First Cover Mock Up

Work in Progress

Before making my final magazine cover, I have made a mock up of what look I want the magazine to have.

Firstly, I took pictures of my chosen 'model' - Yasmine - in various positions and shots, and ended up choosing the one to the right. The reason for having a younger model was because my target audience is a younger demographic that will be largely westernised - music magazines are a luxury for them. The inspiration for having the hands near the face was from the magazine Q, where on an issue with Florence Welch, she has her hands on her face - something I liked. The idea is to have a coverline that relates to this, perhaps her vulnerability or opinion of the spotlight. In regards to her face - I have used make up to enhance her eyelashes, eyeshadow on her eyelids and added some lipstick, which is less visible in this picture. Also, the beading above her eyebrows are stick on face art, which I thought would work well considering it is an indie rock magazine, so the style is quite unique.

The original image had a few blemishes in terms of under her eyes and the shining around nose, forehead and on the fingers, therefore I felt it needed 'touching up'. Consequently, I decided to use the photo editing tool Pixlr in order to make the image how I wanted it. I started by using a heal tool and smoothed some her skin where she had a few spots. Then I used a highlighting tool to brighten the shades under her eyes and then airbrushed it so it blended in with the rest of her face. Lastly, I removed the shine from her forehead, nose and her fingers so it looked more aesthetically pleasing to the audience. After editing, I was happy with the finished image and decided to move on to putting the text over it and experiment with different ideas to establish the overall look/feel of my magazine. 

I began with placing the masthead - UNDISCOVERED - I am still unsure if this is what I want to name it, as I think its quite a long name. However, the sell line 'Discover Great Music' goes better with it because it almost explains the meaning of the name. I think that I have placed the text too high, however I didn't want it to be covering too much of the image, so I am still not sure if I will end up using this image as my final piece. I then placed a few made up coverlines around the image in various fonts, but careful not to make it to busy - I believe having the name in a handwriting font makes it stand out more and indicates what the main focus of the magazine is. I tired to have a little text as I could because I am going for the simplistic look, something that the results of my survey agree that I should do too. The colour scheme of the text is white - this is because it has to be seen against the dark background, so I have limited choice. Although, for my final piece I would ideally like it to have a colour scheme of black or white, with little bursts of colour. This is what I have tried to do here with the pink text, and the idea was to have it match up with the pink of the lipstick. I have placed the barcode and the issue/price in the left hand corner, making it small, because I don't think it is something that needs a large focus. I took the idea from the fashion magazine VOGUE, because it has the price really small - but I think this is because it is so expensive. 

To conclude, I am relatively happy with how my mock up turned out. This is because I think it shows what I want the overall look of the magazine to be - simple and unique. However, I have still not made any final decisions on the name of the magazine, or what image I will choose - my aim of making this mock was to practice and experiment, something I think I have done well.