FRONT COVER DEVELOPMENT AND CREATION

I have chosen to use the image to the left of this writing out of all of the photos I took as it was in a more fitting composition which would work better with my front cover. It's also a simplistic image which I can easily manipulate on image editors to add writing and to use layers on photoshop. I like the way in which it looks like it hasn't really being 'staged' this is the sort of look my magazine wants to portray. With the main ideology of my magazine being that the music is more important than the 'product' value of artists.
Below are some of the fonts I shortlisted when choosing the font for my main masthead. I decided to sample them on the photo to see which would go well with it and too see which went with the 'feel' of the magazine.

I decided to go with the bottom font which is 'Rockwell' but added a thicker border to go onto my final front cover design, as seen below I added it behind the main image but infront of the background to give a more professional look to my magazine using this technique which is used by the likes of Rolling Stone.

After doing my header I decided to add some main headlines and the main feature. I chose to use a 'teal' colour on my front cover as well as the red to add some interest as it would've all gotten a bit boring otherwise. Once I'd got both my main feature and main headlines sorted out I decided to add a section at the bottom so I did a few variations of this, and these were my two favourites; 

From the above choices of font I decided to add in some 'Rockwell extra bold' as t's from the same font family so wasn't too far different to include on my front cover. I also used a variation of different fonts for my 'features' section as this is used on the front of Q magazine which I have previously looked at in some early posts.
 From these two ideas I decided to run with the first one as oppose to the second one, as it was too bold and overpowered the rest of the magazine front cover. The first design is much more subtle which is more fitting for an 'extras' section at the bottom. After this I needed to find something to fill the gap between the main headlines and main feature; I wanted to do some sort of badge like thing which was more picture like. But before I did this I decided I needed something to tie the whole thing together and add a bit more variety to my front cover; so I added some text to the main feature. I also added the barcode area, as shown below;

I wanted to fill the gap above the main feature and below the main headlines so I decided to create a competition badge. I used the below three photos to add to my badge to show different artists. All of these photos are originals by me.

As you can see below I edited these photos on photoshop to get rid of the backgrounds to add to my competition badge to 'Win Free Tickets'. Below is my finalised Front Cover.