Magazine Cover Reflection

Hello Beautiful People! I spent the past couple weeks learning about magazine cover conventions and designing my own magazine cover. I can't wait to tell you all about it! 

My Learning Process

The first thing we did was learn about all the elements of a magazine cover. We took notes on all the elements, analyzed some examples, and then labeled a sample cover to make sure we understood all of them. Once we learned everything, we were assigned to design out own magazine cover using Adobe indesign. This was my first time using Indesign, but it was really easy to use and I didn't really have any issues with it. 

My Magazine Cover

The first thing I had to decide was what genre I wanted to do. We had to use original photos that we took in class, and I decided that the easiest thing to photograph at my school would be the trees/landscape, so I decided to do a nature magazine. After that, I planned the title and what 'articles' I would feature. I decided on the title "Landscape", and thought of some headings that were climate-change themed.  

The next step was to go out and take photos, so I took the camera my teacher gave me and went outside. I ended up taking about 20 photos of random trees, leaves, etc. but I deleted most of them as there were only a handful that would actually work on a magazine cover. These were my final choices: 

Before I placed the images, I created the outline of the magazine by adding most of the words where I wanted them to be. I placed the title really big at the top, and then I placed the headings below in various sizes. I noticed that most magazines had the articles along the sides of the cover, so that's what I did.  

Once I was done with that, I placed the images one by one as the background to see which one I liked the most. I ended up choosing the second image of the tree. After the photo was placed, I changed the transparency to make it a little bit lighter, and changed all the text to white so it could stand out. 

At this point, I realized that I need a puff/plug and a banner/strip, so I added a rectangle and circle around two of the headings. I played around with the colors because I wanted them to stand out but still match the theme, so I made the shapes white and lowered the transparency, and changed the color of the text to green. 

The last thing I had to do was add the date and barcode. I added a random barcode to the bottom left corner, and placed the date on top of it, but I didn't like how it looked, so I moved the date to right under the title. After that, I was done!

Takeaways

Overall, the biggest challenge I has was the placement of the text and making everything look cohesive. But this was definitely a great learning experience and I actually had a lot of fun designing the cover and using Indesign. I'm glad I got to make a sample magazine cover because this was great practice for when I do my portfolio project. Anyways, this is my final cover: