Cover Page Mockup 4

I noticed that my most recent changes to my magazine cover still did not look the best. There were many aspects that I could change that would make the cover page look more appealing to my audience.

First, I removed the filter that was previously applied to the picture as I noticed it gave the picture a haze and unclean look. In doing this, the colors in the picture were brought out and the appearance of the cover page as significantly improved. Next, I shortened the text of the article descriptions as I felt they were too long for the cover page. I also changed the arrangement of this text, in which I switched the "Stone Mountain, GA" and "Hiking the Smokies" to opposite sides. I thought this fit the layout better as "Hiking the Smokies" will be my double page spread article, so should be on a side of the cover by itself instead of with another article description above it.

A major change I made in this mockup was the coloring and fonts of the text. For the title, I changed the letters to all be lowercase instead of uppercase as it seemed to flow better with the background and theme. I changed the font of the masthead to a more subtle style to illustrate the type of magazine the title depict. Along with this, I changed the font of the bonus heading at the bottom. In addition, I also changed the positioning of the strapline. In the previous revision to the magazine cover, I noticed that there was a large amount of white space that I couldn't really do anything with as it was the main center of the photograph. To fix this, I increased the kerning of the letters and played around with the leading as well as the positioning of the text. This way, the strapline has a neater look while also eliminating large areas of white space that try to be avoided. The last thing I did to revise the magazine cover was change the coloring of the type. Looking at my previous mockup, I thought the color blended too similarly with the background picture. It was hard to read the heading in this color as it was a color similar to those in the picture. I changed the colors of the text to a purplish-grey, making sure it still fit in with the color scheme throughout the magazine. I also made the title a slightly darker version of the color.

After making these small changed, my magazine cover is looking much better. It looks more simplistic and appealing to the audience I want it to attract.

LEFT- Updated cover mockup (4) RIGHT- Cover page mockup 3