Continued Stages of Construction - Front cover

Now I am just continuing the development of my front cover. 

When researching into how my front cover would look and what typography and colours I will be using for my cover lines, I noticed that most R&B magazines use maximum of 3 to 4 different fonts and only 3 different colours, when coming to their cover line designs. As seen through these two R&B front covers the first one only uses 2 different font and 2 colours. The second one also uses only 2 colours and 2 different fonts. However, they play around with sizes to emphasises the importance of each word and to grab the audience attention, so that it is not to plain. Therefore this is a key convention in an R&B magazine that I will have to follow while creating my cover line designs. I will not be using more than 3 different fonts and colours and will keep differently play around with the sizes to emphasises each word. I will also be adding a skyline as some on the R&B magazines use this, as seen in the first example they have used it, but in the second they haven't.Therefore this depends on the magazine and what they want to do for each issue. In the next screen shot I will be showing how I have developed my magazine further by starting to add the cover lines. 

Th first feature that I added to my front cover next is the skyline. 'R&B goes soft, John Legend, NE-YO and Lloyd try to get it up' I have explained why I have chosen this specific skyline in my previous planning post and for all my other cover lines, therefore I won't be going to that again. However, I will be explaining why I have chosen this design, typography and colours. As through my planning I decided on making my colour scheme black,white and burgundy because I found out my target audience preferred dark colours when I created my survey. Also the key convention is not to make the magazine too busy and stick to maximum of three colours. First I decided to swap over between black and burgundy because white wouldn't stand out a lot against my background and as I mentioned previously I wanted the main cover line to be the only white text so it really emphasises it's importance. Between each section I change colours, this shows the audience its a new start and adds a nice theme and design to the front cover. I have also seen many different R&B magazines do this. For example, 'R&B GOES SOFT' black then 'JOHN LEDGEND' burgundy because its a name separated from the previous text, then 'NE-YO' another name therefore different from the previous next and I have repeated this pattern. It also makes the text more attractive and better than plain and same colour throughout. The font I used is 'Franklin Gothic Heavy' this is because it is a simple, easy to read and bold font. As R&B magazine normally have bold text as this relates to the type of music which isn't soft. 

I have added a screen shot of how the front cover looks with the measurements, without and a close up of what I have added. For my two cover lines that I have added I first made the top part a different font and bigger size because I really wanted to emphasises the importance. However after analysing it properly I decided to change it because I felt it wasn't very professional and I didn't want to go over using 3 fonts. So for that reason I decided of thinking of different ways I can make the main mart of the cover line to really stand out and shoes the audience that this is the more important. After I did my further research I came up with giving it a kind of highlight. So I kept the font the same which is 'Franklin Gothic Heavy', but I made the size a little bigger. The colour is not white with highlighted burgundy this doesn't take away the attention of the main cover as it is way bigger, but still shows it is an important feature. I did this through using the 'T' tool to add a text box and then coloured the box it with the effects that InDesign provides me with. For the rest of the text, I repeated the same technique as the skyline as I didn't want the cover to look too busy. I the did the same technique and design for the next cover line. However I made the names if the artist a little bigger but not bigger than the highlighted part. This is because I want their names to stand out as their fans and my target audience will approach it as they are famous R&B artist. I also added kerning to the word 'Future' this is because I want it to be read carefully and future is represented as time and the space indicates time and long distance.

In these screen shots I am showing what I have developed in my front cover. Now I have added more cover lines. First I have added a little bit more to the second one. I have added a plus sign (+) this so the audience are able to tell that the second and third cover line are linked together. It also adds the tension as it shows there is still more. For the name of the artist I made the size bigger so it stands out and grabs the attention of R&B audience. I made this burgundy because it links back to the second one, the names of the artist are in burgundy and description is in black. So I did not want to confuse my audience therefore I kept it the same. After I added the short description I finished it off my adding ellipsis this creates a feeling of curiousness, which will makes the audience want to buy the magazine in order to find out what this cover line is all about and what story behind it is. The bottom cover line follows the same pattern, design and font. However, for the words who, best and ever I made them slightly bigger to show they are important, but for the word R&B I changed the font into 'Impact' this is much more bolder and I made the size bigger. This is because its the main feature in this cover line and I want it to stand out. It also links to the genre of the magazine, which is important. Right at the end I added 'You decided' with a white stroke because I want the audience to see it and show them they can interact with the magazine and give their thoughts. But I wanted to make it stand out in a different way, which still links to the theme. Also the title of the cover line 'Your turn' emphasises this as again. The use of question also makes them interact with the magazine as this makes them think. I made the letters capital for all the coverlines because this makes them look bolder and easier to read. It also links to R&B magazine I have see most of R&B magazines use capital letters for all their cover lines.