final magazine cover process and analysis

Above is how I plan to lay out my magazine cover. This is a rough plan, and is subject to change. I decided that the main headline would go right in the middle so that it is one of the first things you see when you look at the magazine. The secondary headlines would go nearer to the sides so that the main image would not be obscured. I also opted to put a white box next to the masthead to act as i skyline of sorts, where i will put a secondary headline. I plan to use a serif font for the majority of the text on the magazine cover, as this is part of the house style of Q magazine. Serif fonts also provide a sense of tradition, which is good for a magazine like Q as it is a fairly prestigious magazine that has been around for quite a long time. 

For my final magazine cover, I took anew set of photos, this time bringing in my guitar as a prop. I took a number of photos, however I chose this one as I felt it was the best in terms of lighting and the position of myself. However, there is a section of a soft light caught in the top right of the photo, which I will get around by either cropping or by cutting the figure of myself out and placing it over another background.
The first thing I wanted to do was to change image of myself into black and white, but not the background.

To do this, first, i need to select myself using the quick selection tool and drawing around the area I need, as seen in process in the screenshot above. i decided to do it in two selections so that i could keep the guitar in colour. The selection you make will turn black and white when you convert, however, everything else will remain in colour. Once i have gone over the top and bottom halves of me and converted them to black and white, I got an image that looked like this.

The next step is to cut the image of me and the guitar out so that i can place it on a new background.

By going around the image of myself again with the quick selection tool and pressing delete to get rid of he background, i managed to get the image of myself on its own. The next step was to add a background.

I selected a black wood background, as i felt black would add good contrast to the blue of the guitar and would go well with the dark tones of the black and white image of me. My image was now ready to make into a magazine cover.

 I then began to shape the image into a "Q" cover, as that is the magazine i used for my analysis. I use the rectangle tool to create the Red square which the magazine title would be placed on and the white banner at the top to write info about an article inside the magazine on. I made sure that the Q, which is the masthead, was in a large font so that it is clear what magazine it is when looking from a distance. 

I wrote the main cover line in very Large font for the same reason and also used the same colour scheme so that my magazine was kept to the house style of Q magazine. The fonts for all the other cover lines are in either white or red, as these are the colours used on the Q logo, meaning I have kept to the house style. I have used black font when writing on a white background such as on the skyline and in the circle advertising the free poster inside, as the black font complimented the white background. Above the Q masthead is my selling line, which uses the buzzword "greatest" to make people want to buy the magazine. The two other images on the magazine other than the main image have a white border, which i did by adding a stroke to the layer in the blending options, so that you notice them straight away, and white also it part of the Q house style. I also added a stroke to the main headline so that it can be seen with ease. I kept the headline to the house style of red and white so that is a clearly part of a "Q" cover. Finally, the quote underneath the main headline uses the buzzwords "bigger" and "better" so that the reader wants to read the interview that the quote is referring to.