articles in the 'dead space' of the front cover. Originally I was going to place them on the right hand side of the sun but the would of overlapped the sunshine which is glimmering down amongst the sea. So the best place to move these two articles to was the dark space in the lower right hand corner of the cover. This would work well as it allows the image to stand out along with the text standing out as well because the white text would be against the black background. The articles I decided to use here relate to my double page spread and also promoting my magazine to a teenage audience.
The next stop was to fill my magazine up with a bit more content. I was happy with the amount of articles on my front cover as I didn't want to over crowd it and as I wanted to keep it looking like a professional lifestyle magazine. So I added in some content at the bottom of the magazine. I firstly added in a grey box to make the writing stand out more and then applied the text in the same style as I have as the articles. I got this inspiration off looking a previous lifestyle magazines in my region and I believe it looked effective. I then turned down the opacity of the the grey box as I only wanted it to be subtle to make the text stand out.
The next step was only a small one as I added in a short sentence underneath my masthead to give it some more depth. The sentence was 'Cornwall's Number 1 Regional Magazine'. This feature again is in the classic white text that I will use throughout my products. This slogan may also be used on some of my other products. I seen this feature on some magazine as well and I felt like it would be appropriate for mine to add more depth.
I felt like slowly but surely my front cover was coming well to look profession and to set the standard of the rest of my products. I needed my front cover to look very professional and appealing to my target audience as its the first thing they may see that relates to my magazine. I added in the final feature such as the barcode, price and date. When writing in the date and price again I used the same white text technique. This concluded my final cover I disbelieve there is anything else that needs to be added to this and therefore decided to leave my cover like this.
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