Development/Construction of Front Cover

In this blog post, I will talk about my contents pages developments,the good the bad points and what I improved through each draft

First draft

This is my first completed draft for the front cover. I decided to call the magazine "Urban Beats" because the word hip hop is often associated with the term urban and I also used the word "beats" to represent the music concept theme. I used that particular font because it looks attractive and if it is observed more closely at the base of the text. the outlines look like skyscrapers and a city. This emphasises the "urban" aspect of the magazine title and the hip hop genre
however, I may change the front cover photo simply because on of the main conventions of hip hop music magazines is that the photos are usually close ups, not full body scale like the on that I used here.






Second draft

After outlining the negatives on the first draft, I decided to change my front covers main image and mostly revamp the whole front cover. I did this because the heading appeared a bit tacky and cheesy, also many people were not able to see the titles main feature (the outline that looked like a city)so this defeated the purpose of it being there. I chose to go with a more simplistic yet attractive and cool approach and change many of the fonts. I made the bar code smaller so that it wouldn't take up any unnecessary space that could be used by other more important features. I added a lot more content than before for example i added more subheadings, an edition date and a celebrities features list. these all made the magazine front cover more conventional and attractive. I decided to go with the black and white approach because it fitted in well with my grey scale photo. For the centre piece of text "the revival of Ken Rebel" i placed the white font on a black background and the black font on a white background , making the font more easier to read and because it stood out, it added a sense of importance to the title. Furthermore, I added a small subheading at the very top to add a more conventional look and to fill up the dead space.


Third draft

This is my fourth draft. after much consideration, I chose to revamp the layout because i had to change the photo. the reason I changed the photo was because the previous one was pixelated, blurry and lost some of its colour. I changed where some of the subheadings were because they were blocking the photos models, which would make the magazine less attractive. In addition I added a price tag in a bright blue font. This adds a more conventional look and the bright blue adds more colour to the page making it more attractive. Furthermore, i added a blackberry barcode for a more reinforced conventional look and to make it look more professional.








Fourth draft

This is my fourth draft and possibly my best yet. I fixed some of the small problems with the second draft. for example I made the centre text "The revival of Ken Rebel" much bigger and move its position further upwards. This action makes the text more readable and it makes it more captivating, since I want that piece of text to be the first thing a reader sees apart from the main title and photo. I moved some of the subheadings that were previously covering the photo`s models bodies making the photo more presentable. I chose instead of my third draft because the photo seemed to be a better choice as it looked more conventional and Hip-Hop appropiate