Johnny Depp Makes an Appearance on My Magazine?!?

A few days ago, we were arranged into groups and able to receive feedback on our projects thus far. It was really nice hearing all of the positive feedback on my magazine concepts and current visuals. So, this is what I have so far *drum roll*: 

Ta da! With my experience of using Adobe Illustrator, I was able to upload my sketch of my logo to the program and traced it accordingly. Then, I colored I alternated between black and white within the asterisk, which gives it a three-dimensional quality to it, and colored the ring around the asterisk blue as well as placed a blue dot in the middle of it, in keeping with my magazine’s signature color and giving it a pop of color. For my font, I simply utilized Times New Roman that consists of the iconic blue color fill with a black outline to make the masthead stand out. In actuality, now that I am looking at it, I feel as though the masthead may need to be lowered a bit so that it grabs a little more attention (I will probably experiment with that later as I continuously work on my cover as a whole).

For my cover model, I decided to use Johnny Depp. You may be thinking, “She cannot do that! Why would she do that? How could she even do that?!” Well, based on the article, “The year in magazine covers: These were the most talked-about images of 2014,” I noticed that all of the most talked-about images had to do with a celebrity, from Kim Kardashian to Laverne Cox and Beyoncé to Oprah. Therefore, I felt that if I were to be creating a magazine that I wanted to be successful, I would have a celebrity as my cover model. Of course, however, I do not have the ability to arrange a photo shoot with a famous celebrity (even though that would be really cool and convenient), so I implemented the next best strategy: mixing fame with art. Fortunately, in my weekly art class, I was already drawing and coloring a picture of Johnny Depp and I thought that this project would be the greatest way to use my art skills in order to work around my situation. Even more so, when I figured that I could use my drawing, a title sparked in my mind, some sort of headline along the lines – Johnny Depp: The Unacclaimed Man of Many Faces. My idea was reinforced when I saw some Time magazine covers in my house, in which one was a painting of Angela Merkel and another was a photograph of Adele.

I took pictures of these Time magazine covers, but here are links to the images:

Time magazine’s Angela Merkel cover (left): http://www.columbian.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Time-Person-of-the-Year.JPE.jpg

Time magazine’s Adele cover (right): http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/56780a4f160000b300eb9528.jpeg?cache=yqlye5vwcg

Similar to these editions, I am utilizing a well-known celebrity, like Adele (and in my case, Johnny Depp), in an artsy format, like what was done with the portrait of Angela Merkel (except I am using colored pencils as my medium). Also, according to “55 Best Tips for a Successful Magazine Cover,” eye contact with the readers is vital in that the cover model should be looking straight into the camera, in which this idea correlates with all of the magazine covers I have posted and with my own cover model. Clearly, I am still not done with my artwork, but I plan to finish it soon so that I can use for my cover.

Moreover, when I showed my group my magazine, I had also compared it to the National Geographic and Time magazine I had uploaded on my first blog post.

My magazine can be seen in the center

Source for the National Geographic magazine (seen to the left of my magazine): http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/covers/img/ngm-1985-jun-714.jpg

Source for the Time magazine (seen to the right of my magazine):

http://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/images/stories/2010/04/time-100401.png

When deciding a thickness for my blue border, I subconsciously made it a little thinner than the National Geographic magazine’s yellow border, but a little thicker than the Time magazine’s red border, creating a sort of happy medium aesthetically to my eyes. As I was putting my cover together, I noticed that both the National Geographic and Time magazine have a thin white border between their exterior color border and their cover image. As a result, I thought that I should follow in those foot steps, and I feel that this addition enhances the cover as a whole and acts as mediator between the color border and cover image, in that it makes the cover image pop out without taking away from the color border.

When I was done explaining what I have so far with my magazine, my peers questioned what I had in mind for my two-page spread, in which my response was that I had not come up with a two-page spread yet. I do not plan to expand on the cover story, which in my case would have been about Johnny Depp, because, typically, the full story on the cover image is found in the center of the interior of the magazine. In moving forward, I plan to work on creating the table of contents and see if I can find a source of inspiration for my two-page spread.

Work Cited

"The Year in Magazine Covers: These Were the Most Talked-about Images of 2014." Saloncom RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2016. < http://www.salon.com/2014/12/28/the_year_in_magazine_covers_these_were_the_most_talked_about_images_of_2014/>.

"55 Best Tips for a Successful Magazine Cover." Magazine Designing. N.p., 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 18 Mar. 2016. < http://www.magazinedesigning.com/55-best-tips-for-a-sucessful-magazine-cover/>.