STEP1 - Front Cover

This is my first step in making the front cover to my music magazine, I decided to go along with the black, red and white colour scheme as this typically portrays a rock/alternative rock music genre. I have used the shape tool on Photoshop to add the 'PLUS bar' at the bottom wherein I have added famous band names that would be featured in the magazine. The 'WIN SUM41 TICKETS!' were put in two red and white circles that I have made from the shape tool in Photoshop, also I have rendered the shapes to give it a ripped effect. I made the cut-out layer of Cleo to be on top of the masthead so that it appears as she is literally standing out on the magazine; aggressive and in your face. Her lips have also been edited to be 'blood-red' so that it would help anchor her to the colour scheme a bit more. 
Here is the RAW picture that I took on the camera:

Here you can see the differences to the before and after (see above); I've added more brightness and a little contrast to make the colour white more prominent so it can stand out from the black background of my magazine. You can also see the difference of the lips and how much more effective they are when they are red (I was planning to have my model wear the lipstick she had but we both forgot so I used Photoshop to compensate). I feel this shot is effective because it has the artist's face closer to the camera to the rest of the body to allow her recognition as an artist and the shot shows her electrical guitar and amp which both are connotations of the rock/alternative rock genre.


I managed to get the electric guitar, amp, and Cleo to wear her 'Chelsea Grin' sweatshirt and converses as this would help attract my target audience as these are typical representations of a person in an alternative rock band. The reason I wanted my model to wear that particular graphic sweatshirt was because many many rock band members usually wear clothes with one of their favourite bands on it. For example, David Baksh (former Sum 41 member) was wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt in the music video 'In too Deep': 

So I wanted to use that finding to be reflected in my front cover, however I did cover her t-shirt in Photoshop with black rectangles because all the text on her top would be a distraction to the name 'CLEO' in big letters which would prevent her name from standing out. However I did manage to get her to wear black and white which is also what a lot of alternative rock musicians wear, for example Good Charlotte:

By doing this I have shown that I have tried to appeal to my target audience (by genre) and helped to typically present what genre my magazine is and what sort of artists and bands will be featured.