Magazine Cover - Details

I wanted to make some of the 'specials' stand out and saw that Empire often added a low opacity box around their 'specials' in order to make them stand out to the readers/audience. I decided to do something similar, as seen below, whereby I created a grey box and lowered the opacity in order for it to stand out in comparison to the background but not crowd out the words above it. I then Layered the text above it and moved it to size. It created the effect that I was looking for, which was pleasing. 

I also decided that I needed to change the colour of my film title slightly and so decided to keep the powerful 'Two' and 'Evils' in bright block red but changed the subtitle to a much darker burgundy. I felt that this balanced the overall look to my magazine, which is essential for it's success. 

I wanted to add some sort of logo and was set on the idea of using an image of a razor-blade to fit with the 'Extended Cut' masthead. I placed the razor blade image all over the magazine and even attempted to add a line of them through the already visible cut in between the top and bottom layer of 'extended cut'. In the end, I decided to change the colour of the razor-blade and tilt it so it would fit into the 'T' at the end of my magazine title/name. 

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Magazine Cover - working progress

Below are a few photos showing the progress of my magazine cover, with the different puffs, square blocks added carefully and placed in a particular spot on the front page, where I believed they looked best. I am fond of the slick, sharp feel to most empire magazines and so wanted to replicate this in mine. I was also influenced by the 'coding' from media magazine and so attempted to do something similar as seen by the faint coding travelling down the background layer of the magazine. The blue title was also included in order to outline where my masthead would be placed. I particularly like the the red puffs in the bottom right corner, combined with the black and white writing as I think it creates quite a striking effect. I think the central image is extremely striking and works with the grey/white background colour to my magazine.

Progressing: I placed the 'Two Evils' title almost all over my magazine cover before finally deciding to place it either side of Gabriel's head. I wanted to do this from the start but was trying out different placings before I went with my original idea. I like this placing due to the fact that it fits with the connotation of the title itself. Our film plays around with the theme of split-personalities and this is highlighted through the broken placing of 'Two' and 'Evils'.

Progressing:

I decided to place the CMYK mask just below the title of my magazine front cover as I was strongly influenced by many of Empire's magazine covers, who place a small red 'plus-sign' on their magazine cover to signify that it is their very own front cover. I also thought it worked within the style of the magazine itself. All that was left for me to do here, was to change the colour of 'Two' and 'Evils' in order for them to stand out compared to the brighter, more block red of the magazine.

I was having particular trouble with the masthead for my magazine cover, mainly due to the fact that I was short of ideas. I wanted to play around with the idea of using a razor blade in order to link in with the title of my magazine, which is 'Extended Cut'. Another idea I had was to have the two words on a different level in order to show that it looked like they had been 'cut'. I will keep playing with it until I find something that I think works well with the rest of the magazine cover.

I decided to split the words 'Extended Cut' in half in order to represent this idea of the 'cut', which is a term used in film on a regular basis. Below is the end result…

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Media Magazine - Progress

We decided to take a few photos of our main actor (plus us, as the directors for Charlie's magazine) in order to insert these images into Photoshop and then play around with them. We wanted to play around with a few different images in order to increase our chances of finding one we particularly like. Below, you can see two different sets of images of Gabriel in the editing stage of Photoshop. As you can see I played around with the different colours, their transparency and saturation in order to find the desired effect. I particularly like the first image below and decided to use it as the central image to my magazine, which is influenced by the famous 'Empire' Magazine. I also enjoyed using tools such as spot removal in order create a completely clean-looking face, similar to that of modelling photos on the front cover of a magazine.

As you can see below, I decided to play around with the different levels of brightness, temperature and vibrance in order to make the central image more powerful. I decided to play around with the different colourings as well but landed on this image below and felt it was the perfect fit for my magazine front cover. 

I originally wanted to split the central image and have Gabriel looking both ways on the front cover, but after much deliberation, I decided that it would probably be a better idea to attempt this for the poster, instead of the magazine. 

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Media Magazine Influence

I particularly like the style of this magazine, especially the coding presented to us faintly across the cover. I think it works especially in conjunction with the colouring of this magazine (black, blue and white). 

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Aims for magazine

My aim for the lesson today was to find a solid working title and sample a few different fonts against different coloured backgrounds. The colour of the background is less important to me at this stage as I will now be focusing mainly on the font and trying to find one that would stand out on my magazine poster. Font is often the most important thing to a magazine cover as it is the first thing an audience member looks at before beginning to read and/or judge whether they want to purchase it. I will be using 'Working Title' for now whilst I am thinking for the right name for my magazine cover.

Below are a few sample fonts: I am not particularly fond of these as they look more like the kind of fonts you are likely to see in the graphics of a movie instead of the slick font of a magazine cover. These might be more appropriate for the poster with the obvious links to the graphics of our actual trailer. However it was still useful to experiment with the different fonts available.

 

Sample Names (brainstorming):

 

• Cinema Verite
• Close-Up
• The Cutaway
• The Dark Horse
• The Extended Cut
• The Film Review
• UK Film Review
• UK Review
• British Review
• UK Unseen
• UK Helm
• Helm Cut
• Directors Cut
• On-Scene
• UK Icon
• Inside Joke
• Inside UK
• Invictus Magazine
• The Interlude

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