1st step - front cover page

I decided which image of my model I would be using for my front cover page which as you can see is the one of my model wearing red. Why I chose this image to be on my front cover is because I thought the shot angel is a mid shot which is one of the conventions of Hip Hop/ R'n'B magazine covers that I have been researching on. Also because the eye level is looking direct and the camera which is effective as it looks more like the 'artist' is engaging with the readers.

I then used photoshop to make a start to creat my front cover page. As the orginal image as an effect of the background being faded from black to pure white (bottom right side going up), I thought this would look really effective as I would not have to play around with the background so much. I also wanted to see how an all plain background would look like. I did this by cropping the models image itself and pasting it on a black page. Why I did this is because I wanted to put both my potential front cover ideas together and see what makes a better background for my front cover. Here is what it looked like:

I asked my teacher Miss Silva and my class mates which one looks better and everyone had said the left one (with the faded background) looks better than the plain one.

From their feedback, I decided to stick with the faded background image.