Creating Front Covers // Mock Ups

The front cover is he first thing the consumer sees when looking at shelves. 3x as many people pick up magazines in shop as those who are subscribed for issues weekly/ monthly. I decided to create mock up magazine covers to begin thinking of how I would like to design my front cover.

I found this photo of FKA Twigs and layered my temporary chosen magazine name, AMP, under her and added some made up headlines.    I like the black and white in this photo, although I would like to use colour in my cover, and I like the idea of using a pineapple for the bright splash of colour. I know I  need to add a barcode, strapline and possibly a puff, and I decided after creating it that I wasn't sure I liked the arched text. 

I then took a photo of Kehlani offline and created some  mockups, using my potential name "AMP" and a few tag lines to create an example.

I tried to vary the fonts and boldness of the straplines, although from this process I can see I need to use more varied design of words to entice the audience.

 Using the different layer drop bar in Photoshop, I experimented with a background of pineapples under my simple idea for a cover.

--  --Pineapples layered over and in black and white

-Pineapples layered over original photo

I realized the dots over her face were covering her and didn't look quite right, so I knew I had to change that. Using the rubber tool on Photoshop, I removed the background from covering her face, although I left the over shadow on the rest of her body as I think the projection look is quite edgy.

I like the way this looks as, similar to my Kanye West Photoshop practice, it looks like the pineapples are being projected onto her, and I like how it looks tropical, colorful and eye-catching.

This looks like it could be a summer edition of a magazine, the bright colours and tropical pineapples give a summery and sunny vibe. Even though I'm not sure all of these covers scream "HipHop", this process has defiantly made me realize the kind of design I want my magazine to have, and also the kind of vibe I would like to give off.