Magazine Covers Evaluation

What is your favourite cover and why?

My favourite cover is the last one that I made(metricmusic), the reason why this cover is my
favourite is because of the gradient style of the background and because of the name I
chose for the masthead.

Explain how your research into other magazines helped you develop ideas for your magazine
covers.
I learnt what type of fonts are used for each genre of music and what colours are used for
the backgrounds of the covers and I used this information as the basis of my designs as I
wanted originally to have my covers look similar to the standard style of music magazines. I
then wanted to make my last 2 covers unique and stand out from the others so I went
completely outside the box with my last cover designs.

Describe at least 2 photoshop techniques you used during the production of your magazine
covers.
I selected the subjects of the main image. I then copied and pasted in the exact same place
to make a separate layer for my masthead to go between and hide part of the masthead
with the pasted image to make the cover look 3D through an optical illusion. I used the
gradient tool to make the background for the last 2 covers and I used different methods for
each cover, for the first cover I used the default style of gradient and for the other cover I
used the noise variant of the tool with the radial style of gradient to give it an optical illusion
feel and 3D style to it to make it really pop out at the viewer.

Describe a problem you faced during the creation of your cover.

Deciding what the masthead and sub articles would be as there was too much variety and
too many options available for me to choose from as I have always had difficulty making
decisions.

Ask a friend for feedback on your covers. What did they say?
They said that the masthead on the first cover looks squashed and that the bottom left of
the first two covers was empty and that the space could have been better used.

Based on what they said, what changes would you make for next time?
I would change the size of the masthead so that it can be more spread out and I would also
either add another sub article or move one of the sub articles further down the cover

What skills do you need to develop in the future?

I feel that I need to develop my decision-making skills and that I need to check that I’m
making the best use of the available space on the covers and that the effect of the cover
design is maximised to give the target audience the best impression of the magazine.