Front cover

This is my music magazine front cover!
the target audience for my front cover is 13 -19 year-olds, both boys and girls and anyone interested in pop and R&B music.
to create my front covern i used adobe Photoshop. I found it easier this time using Photoshop as we had already had the chance to get use to it when we made our college magazine front covers for practice. Although it was easier I still found it a little difficult to put everything together and also to put things such as barcodes on the cover.
To create the front cover i got ideas from magazines such as Q magazine, vibe magazine and NME magazine. For this we had to take our own images using a digital camera then Photoshop them in. On my front cover I have my image as the main focus, the masthead at the top of the page, which is fusion, this also had the date and issue number underneath, then I had small captions around the image of things hat were also going to appear in my magazine. The colour scheme I have decided to use is black, red and blue. The reason I have chosen to use these is because they stand out to most age groups and they look most effective on my cover.
I used my friend Kat as my model for this and took a variety of images, most where close-ups as this is what we were told do in the brief. I think the close-up shot also looks more effective and stands out more to the audience. i took the images at my friends house, as we did not need an outdoor loctaion or many props to to create my iadea for a good main image. i had my model stand in front of a unique designed mirror that looked glamourous this was to reflect the model and the brand within the magazine. although i didin't use spectacular props in my image the ones i did use, i thought were very effective. i had my model dressed in a blue party dress, not only because the colour stands out, to fit in with the colour scheme of my front cover. i had lots of jewellery e.g pearls and diamonds, and ribbons drapped on the mirror to reflect the glamour. i also done her makeup quite extravagant as most celebrites, especially when doing photoshoots, have this. the bow in my models hair was purposely put there, so that when my image was incorporated onto my front cover it would cover a small section of my masthead, i think this makes the cover look professional and effective.
The only thing I would have changed is that I would have used different shades of the colours to maybe stand out a little more.
After I had done my front cover I handed it in to get feedback on what I could improve on it to get a better grade, I then improved my cover and now think it looks a lot more effective.
On the front cover I have used the main conventions that music magazines use such as masthead, cover lines, images, date, barcode, captions etc.