Music Magazine Cover First Draft - Step-by-step

Throughout the design of my front cover, I made sure to save my progress regularly. I did this primarily so that I could go back and change it if I had changed my mind about something, but it also meant that I'd be able to post on my blog a step-by-step account of the cover's creation process. The step-by-step account is what you'll be reading now.

As Confucius said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." This was my single beginning step. I basically just brought the picture I'd decided to use into Photoshop, and then put the masthead design I'd made earlier onto it. I then cut out the top of my model's head and made it a duplicate layer which I placed above the masthead layer; this made it look like my model was standing in front of the magazine title. I next put some text saying "Kerry Anne" on the cover, as this is the name of model and therefore the name I was going to use for the "singer" on the front cover. I also put a barcode I found on google in the bottom right hand corner, as this is a common position for music magazines to put their barcodes.

For the second version, I first made the masthead more thick and bold so that it would stand out more. I also got rid of the "Kerry Anne" text, since I decided to focus on editing the main picture and designing the cover before worrying about adding text. Another thing I did was change the barcode to a more realistic one.

This I did for a bit of fun; I used the colour replacement tool to make Kerry's eyes red. I found it quite effective as it definitely made her appearance scarier, but I knew that it was not the kind of thing the one should seriously include on a music magazine's front cover.

This is the third version I made. The most noticeable change is the black header bit, which I added as I have seen it on many music magazines. I found it useful aesthetically as it meant my magazine looked more music-like, and I also found it useful content-wise as it allowed me space to include more information about what's inside the mag. Separating the black box from the background is a small silver-coloured line, which I put there as it matches the silver colour of the masthead's outline. In regards to the masthead, I changed it by applying a drop shadow and mucking about with its other settings slightly so it looked clearer and therefore more professional.

In this fourth version I had hidden all the things on the cover apart from the main picture, so that I could cut out the background. I decided to cut out the background so that I could apply another better one, rather than having the random wall that was in the photo's original background. On many music magazine covers I looked at a coloured background had been applied, so I thought I could create something similar to these covers by adding in a background colour myself. Obviously at this point I had yet to cut out the background completely. I used to lasso tool to do the main section of cutting, and when it got to the finer details I used the eraser tool with a very small and soft brush setting.

In the fifth version I showed again the layers that I had previously hidden. I'd finished cutting out Kerry but the edges of the picture still looked sharp and jagged, making it clear she was cut out, so I rectified that later on. I chose to use a yellowy orange background for the moment as that was the colour of the wall used as the actual background and so I felt it fit the picture quite well. It is also not overly obtrusive to the eyes, though I did feel that it looked quite ugly. I also actually added something to the black heading. I used white text, because white always looks good on black, and included a picture of the "three middle-class schoolboys" in question. As you may remember, this was actually one of the pictures from the first session of photo taking so I am glad I was able to use it. I put a small white frame around the picture so that it would be clearer against the different things it is in front of.

For this sixth version I had changed the colour settings of the main picture slightly, so that Kerry looked less pale. I also spaced out the text in the header section better, so that it properly filled out the space. I added in a month and price as they are aspects needed on music magazine covers just as much as barcodes. I used the font Oceania as it was the same font used for the masthead, and it therefore helped to create a sense of house style.

This is probably the point at which the biggest (or most obvious) changes took place. For this seventh version I got rid of the ugly yellowy orange background and replace it with white. I then used the gradient tool and dragged a white and black gradient inwards from the outside edges of the cover, which made the outer parts of the cover black fading into white at the centre. This gave the effect of a picture taken with a light shining on a white background, where the black parts are the shadow. I made this effect more obvious by going on Filter > Render > Lighting Effects... and then applying a spotlight effect with the angle pointing downwards. This made it look like a light had been shining directly on Kerry's face when the picture was taken, and this gave the picture a much more studio-like quality. I also moved the "Kerry Anne" text to the left and put it across two lines, as in its previous position it felt like it was taking up too much space and therefore limiting what else I could include on the cover.

For the eighth version I applied a much more even gradient to the background since previously it looked kind of random, with the bottom left hand corner having a lot less black than the bottom right hand corner. I moved the whole image of Kerry to the right slightly so that her name was not obstructing her face so much. I also put the lure ("I'm done with the band...") underneath the name, to show it was said by Kerry Anne. However, what was by far the biggest change I made did this time was the addition of make-up. I wanted to make Kerry look more "rockish" and thought a good way to do this would be by adding more obvious make-up. I looked up on youtube a variety of make-up application tutorials, eventually finding this one and this one, both of which proved to be extremely useful. Female musicians often have bright red lipstick and I managed to, with the help of the first video, create what I thought to be a pretty good effect. I applied also a black eye-liner effect using the second video; I chose black as it is gothic and "rockish", which is the effect I wanted to create.

In this ninth version I only changed a little. I compressed the "Kerry Anne" text and the lure below it, so that they were spaced out less vertically. I also changed the drop shadow settings on the lure, making it so that the shadow was actually directly behind the text. This compression and drop shadow editing made the text easier to read, and it also looked better purely in terms of aesthetics as well. The only other change I made was to cut out Kerry's head as I had done earlier and put it over the masthead again.









And here is my tenth, and final, version of the front cover. Here I added all the text to the cover, which wasn't too hard since I had decided on most of the band/singer names and their stories beforehand. I put all the band/singer names in red, as this highlighted that they were more important than the accompanying text. To be honest I have no idea why I chose to use for the accompanying text the same particular yellowy orange colour I had earlier deemed too ugly to use for my background. Regardless, I think it works quite well, and I believe it compliments the red text quite nicely.



It is likely that there will be further changes for me to make, but this is only my first draft so I have the time. Also, I apologise for the hideous layout blogger has deemed fit to impose on this post. I tried my best to sort it, but to no avail.