As part of one of the workshops, we did we made a magazine front cover using one of the images we had shot as part of our gender project and I chose one from my series of masculine Katy. Opening it up in Photoshop I began by duplicating my background layer and adding a curves layer to make the image pop and add contrast. By adding an exposure layer and increasing the offset and gamma correction slightly I was able to keep the image looking slightly washed out to be in keeping with Terry Richardson’s raw looking style, however I wanted to keep Katy’s face the same so I added a layer mask and painted out her face. I inverted the mask by using the shortcut ‘command i’. The magazine I chose to use was ID magazine and after searching on the internet I could match up the font they use with a font that was similar in photoshop using the text tool.
The skin tone was slightly too tanned for my liking so I added a hue/saturation layer and lowered the saturation slightly. By using the liquify tool and adding another layer I was able to bring in Katy’s arms slightly to keep it in keeping with the ‘fashion look’ -although she didn’t really need it!
Choosing a title for the cover, I wanted it to be in keeping with gender theme and challenging gender norms so I picked Beyonce’s song title, ‘who run the world?’ And it usually says ‘girls’ after it but I left it open to interpretation. Looking at replica’s of ID magazine I wanted to keep it authentic by adding a barcode, so I searched online for one that had a blank background which I could drag onto the desktop of my computer and straight into my image in photoshop as another layer and named in ‘barcode’ so I knew which layer it was. Lastly I added some finishing touches such as the date, price, cover star and photographer with the text tool and picked a font similar to that on the original ID magazines. I’m really happy with the end result and I planned to do another front cover as part of a two part series for my final body of work. Everything about this image worked well for me and stayed in keeping with the theme of challenging gender norms. The only thing I would take on to the next cover is to try photo-manipulation as the front cover to challenge myself and extend my skills using photoshop.
Using the same process as the Katy cover in terms of the text boxes and barcode. The changes and developments I made with this cover were to add in captions of what Drag Queen Dave had said in his interview. I felt this worked really well as it created intrigue. By choosing strong expressions of both Ffion and Drag Queen Dave it makes the cover eye-catching and I was able to manipulate them into one image by opening up both images in photoshop and using the move tool, dragging one on top of the other and turning the opacity down on one. This worked really well because of where the faces were on the image. The caption positioning related to each image, with Ffion being on the right hand side and Dave on the left. By using the colour picker I was able to match the font colour to that of Ffion’s shirt which I felt made it look great from a design point of view.
By completing these designs in photoshop it has opened up my creativity and passion for photography and design work. I thoroughly enjoyed the process.
If I had more time on this project I would love to develop a series of magazine covers using images from each shoot with captions from the model's interviews to dig deeper into gender norms. This is a project I will undergo in my own time.
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