My front cover

This is the image I eventually decided to use on my front cover. I chose it because I liked the pose and thought that it would be good to juxtapose this image with my article name 'This Charming Fan' as it shows her swearing which most people would not consider charming! I thought the image would look good on the front cover as the subject is maintaining eye contact, which draws the reader in and encourages look at the magazine. I thought that the brick wall background looked realistic and could have been from a real magazine photo shoot, so I decided not to cut out the picture and out it in another background. Also, I did this for my student magazine and it did not look very professional. I also like d this picture as the viewer can clearly see the 'Morrissey' logo on her T-shirt, which is an important part of the article.

I then edited the picture to make it look more professional and glossy. Firstly, I used the spot healing brush to get rid of nay skin imperfections. I did this to give the photo a more air-brushed effect, as seen on most magazine covers.

I then used the blur tool and selected Gaussian blur.

From their I clicked the fx button at the bottom of the layers column and clicked on overlay, before adjusting the opacity. This made the picture brighter and gave it a glossier finish. The finished photo can be seen on the left.

I then added text to my magazine. I used three different fonts on front cover, all downloaded form Dafont.com. I started out with my arcticle name 'This Charming Fan', which is a pun on the famous The Smiths song This Charming Man. I used that particular pun as the article is about a musician who is big fan or Morrissey (one time frontman of The Smiths.) I then put on the artist's name and a quote, a convention I've seen throughout my research. I then added another article at the top of the page and a list of other bands at the bottom of the page, again common conventions seen used in most music magazines. I added drop shadow to all of the text, as it made it look more professional and it makes it stand out more.

To finish off my front cover I added the magazine name 'Fusion' in the top left hand corner, as that is where the most important information should be situated, as it is the area are we automatically look at first. I also added a barcode and a price and date to make the magazine look more authentic. This finished front cover can be seen below.