Construction, Contents Page

The construction of my contents page starts off by referring to my front cover to transfer similar elements into the contents page in order for them to be similar and look like they belong to the same magazine. Here I have used the same background as my front cover and added a black rectangle box in which I will use to type up topics and their page numbers. I then added a drop shadow (as seen when making the front cover) in order to give off a 3D effect.

 I then added a red box going across the top as this colour was also interpreted in the front cover and added a drop shadow (the same as the black box) again to give off that 3D effect and to keep the style constant throughout the page.






I looked back at the front cover I had previously made in order to extract the title and substitute it into my contents page as in many music magazines that I have seen, the title is written in the same style, form and shape and is commonly included on the magazine contents. I did this by creating a duplicate layer of the title of my magazine front cover and dragging it into my contents page. I then positioned it where I thought was best suitable and moved on to the next step.


 
Because my magazine is designed to be published weekly I decided to put 'THIS WEEK' instead of just writing 'contents' as I thought it was too common. I also thought about the audience and if someone was to buy the magazine would they be able to define whether it is weekly or monthly. I did this simply by adding an outer glow to the text and changing its density until I was happy with it.

The text tool was used in order to create the list of artists and story lines that the magazine would consist of. I used font style 'Base 05' to create the subheadings at font size 30 and 'Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold' to list the artists and topics included. The colour scheme of my magazine is BLACK, white, grey and red therefore I used these colours significantly to help the audience establish the different categories.

 As you can see, there has been quite a big transformation from the previous picture to this one. Here I have constructed different sections through the use of the rectangle tool as my first attempt with the line tool failed. I created what I like to call the 'dividers' by simply extracting the red from the front cover, clicked on the icon and horizontally dragged my mouse down and adjusted the length and width of it. I created only one line using the rectangle tool and decided that the easiest and quickest option would be to make a number of duplicate layers to assure that the width of each would be equivalent. I changed the length of some of them which wasn't a problem as not all of the rectangles needed to be of the same length. After eventually placing them where I wanted them to be I used an outer shadow to create a 3D effect and moved on to making 'mini boxes' which was used to put numbers of pages of the main stories in the magazine which would later on be followed by a picture behind it. I used an inner shadow this time to have the shadow drop down from a corner instead of beneath it. This was followed by making another rectangle by using the rectangle tool which was coloured in Grey to separate the first section 'ARTIST INDEX' from the next section which would be called 'FEATURES'. I had to juggle the layers around as I realised that I should have made this layer before making my dividers as it was appearing above everything instead of beneath it.

 
Here I have interpreted the number of my three main stories and also the heading 'FEATURES' and 'PLUS'. I did this simply by typing up the text and positioning it. The subheadings consists of drop shadows in which I have decided will be a design element going throughout my magazine. I done this simply by clicking on the text and selecting drop shadow from the effects tool. After all the text was added into the columns I made sure everything was positioned and the aligned correctly to my satisfaction in which I then moved on to importing my images.

When importing my images into my music magazine I noticed that a few of my pictures was dull and could be edited to make it stand out and look more professional. I did this my opening my images as a new document, then going on image and adjustments which allowed me to change the brightness, contrast and saturation of the image.

As I had edited the picture on a background layer I had to find a way to transfer the image from the document to the construction of my contents page therefore I made a duplicate layer which would allow me to drag the image into my contents page tab. I did this to all three images which are featured on my contents page. After importing all images my contents page was finally completed in which I moved on to making my double page spread.