12 Front Cover

Final Front Cover Design

I've decided to create something that looks slightly abstract and also quite simple. I was inspired to create a collage front cover when browesing the internet for magazine front cover ideas. I saw the idea on the front cover of popshot magazine. Here are a few examples of the sort of idea I had for my magazine front cover. 

  

Popshot magazine are quite popular for being an illustration based magazine. They also use quite a few abstract images in their spreads and front covers. I've decided to lean in this direction for my magazine. Here, I'll show you the process I went through to create my collage front cover for my magazine.

Here, I cut out a few images from magazines, newspapers and such and then placed them in various positions in and scanned them. I would have added more to the collage but I thought I'd start of simple just in case the image didn't come out exactly how I'd visualised it. 

You can see that I also experimented with various background textures. I've also tried to shuffle some of the images around to create something different. After I had scanned the image, I went ahead and opened it up in Illustrator so that I could get on with some further experimenting. Here are a few images of what I tried in Illustrator in order to get some results.

As you can see, I've live traced the image and left it black and white. I wanted the image to look simple but leaving black and white was too plain and boring. So, I continued my experiment by using colours and mixing the collage with my other collage layouts. Here's an example of what I ended up with.

I like the look of the collage but I'm not too happy with how the overall double page turned out. It looks to plain and just placed there rather blended in and professional. I still left it as it is and decided that the next time I look at it, I'll create a more vibrant collage and possibly have the entire image blend in together. Overall, I'm happy with the experiments but I would be a lot happier if it turned out more vibrant.