5.2 Front Cover Part 2

Hi everyone, in part two of our Front Cover lesson here we're actually going to design one of the covers that I previewed in the other lesson. So let's go ahead and get started. Now one of the great things about these magazine covers is that they have such high impact but really, they are not that hard to design and actually it can all be done very quickly because it's really just a matter of mixing one image with text placement on it. So let's get started. Here we have a blank cover ready to go. This is in the same template as everything else that we've been designing so far. So we're just going to add this front cover. The first thing is to drop in an image. So the cover we're going to design is this one. With this gentleman on the cover, it's such a great image. And really I can not emphasize enough how important the image is in your magazine cover designs. So we're just going to move this up slightly, we have a lot more room up front here up top here, so we're going to fit that like so, and then let's make sure that that is on the photo layer so everything else will be on the text layer. All right so one of the great tips that I have for you is to make sure that you use the colors effectively. So we already have orange in our color palette but if you didn't you can go ahead and grab that eyedropper tool select that orange, and go ahead and save that into your color swatches palette. So the next step is to re-create that logo. Now I'm just gonna type this out with text, but if you had a logo, you can drop that in the same way that you dropped in your image. So this is our Futura font here. And go. And this is not capitalized. We're gonna have urban as a white. So I'm gonna drop this over here so we can actually see what we're doing and urban is a smaller font here. Okay, we'll see how that works and then the word magazine And this is a large, large word here that fits between our margin lines. Okay, and we're gonna make this bold and give it a lot more weight here. Okay, and then I'm gonna make sure that this is on our text layer. Perfect. And then this little bit right here is white. Okay, now the nice thing is, once you have this all laid out, you can just reuse this format in every issue. I actually just open up the last issue and work from there, but you can definitely copy and paste anything over that you want as well. It's up to you and your workflow on that. So we have an issue number, and then we have a month, and a year. Again we're gonna make this a lot smaller. Go back to our Futura, back to white, and we are not going to all caps that. And this is gonna go right over here and line up on the right of our issue here. And I'm actually gonna make that a hair smaller. Perfect. Okay, and depending on your image background and everything that's going on here, these colors of course can change accordingly. And in fact, I think I'm going to use a lighter orange. That's better. Okay, now, the final step is to place our headlines. So, the tip that I have for you when you're looking at placing your text, is take a look at this image and see what space you have. You have a little space here, you have a lot of space here, and you have a lot of space here. In essence, you could put text on top of him that's okay, that's just a design trace to you, but if you have all of this negative space around him, why cover up his great action when you can use the negative space. So we're gonna do that. We're gonna create a really big headline here. And shrink this text down slightly. And I'm going to use a different font here. Give this a little more space. And then we're going to put big headline another line. And then set that to auto and then we're gonna make the word really bigger. The thing, when you're working with headlines, especially on a magazine cover, is hierarchy. Varying the sizes of your text and your headlines is key. This right here is our main feature, it's going to be the largest text on the page aside from this up here, so it's really important that you keep your headline hierarchy as such. That way, the viewer can read what's most important and go from there. So this is our biggest headline, what we have down here is going to be a little bit smaller. Okay, so then we're going to create boxes for our secondary information here. And these are black boxes with white text. So, this one, and then we're gonna create more. And we're gonna make this text a lot smaller and white. And then again make sure that it's on the text layer so it shows up above everything. And then we're just going to write a line that in the box. And I'm going to zoom in here just to get the sizing a little better. We're gonna to make it smaller. And give it a little bit more space on the left than the right. Okay, and from there we are going to duplicate this. So I'm hitting shift to select both, alt shift to create a duplicate and another duplicate. Now the difference is is that that this one is going to be a little bit longer. It's still going to align on the right but this one's now gonna say information. And then we're gonna ride the line again with the N. And then this one's going to to say inside. And then of course whatever you need to put here for your content will work, this is just an example. All right. So that fit nicely there. And let me zoom in here, and make sure that information has a little bit more cushion. Okay, all right, so then that is our really big headlines. So the only other space is over here between his feet. We can put another headlines, so I'm gonna take a text box and another headline, and this again is going to be a white text, much smaller headline. It's not gonna be the same size as our big one because, again, we want to keep that hierarchy. Okay, and then add the word big there. Okay, and then same font though, as our original headline. Okay, and then, whenever you have all caps, its a good idea to put some spacing in between your letters just so its easier to read. And then I'm going to make the word, another, just slightly larger than everything else. And then we can close this gap slightly. All right, now, you can leave it like this, that's fine. You can read that. But, just to give it a pop of color because we have a lot going on here with a lot of gray, I am going to create a box effect here, and we're going to use that nice orange color without a stroke on the box, 100%, and then we're going to push that behind our text box, just to give a punch of color behind this headline. Okay, and there you have it! A very quick and easy magazine cover, but again, what makes this work is the use of colors and that dramatic image that's gonna draw the reader wanting to read more.