Photoshop: Magazine Cover

You will be using PhotoShop to create a realistic magazine cover. Your magazine can be an existing publication (People, Newsweek, etc.) or a made-up magazine (Kelseyville, Knights, Lake Sports, etc.) -- but keep them school appropriate.

I recommend beginning with a Google search for "magazine cover" and then clicking "Images" and then specifying "Large". (Here's an example.)  You can use a large image as a layout guide to try and match your title font, see where to place page components (UPC symbol, pricing, date, etc.), or to help you place images.  You can search for specialized fonts or look through a listing of fonts (here are some and some more and even more) to match from.  You can also use the image to help you select the proper colors (simply use the "eye dropper" tool).

Keep notes as you locate images, fonts, etc. that you plan to use in your projects.  When you post your final project to your blog, list where you got your sources.

Project Specifics:

• Width: 8.375 Inches
• Height: 10.875 Inches
• Resolution: 300 DPI

Here's the example I made in class:

Notice the UPC symbol and the address label.  Sometimes
the small details help the most.

Some examples of student magazine covers have included:

I recommend saving the actual PSD file for this project so you can easily create another magazine cover in the future as a gift, a joke, a report cover, etc. and then saving it as a JPEG so you can put it on your portfolio blog.

Here are some professional examples of starter photographs and the Cosmo magazine covers they produced.  Once again, notice the photo editing:

There are also some easy-to-use magazine cover creators available on the net if you would like to play with them, but do understand that you will not be able to use them as your Photoshop project:

• MagMyPic.com
• OnCoverPage.com
• FakeMagazineCover