I began by creating a black A4 sized layer to use as the background for my magazine.
I then added a red oval to give the back ground of the magazine more dimensional. However, the block of red did not look professional nor appealing so I decided I needed to make the edges of the oval softer. Red also suggests the genre of the magazine; horror.
To make the edges softer I went to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and changed the strength of the blur until I was happy with how the edge of the oval looked. Although I still felt like the background looked flat so decided to add some light to create depth.
In order to add light I went to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects and added a light to the centre of the oval. I chafed the gloss, exposure and ambience until I believed I had achieved what I thought added depth to the background of my magazine and made it more appealing.
I then added the masthead 'Indie Scream' to the top third of the magazine. The font chosen was Ariel Black and each letter was a capital. However, I did elongate the font downwards to make each letter taller but still keeping the width. The reason I chose this font is because we are targeting an intellectual audience, I believe our font helps us do this. The title Indie Scream further suggests the genre this particular magazine focuses on is horror.
Then I added a slanted white rectangle to the upper left corner of the magazine. This would act as a background for the magazine's tagline. I wanted to add a background to ensure the tagline of the magazine was easily visible to the audience. In addition, I believe the more layers used the more professional the magazine would look. This is due to the previous research into magazine's which can be seen on this blog.
I then added the tagline 'Blood, guts, gore and more!' in the Ariel Black font. I kept the font simple and in capitals to ensure I was targeting the correct audience. The colour black was used to incorporate the black background behind the red oval. I believe it is important to ensure the colours of a magazine work well together, yet only have limited colours. The use of limited colours will also help with the branding of the magazine.
After researching other magazines it was clear that the magazine must have a tag line that relates to the title of the magazine. This was done by adding 'The Independent Music Magazine'. This tag line not only explains the title of the magazine but also sticks to the Ariel Black font in capitals, further making sure we are aiming our magazine at an educated audience.
From the research carried out on horror magazines that are already competing it the market showed us that digital media is extremely important. Due to this we ensured our magazine had a website which could be easily accessed by our target audience when out and about.
The issue number '14' was then added at the top right of the magazine. The number 14 shows that although this is not the first Indie Scream magazine, it is still new and possibly still trying to gather a committed audience.
Researching other magazines showed us that the barcode must be on the front of the magazine. We chose to put the barcode in the bottom left.
This is the image chosen to be our main cover image. It is of our horror killer.
It was decided that the title would be on top of the main cover image as this is not an established horror magazine. The main cover image is placed in the centre of the magazine as it is one of the first things we want our target audience to look at. The eyes in the centre of the page allows the image to capture eye contact with the audience and also captures attention.
It was important to have the title of our horror trailer on the cover of the magazine in a way that would catch the attention of the audience as the magazine is meant to be promoting our trailer. However, we wanted to keep our magazine simple due to the fact it is aimed at an educated audience. In order to keep the magazine simple yet capture the target audience I simply changed the font of 'Anonymous' and increased its size slightly. I used the font Nightbird which was found on DaFont.com. To ensure the cover image is one of the first things seen by the audience I kept the strap line 'Anonymous' white.
I found an image of scream queen Christa Campbell on google and opened it in PhotoShop. I then took the oval selection tool and selected the part of the image I wanted to use for the magazine; her face. However, like the red oval background of the magazine I did not want the edges of the oval to be sharp. I went to select > feather and changed the feather radius to 10 pixels. I then dragged the image onto the magazine.
I did the same to this image of a zombie from the walking dead as I did to the image of Christa Campbell.
I then placed both the images at the bottom right of the magazine with strap lines next to each image explaining what the images are symbolic of and why they are on the magazine.
Finally a price was added underneath the barcode.
