Front cover construction:

I decided to use Photoshop for creating my magazine front cover as I knew it would give me the best opportunities and give me the best outcome.

After creating my new page I put guide lines along all four edges, 1cm from the edge, this was to keep all my text in line and give a professional look to my magazine as after analyzing many magazines I noted the text is never at the very edge of the front cover.

I picked the house font of Arial Narrow, and then added the details of issue number date and price, I decided to use a small font on these pieces of text as I believe they are less significant than the rest of the context, also I wanted to make the price a less evident factor of the front cover as sometimes price can be off putting.

I then searched for a font for my masthead, I came across the font 'old press' on www.dafont.com and downloaded that as I thought it fit the 'rough and ready' look I was hoping for. I then selected size, colour and positioning of the mast head- this was very important as I needed to ensure my masthead would both stand out from others on a magazine shelf and appeal to my target audience.

I decided I wanted all my sell lines on the left hand side of my magazine after experimentation and product analysis; it is a fact that British read left to right and so by positioning the sell lines on the left it draws the eye in the correct way and not only does it make the magazine flow better but it also gives it ore of the professional look which I am aspiring to.

I thought it was athletically pleasing to use a shape/spacer to break up the sell lines, by doing so it makes it more evident to the reader there is multiple articles and thus they will feel like they are getting more for their money and this is something which will be important to them. I chose a simple slim rectangle shape for my spacer as I didn't want something to complex to take the 'lime light' off the main context of the front over. I used the colour selecting tool to select the colour of the masthead to use on the boxes, bu having a consistent house style the magazine will be instantly made look more professional.

I wanted to use the same font, arial narrow, through-out my magazine but my keeping it all the same size and boldness level it looked a bit plain and boring so I decided to experiment with this factor; I decided to use bold, italic, bold italic, regular, underline, different font sizes etc to give the cover a certain extent of depth and realism.