In this post I will take you through the stages that I went through to create my cover:
(All the fonts which have been used were found online at www.refont.com)
Above you can see the first 5 stages that I took to create the cover, I started by taking the original image and changing the brightness and contrast to give a darker, Richer image. The next step was influenced by a cover I had seen this year of Kanye West with a crown of thorns on his head, so I decided that I wanted to create my own powerful image. I took a stock picture of a skull I found on the internet and pasted into Photoshop on a new layer, I then changed the size of the image several times until I was happy that it was the right size and in proportion to my original image. Next I used a feature in Photoshop called warp to change the angle of the skull so the contours all lined up and it matched the shape of the subjects face, I tried to make the cheeks, eyes, chin and nose match up so that it looks like it could actually be his skull, I also trimmed off the upper part of the skull as it was too big to be on the image.
In this next phase of editing, the cover itself starts to come together, after having the skull image lined up with my photo I changed the layering effect on Photoshop to an overlay so that the skull was a lot more transparent and it also blended with the colour of the face. To then change the image and give it yet another dimension I selected the facial area of the image and cut it out, putting it onto a new layer, I then filled the gap and made the entire base layer black, with the facial image pasted back onto a new layer I lowered the opacity of it to 86% to create a bit more of an edge to the image. I then set about making it into a cover, I started by putting the title on, looking at the cover I didn't think that my previous ideas had the suitability for the cover based on the image I now have, I then placed my strapline on 'They said Hip-Hop was dead' I chose this as a strapline because of the suitability and the relation to my main image. I also placed on the price, date and issue number in the bottom corner. The next stage that I went through was placing on the name of the artist on the cover, I placed it down in the bottom left as I felt that it was the most appropriate place and it also filled a large blank area.
These are the final stages of my cover coming together, in the first of these I added a barcode to the bottom right of the cover and then moved the date, price and issue number above it to keep all of the magazine details together. On the next step I added a puff underneath the strapline giving a bit more detail about the main topic of this magazine, as the cover has the image with the skull being superimposed and the strapline being to do with Hip-Hop being dead, I put the puff to read 'We meet the man who is leading the ressurection' I felt that it was suitable as it fitted with the whole genre of this particular cover. In the final cover I added some more puffs to the bottom to fill the blank space and to add extra information about the magazine for the readers, I also moved the price etc to the right a little bit as there was a gap that I felt shouldn't have been there.
FINAL COVER:
For the final cover, I added in some more puffs down the left hand side of it to again show what else the magazine has inside of it, I have put that it has interviews with several major artists who have just released new songs out onto the market which would entice people to read the magazine hoping that they would get an idea of what the new songs are like, I have also put the competition there, this will also make people want to read the magazine because gig tickets are highly sought after and being the first issue the tickets will help to bring in customers which could then be turned into a loyal customer base. I have had to move down the 'Van Kho' text though as when I was adding in these puffs they overlapped into the text so I have changed the text size and slightly altered the layout to create the final version of my magazine cover.
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