Decision Process - Magazine

By Huseyin Tozanoglu

This is my final product for my ancillary task of creating a magazine front cover to go with my teaser trailer. In this slide, I will show you the steps I took and decisions I made whilst using the Photoshop software, upon reaching this final product.

I began by selecting the appropriate size and scale for my magazine front cover. I ultimately went for 20 cm width x 30 cm height.

I then found an image of a light brown brick wall from the internet and copied and pasted it onto Photoshop, were I scaled it to fit onto the canvas size. I chose this light brown brick wall as it gives off an urban image, that is portrayed in my teaser trailer.

After, I started creating a masthead for my magazine front cover. I started off by typing the words ‘FILM’ in a white, Gill Sans Ultra Bold font style. The masthead size was meant to be 72pt, but, when I chose 72pt I realized that, that size font will be too small on a page this big. So, I made the font bigger.

I later decided that the white font, looked too bland and did not look eye catching enough, so I added a black color over lay. I think the black makes the masthead stand out and gives it a strong appeal.

I then added a bullet hole effect onto the masthead, so that the magazine will be more intact with the crime film genre.

As I wanted my masthead to be similar to the ‘TOTAL FILM’ masthead, I was not pleased with the masthead just staying as, ‘FILM’, so I decided to call my magazine ‘PIXEL FILM’. I added the word ‘PIXEL’ into the masthead, by placing it in the ‘F’ of the word film; much like ‘TOTAL’ being placed in the word ‘FILM’ in the Total Film masthead. I used the same font as the masthead; Gill Sans Ultra Bold, however, I chose to add some effects to the word ‘Pixel’ and added the bevel and emboss and satin effects.

I then added a strap line to the very top of the magazine cover. The strap line reads ‘THE NUMBER ONE CRIME FILM OF THE YEAR’. The font I used for the strap line was Impact and the color was Red. I decided to add this strap line so that my magazine will have an extra selling point. I then added an effect to my strap line to make it more appealing, the effect that I added was, drop shadow. I chose drop shadow, as it made the red color of the strap line more vibrant.

The next stage was to add the main cover line. My main cover line is the name of my film; Dog Republic. It sits in the middle of the page and is as wide as the masthead. The main cover lines font is different to the masthead and the strap line, it is Rockwell Extra Bold. I chose this font as this was the font I used in my teaser trailer. I also added effects to the main cover line, the effects I added were; Drop Shadow and Outer Glow. I chose outer glow as it made the main cover line stand out, as the main cover line should always stand out on the page.

I then added the other cover lines. For the cover lines I used a mixture of font; Impact and Lucida Grande, and a variety of colors; Red, Turquoise and White. For the cover lines I also used effects; the effects I used for the cover lines were Drop Shadow. The drop shadow made the cover lines stand out and more appealing. For the cover lines that run down the middle of the page, I decided to use a bigger font apposed to the cover lines that run down the sides of the page; this was something I spotted during my research from magazines such as Empire and Total film.

I went on to add my main images of the 2 main characters in the trailer. I wanted to use the pictures to portray what type of film it will be; so I used the gun prop, to show the crime and the image of one character smiling, to portray the light hearted appeal of the film. I placed both images under the main cover line and cover lines, but obscuring the masthead slightly. This is a technique I spotted frequently in other film magazines such as Total Film and Empire. The actors clothes color was dark colours such as black and dark grey; this was so that it can blend in with the magazine and also to make the images stand out on the light background.

I then added the magazines website and date of issue onto the magazine cover. The color of the website and issue date is turquoise and the font is Lucida Grande. They both sit under the masthead, on top of the main images, on the left and right corners of the masthead. I again used effects on the font and the effects I used for the date and website were; Drop shadow.