Briefing
The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate
the potential for altering content and viewers’ perception in an image and help
define your own stance. The object is to
produce a photographic image to illustrate an imaginary book or magazine cover. Decide on a topic to be illustrated. Explore the areas of adjustment and
manipulation that would make the image successful as a cover. Accompany the finished image with a
description of the techniques you considered using and finally used and also
your ethical justification.
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Produce a photographic image to illustrate an
imaginary book or magazine cover
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Explore the areas of adjustment and manipulation
that would make the image successful as a cover
>
Accompany the finished image with a description of
the techniques you considered using and finally used and also your ethical
justification
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Background
When I first read
through this module I was excited to see the content of assignment 4, that of
designing a book or magazine cover as the main part of the work. I enjoy reading a great deal and at one
point came across a book by the author Penelope Lively called ‘The Photograph’ where a man whose wife
had recently died came upon an old envelope amongst a load of discarded
items in a cupboard. I thought the
original cover was very weak and thought I could do better. I tried to picture this cover in my head and
even went so far as to source images to create a new cover but found it was
outside my experience to do an adequate job so I searched round for an
alternative. Perhaps when I work through
the level 2 digital photographic practice module I will be able to create my
vision.
I did some
research on the Internet to see what style of front covers women's
/teens'/model magazines was used to sell them and came up with some front cover
examples, see below. I have done a fair
amount of desk top publishing work both professionally and personal work in the
past and have a good idea of what is needed to both create a good cover and be
able to create an eye catching one.
The front covers
here gave me some new ideas to work with as I had been out of the design
industry for some time. I set out to do
my best to create an eye-catching cover for a teen model magazine, that I
called Teen Models.
What did you set out to achieve?
I wanted to create a front cover that would be eye-catching and that
would create an impact on the bookstall to generate sales of the publication.
It was important not to just think of fonts and text size that anything
would do. I have been on several desk
top publishing courses (DTP) whilst working in communications where part of my
job was to design newsletters and magazines.
In the 1980s and 90s especially it was considered correct to have
headings and sub-heading in a San-Serif font, ie, letters without curly bits
such at Arial or Comic Sans, as this made the headings bold and attention
grabbing. Body or paragraph text would
be written in a Serif text, i.e. with the curly bits on the letters, such as
Times New Roman, to make it easier for the eye to follow the lines of
text. These days it seems like anything
goes as per the magazine illustration below.
If you look at the fonts used you can see that the main heading
'COSMOPOLITAN' is all in block capitals and is a Sans Serif font. Most of the other sub-headings are in Sans
Serif but the black tilted sub-heading is in a Serif font, quite an ornate one
from the design of the letter 'F' at the beginning of the first word.
My first task was to find that special image that would appeal to the
teenage model demographic profile, so I searched through the pictures that I
had taken of Fartuun. The one that I
thought would be most appealing was the one below. Fartuun looked happy, relaxed and was smiling
naturally. There was space at the top of
the image for the magazine title and around the sides for other information
regarding inside articles.
I
removed the grey background so that I could add a new, more colour co-ordinated
background and relevant text items. I
felt that a bright graduated background would be best so added a new layer to
the image and made it graduated from white to yellow, as seen here. It turned
out bright and cheerful and complimented Fartuun's dress, which made a good
balance to the whole image.
Then
I combined the two images into one TIFF file to see the effect but keep the
layers separate whilst I worked on with my other ideas.
I
liked the result especially at the lighter area of white came behind the girl's
dark head and really emphasised it. I
inserted the title of the magazine 'Teen Models' using the Arial font size 72
as this was the largest available in the palette. I enhanced it using the Layer Styles option
adding a dropped shadow, inner shadow, outer glow, bevel and emboss and colour
overlay. Then I changed it to the Marker
Felt font as I felt it had more impact.
Once I had the text looking the way I wanted it, I made it fit the width
of the page by highlighting it and using the keyboard keys Command/Shift/right
arrow to enlarge it to fit the space available.
I
wanted the model to be larger in the frame and her head in front of the title
banner so I used the Transform tool to make her larger and re-ordered the
Layers so that her layer was in front of the Title banner layer.
As
the model's hands had moved outside the cover area I had to resize the image to
fit inside the width of the page. I
opened the Edit/Transform command T) and, holding down the Shift key to keep it
in proportion, resized the model to show both her hands completely. I also made her a bit taller by using the
centre handle bar in the Transform box to pull the image down and did not hold
the Shift key I was able to resize her but not keep the proportion.
I
had to decide which headings and subheadings would be shown to illustrate the
main features in this magazine edition.
I chose to use the Cosmopolitan magazine front cover as an example, see next
page, and liked the red circle sticker to emphasise a particular feature so set
about constructing something similar for my publication.
I
had to estimate the size of the circle so assumed it to be approximately 4
inches in diameter. I used the
elliptical marque tool, holding down the Shift key to keep it circular, and
drew out the size I wanted and filled it with bright red colour. I made another slightly larger circle, filled
it with orange colour and placed it behind the red layer. Below you can see the red circle layer,
orange rim and white text layers. I
linked the two coloured layers so they stayed together when I repositioned
them. I added white text in an Arial
font as it stood out well against the red background. This time I used sentence case rather than
all capitals as I thought it looked better.
I
decided to copy the way the text was laid out so made a further layer of green
text for emphasise then a separate layer of white text to go at the bottom of
the circle. I added the final pieces of
text, following the colour ideas of the example magazine but substituted words
that I thought were more appropriate to a teen model magazine.
I
saved the image as a TIFF file in case I needed to make any changes then
flattened it and saved it as a JPEG file to make it smaller. I cropped it in closer and removed the white
background by using the magic eraser tool.
Finally I dragged it into the main image as layer and positioned it to
the lower right bottom area of the image.
I
added further sub-headings to the image which I felt was appropriate for the
publication and positioned them on the left hand side to balance up the whole
page.
I
felt the whole image needed more impact so added a banner across the centre of
the page using a bright red colour and a Serif font. I adjusted the size, as described earlier, to
fit the area and used Transform to tilt it.
The final items
the image needed were the date of the publication and a bar code so I added the
date under the main title heading and a bar code/number in a black Sans Serif
font, in the bottom right hand area in front of a white box.
Here's
the finished image.
To
what extent do you feel you have succeeded?
I've really enjoyed this assignment as I was
involved with newsletter and magazine design when I was in full-time
employment. I was a bit stuck for a
subject but remembered my previous work and some of the pictures I had taken of
Fartuun. The fact that she wanted to
break into modelling and would use my pictures as part of her 'Photo Book' gave
me the idea of a teen models' magazine.
I used internet research on various magazine
titles to see what was the modern style and based my ideas on the types of
covers that I found. I think the cover
has impact and would stand out amongst all the other magazines of its type on a
book stall. I also think that it would
attract the target audience with the subjects I used in the sub-headings and
the way I designed them.
I'm
really pleased with the finished result as I feel that I haven't lost my
touch. In the middle of working through
this assignment I bought a new Apple iMac computer so had to reacquaint myself
of all the different systems involved.
This proved difficult to start with but as I worked through the
assignment I remembered more techniques and how to achieve them.
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