Graphic Design Theory - Project 5

 Hello again, everyone! For project 5, we were tasked with using a national magazine as a template to design our own magazine covers. We had to try our best to mimic the typography, layout, and content, while using our own images and article titles. This was the first project where I had a clear vision of what I wanted to accomplish, and Billboard Magazine had numerous similar references, making it a clear choice for my national magazine. 



I've always loved it when magazines would use their cover model to cover part of their masthead, and I knew I wanted to attempt that myself. It was actually much easier than I anticipated! I selected the image of my friend Nichole, which was taken during a photoshoot we did for our collaboration release for my clothing brand, and then copied the layer but removed the background so that she's overlaid a 2nd time on top of the first image and the "billboard" masthead. Most of the typefaces used on the reference photo are custom, so I had to do some research to find similar families to get as close as possible. I found that Futura PT was almost identical to the font Billboard uses for their masthead, though I did have to adjust the letter spacing to bring them closer together to achieve a close enough look. Acumin Pro Condensed Bold and Acumin Pro Condensed were the closest I could find to the side articles, and I also had to adjust the letter spacing. I chose those subjects because they're big news in the EDM/rave scene right now, and I thought it would be on the cover of a magazine if it were more mainstream. The "Festival Pointers" section was close to the original font, but obviously not the same. I did notice that on the original, "Global Vision" has the same number of letters, so I did the same with "Festival Pointers". Under the original, it says "A Trilingual Takeover", so I wanted to make sure I used some alliteration when I chose my subheader. This is why I went with "Practical Prep, Perfect Party". I didn't know what to change in the 40 under 40 box, so I left it as is because it would also pertain to the rave scene and keep on theme with the rest of my articles. I couldn't find anything remotely close to the font used in that section, so I went with Duralith for the "40 under 40" section and Pathway Gothic for the "21 under 21" section, as I thought they somewhat resembled the original. 

Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this project. I learned how to change typefaces to make them appear similar to other fonts (when they didn't quite look the same originally) and I learned how to overlay a photo over text. Any feedback is welcome, I know I turned this in really early so I wish you all luck with your projects! 

Until next time!

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