Constructing my front cover

I started off using a blue gradient as my background colour because blue is a popular colour to use on the cover of a pop music magazine. I used the gradient tool and selected a blue and white gradient and got the style as shown above.

I then on a separate layer added my original masthead and scaled it to size which was around an eighth of the page, which follow the conventions set by the majority of music magazines.

Then on separate layers I added the text and a logo for the V festival. This is shown above.

I then decide to add a separator between "Jess Barber" and the story below. I did this by using the rectangular selection tool in Photoshop and then the fill tool and filled it with white.

I then  decided to change the blue gradient background for the blue sky background on the main image as shown above. I thought this would be more effective and look better.

I then decide to follow the conventions set by Billboard magazine and decided to bring the top of the model used and bring it infant of the masthead, as shown above.

I decide to change the masthead to a plain white title because it was simpler and looked better as it worked well with the rest of the white on my cover. I made this masthead using the text tool on Photoshop and then I added the black outline using the stroke tool.

I decided to put a red backdrop behind the name of Sam Smith in order to make him stand out like the other artists used on my cover. 

Finally I made a barcode in a separate Photoshop document and copied and pasted it onto a separate layer on my cover.