Preliminary task- front cover of a new college magazine

This is my preliminary task front cover. I decided to produce a front cover for a new college magazine for my own college. I chose a colour scheme of black, purple, red and white and I think that these colours go well together. Also, in the main image, the subject was wearing a purple jumper, so I chose the colour scheme around this. I edited by image using photoshop. I cut out the background, as it had no particular purpose as it was just plain white. I then made adjustments to the image to enhance the colours, and to remove a lot of the orange from the original image. I then applied an effect to make the image look more like a painting. This effect made the image much more striking, and made the eyes stand out much more than in the original image. I used a secondary image of a microphone to go with the boxed text, as it is a feature on recording music. I took this photograph of the microphone during the time of music technology recording days. I took lots more images than I used on my cover, but I selected the best two and used these for the main feature. The main image is of Jamie Turner, this links with the main feature(see red and white box). I also added thick black borders to the main page and the magazine title. I felt this gave a more striking and unique look than a thinner border. I decided to use three separate letters for the main title of my magazine so that I could overlap them and create a more unique title. I chose to colour the M in red as this stands for Mary's in St Mary's College. This is the main letter in the title and so this is different. Also I added the "Magazine" text vertically to add more interest. Also by doing this, I was able to group the full title together. I added text referring to articles of a wide range of topics such as music technology, media coursework, fashion, exams etc. I also included information  of free gifts inside, as this will attract readers. The production of this front cover took a lot more time than I expected, however I am pleased with the results and I think that this would be a successful front cover of a college magazine.