My Magazine Front Page Swede

Here is my version of a Billboard Magazine Front Cover featuring Beyonce:

Here is the original Billboard Magazine Front Cover featuring Beyonce:

Reflection

InDesign has given me a clear understanding of all the different features needed for me to include in my magazine in order for my front cover to be visually appealing towards a certain audience. The software, InDesign, helped me successfully replicate the original Billboard Magazine front cover. Since it was my first time working with InDesign, I was able to discover multiple ways of editing with different components and it assisted me massively whilst identifying the key conventions of the magazine front cover in order to make my copy of the Magazine cover look identical to the original.

Compare & Contrast

With the Magazine front cover that I chose, InDesign allowed me to be very specific when attempting to replicate it because it held a wide variety of different fonts, texts and styling options which were very helpful when adding in the minor details like the Cover Lines. I struggled a lot with re-creating the Masthead as it meant I needed to add in the colours within the spaces of the letters, however with the use of the eclipse shaping tool and the colour pipette I was able to sufficiently fill in the gaps with the correct shaping and colours. To make sure there were no small gaps around the edges in the letters, I made sure to send the shapes to the back of the Masthead so that the text was in front and all potential gaps would be filled. Because I had so many separate things on my page, it meant that if I moved one then everything would be out of place so I found it easier to group them all together so that if it moved, it would move together as one. Unfortunately the Main Cover Star Image was not the right size for it to be in the correct positioning, it was too zoomed in so it appears bigger. However, I tried my best to make it work but it was impossible to get it exactly the same. Once I got it imported and placed in the right position, I locked it so that it wouldn’t move if I was to jiggle around words. I found this very effective and useful when designing.

Strengths

I was able to match the majority of the different fonts used throughout the front cover, I’d have the original Billboard front cover open next to my InDesign document and repeatedly keep comparing the fonts until I was certain that I had found the closest match. The InDesign software had a vast range of font types and so it made it harder to find the right one because there were so many, however it enabled you to filter in whether it was a Serif or Sans-Serif font which did narrow down the options. It was important to make sure I had found a font close to the original one used as it would of looked odd and not been a fair representation of the original.
I was able to add in the small unreadable details like the Price, Website Link and Date. For the things I couldn’t read on the original front cover, even if I zoomed in, I used a helpful tool called Placeholder Text which would fill in a text box with random latin/greek. This gave me a clear idea of what it would look like on the magazine and made it more similar to the original.
I made use of the text tools, for example with the “Beyonce” along the bottom. I tried to get the word touching like the original without making the letters look too narrow and with some of the Cover Lines, some of the spacing between them were quite compacted and I feel like I achieved the correct spacing. I also made my Cover Lines align with the beginning of the Masthead so that it looked neat and professional.

Weaknesses

Next time, I would look deeper into finding a font which is more identical to the original Masthead. The original one is rounder, closer together, stretched and bigger whereas the one I used is bolder, shorter and more spaced out. It is more noticeable on the “B” and “i”. The “B” is wider on the original and the boldness isn’t as thick as mine, the “i” has a different dot and is meant to be shorter than the “B”. Additionally, the placing of the Masthead isn’t exactly correct as I could of placed it closer down to her eyebrows. However as I was only copying it, it was never going to be exact and perfect.
To improve on my version of the magazine cover, I will use a colour pipette to make sure I have used the same shade and colour when making the coloured circles for in between the holes of the letters as I feel as the green I used in the “d” is much darker than the original.
Since the Main Cover Star Image isn’t the same sizing as the original, it made it difficult to adjust the wording accordingly. For example, as a way of making the front cover better I could move the “Beyonce” down by her hand as I feel like it is too close to her chin but due to the image proportion majority of her hand is cut out, making this a lot harder to achieve.

Focus Forward

After exploring the different aspects of InDesign, I feel more confident with the software and how everything works together to produce a high level outcome (i.e. a Magazine). It has helped me understand and realise what special tools and features I will need to use when creating my own Magazine in order for it to come out successful. Nevertheless, next time I would challenge myself a little more and choose a Magazine front cover that not only would I not tend to pick but something that has more key conventions of a magazine like Pugs, Plugs and A barcode so that I can identify what tools I’d need to use in order to represent them onto a front cover accurately.