Creating a Music Magazine, Part One.

My task requires me to create a magazine for a music magazine, I had to begin with ideas for naming and layout. In this blog entry I will discuss my steps for creating the front cover.

The Layout: 

To get the desired layout size I used the program 'GIMP 2.0' on my laptop at home. It gives you the exact page size of an A4 sheet of paper.

The Name:

I wanted the name to be easy to say and one that would fit the Ukulele theme. A Ukulele is often shortened to Uke so I have used this as the name.

Photographing:

Using my digital camera my friend, Lucy who is featured as the model in my magazine and I went to a beach scene and took several photographs to be used on the front cover, contents and double page spread. Here are the key photos:

The Creation of the Cover

Once I had my A4 canvas laid out I had to pick one of my images and paste it in. I chose this one:

Out of all the images I took this is the best one to get a three quarter shot out of, I cropped it down near her waste and then erased all of the background. The image looked professional as it echoed the magazine Q which I was studying for magazine conventions. One of Q's conventions was the iconic red box which features the Q masthead. I wanted to use the same iconic box but replace it with my title of Uke.

Adding the box behind model.

Once I added the box I needed to create my title within this space and work out a colour scheme that would suit the clothing the model is wearing and would also be suitable for the theme of a special pink edition.

Adding a badge and working out colour.

I considered grey at one point as it matched her clothing, however it wouldn't fit the conventions of a female orientated magazine. After I had settled on a eye catching pink shade I added a badge to the front of the cover advertising the '6 Page Exclusive' part of which I would feature later on in the magazine as part of the double page spread. After I had completed the basic layout and badge design I worked with my tagline and coverlines. Underneath the masthead I added 'The Finest Ukulele Magazine in the UK' and put on several coverlines mentioning other Ukulele artists and a chance to win a trip to Hawaii. Along with the basic information I wanted to add extra eye catching flair to the front of the magazine. This is where the vine tool in GIMP came in handy. I changed it to the colour of the masthead background and added several vines across the page. I carried the vines through to the design of the masthead background as well. With the vines I wanted a little something extra on the masthead so I went on google images and found a clipart of a Uke which was free to use.

Here is the original clipart:

http://www.clker.com/cliparts/T/H/R/g/B/i/ukulele.svg

Even after I had finished with the vines something was missing, I had mentioned all of the information yet I hadn't informed the reader much about the actual edition of the magazine itself. I added a pink banner across the bottom of the magazine and added the information of the special edition release.

The First Final