Magazine Front Cover Development

1) Main image -  This was the starting image for my poster with no effects on it whatsoever. There was strong lighting in the room which meant that my face and it's features are clearly visible. It is vital to have a clear main image so that when people see it on the shelves they immediately recognise who is on the front or what is being portrayed. 

2) Masthead -  Next I made two photoshop documents for the masthead of my magazine front cover. Using a white text on a black background was key to making my magazine stand out on the shelves. Similar to the yellow colour background for the Sight and Sound masthead I wanted to catch the eye of the audience with my main title. The words relate very much to the theme of my magazine with it's Britishness and looking at English films started on low or high-budgets. Next to my masthead I accompanied it with a tagline to support the British theme being portrayed: "The British Film Magazine", also I got the logo for BFI and placed it on the background to give the magazine a classy feel.

3) Barcode, Dateline and Cover Price - Following this I added the dateline, cover price and barcode which can be seen above. Continuing with the black background with white writing, I also made the issue's month red because it stands out on the black background and is again a colour of the Union Jack. A small logo that I got off Google Images and darkened was the coat of arms of London, again to symbolise the urban nature of my magazine, focussing on young British talent from the streets and following their progress in the film industry as a worldwide picture.

4) Having the main image, the masthead and the barcode sections I placed these into one Photoshop document and my Film Magazine front cover began to take shape. 

5) Background Image and Text - Here is where I added my main text and also the background to the whole magazine. I had in mind that the background of a wall of which I took a photo of would not be the main background as it is too bold. I would therefore, use the texture of the background and place brown shapes over it to make it look less rigid and more up-market. The text's colour palette is the colours of the Union Jack again to symbolise the Britishness and the font is downloaded off DAFONT which gives a very urban look to my magazine with sketchy serif effect. 

6) Final Product - The final touches to my final product included adding three blocked brown shapes to the background and tweaking down their opacity so that the rigid, gritty background could come through with its pattern. Finally I used the gradient tool on Photoshop to blend the main image into the background so I didn't stand out and look extremely artificial compared to the background. This is what the darker brown shadow around the main image is.