Final Production

After getting feedback from my target audience I went on to plan and produce my final production. Early on I had decided on a minimalistic style for my cover and planned on taking a photograph good enough to be the centre stage of the cover. I realised that I wanted to have a simple colour scheme and settled on black and white with other colours used sparingly. I felt that although this isn't entirely conventional for a music magazine the look I wanted was simple and elegant and by using such a simple colour scheme I would be able to work better on the layout and quality of my photos rather than having the focus on an overwhelming spectrum of colour. I had an idea to cover my models in coloured dots as I wanted there to be an interesting element to the photo so the minimalistic look wouldn't seem too dull. I took several photos in order to have enough to decide on which to use for my cover, contents and double page spread: several of the 30 photos I took are below:

(Final front cover photo)

(Photo used in contents)

I chose my cover, contents and double page spread photos (indicated above) and using Photoshop I altered the contrast levels and colour scales on them using the "image adjust tools" shown below

Here is my final cover, contents page and double page spread:

How I edited my production using Photoshop

Front Cover

After altering the photo with the adjustment tools I realised that I hadn't painted the dots on Beau's (my model) neck, I used the clone stamp tool to take the already present ones on his face and some of the arms that were of a similar skin tone and paste them onto his neck

Clone tool icon - to use I selected the area I wanted to copy while holding the alt key and then pasted it where desired by clicking.

I used this alongside the smudge and burn tools to remove any blemishes, The clone stamp helped to cover the blemish while the smudge tool (used by clicking and dragging) and the burn tool (used in the same way) helped to blend the harsh lines and create shadows. 

Burn tool

Smudge tool

I placed my masthead in the top left corner as that was the style most preferred by my focus group and wrote it in the Sacco font the focus group had found the most appealing, I added the tagline from my mock ups "music . style . news" in the Orator font and placed it directly underneath the masthead. 

Other details I added to the front cover to give the impression of a real and professional magazine are a barcode, price and date alongside the "website" for my magazine. In keeping with those that I've studied I placed these details in a bottom corner and quite small. I took inspiration from some of the covers of the magazines I've looked at in terms of the minimalistic style of the cover, in particular the NME cover featuring Amy Winehouse. I felt the nature of the photo meant that adding any extra text would detract from the quality of it and so made the decision to leave it mostly blank

Contents

The background image of my contents was not a picture I took but actually a picture I made up using the photos shown before and Photoshop, I realised that I had not downloaded the photo I had taken for my contents and unfortunately it had been deleted so I decided to "create" a different image I could use from those I already had. I took the photo used for my front cover and altered it's contrast as I had with the others and erased most of the image  apart from two arms on the left hand side, I used other photos I took in the same style and pose and created copies of different arms using the "layer by copy" tool, removed their backgrounds with the magic wand tool (used by selecting the desired area to be removed and pressing the delete key) and blended them into the background using the clone stamp tool and then the burn tool to create shadows underneath them (details of both tools above) I was incredibly happy with the end result and I felt it looked like a real photo that was perfect to base my contents on.

 Eraser tool

Magic wand tool

The first photo used in the contents is a close up of my model, as with all my other photos I took the dull colours of it and altered them with the contrast tool to brighten the photo and make it appear professionally done and clean. I used the clone stamp, smudge and burn tools again to edit out any blemishes but was overall happy with the photo and didn't feel any excessive editing necessary. I did not personally take the second photo as I wanted it to be of a festival that I have not been to, the third photo however I did take on the streets of London in natural daylight, I upped the contrast and colour scales of it to make the yellow pop more and was happy with the way it looks on the page. 

I set up the page to have the arms on the left hand side, pictures on the right and text in the middle, I titled the page in the same Orator font I used on the front and then alternated between Perpetua and Perpetua Titling for the text, using the bolder titling font in a bigger size for every feature that had a photograph to match it. I added an editors note at the bottom using the same two fonts and a signature at the bottom with a page number in the bottom right corner. In the white space in the top left corner I added contact details found in most magazines, I used the magic wand tool to cut out the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram icons and have the simple black outlines of them alongside the details I had made up for my magazine underneath.

Double Page Spread

The photo I took enabled me to effectively split my double page spread in half with my model on the right and my text on the left. The photo didn't need a great deal of editing as it was already of good quality, I simply altered it's contrast and colour levels and used the clone tool to fix some chipped nail polish on my model's hand. I set up the left hand side of the page to have a large quote at the top and a short introduction to the interview and then the bottom half to have the interview itself. I backed all the text on a "B" that filled the half and set it to 10% opacity on Photoshop to be mostly transparent so the text on top would stand out enough. All the text I used was written in the same Perpetua and Perpetua Titling fonts I used in the contents to have continuity across the magazine. The quote at the top was written in the titling font with the different words in bold and italic split across two lines. I wrote the short introduction in the italic font slightly smaller underneath it. I structured the interview text around a quote in between two columns and the questions were in the titling font and the answers in the smaller font. The quote in between the columns was written in italics and enveloped in bold quotation marks.