First draft - front cover of my music magazine

This is the first draft of my front cover for my music magazine. When I was making this, I changed a lot of my ideas, such as using paint splatters on a plain white background for the actual background of my front cover. When I tried this, it didn't go particularly well as I thought it looked dull and that it didn't really 'fit' in with the type of magazine that I wanted to create.

After I tried the ideas that I originally thought, I searched through magazines and looked at the backgrounds used on them, as all the magazines I looked at were rock, I noticed most of them had a 'dark' look to them. I decided to take this on board and decided on using one of my ideas which was to  use a picture of the sky. On this picture, in photoshop I edited it to make the sky have a darker tint to it. Once I made it look darker, I used the gradient tool to fade it nearer the bottom. I did this as I wanted it to look faded towards the bottom to make it look more intriguing. For the title, I really wanted it to stand out and not look boring and unattractive so instead of just a normal text, I used the rubber tool to put lines through it so you could see the background through the title. I think this was affective and makes it look quite captivating. I chose to have the title in grey as I thought white wouldn't go with the 'dark' colour scheme as there is also some grey in the background.

For my main picture in the middle, I used a shot of his full body so it would fill the page from nearly top to bottom. I cropped the photo of the gituarist out and left a thin white line around him, I did this so I could smudge the white out into the background so it would look like a glowing light is shining off him. I made his head cover part of the title as when looking at proper magazines I saw this on nearly every one and also I quite liked this idea.

For the other text I wrote, I put them in lots of different fonts. I did this so it would look more appealing and eye capturing as if it was done with all the same text, it may look boring. I mainly used the colour yellow as I thought it went with the dark turquoise colour in the background. I decided to put a giant quote on top of the photograph of the guitarist as it shows that it is him who is talking. The quote is also put there to captivate the reader so for me, it had to be large enough for them to be able to read it and also it had to be an interesting quote otherwise the reader would not be drawn in. On the bottom right corner of the magazine cover, I made a circle shape with 'WIN A FREE YEAR OF RESONANCE MAGAZINES' in the middle. I made this so it so it would grab the audiences attention so that more people would want to purchase the magazine and apply to win a year of free magazines. On the top of the magazine, I created a black banner stating in bright yellow all of the posters that are included inside. I know being a teenager who is into the rock genre, posters in magazines are always included and teenagers love magazines to put on their walls at home, so I wanted to include a decent amount of posters that are included inside so the audience will see it straight away and may force them into purchasing the magazine. At the bottom of the magazine, I added the barcode like everything you buy always does, the website, the date and issue number.

Overall, I like this cover that I have created as I have tried very hard to make it look like a realistic magazine. However, I still think there is more for me to improve, like more writing down the left side of the page, beside the photograph explaining more about what's involved in the magazine. Also, I have noticed that I forgot to add the price to the front of the magazine which is obviously a very important thing to have on anything you are purchasing, so on my next draft I am going to work hard to fix them in.