First draft - Front cover and contents page

After loosing my memory stick soon after completing my first draft of my front cover and contents page I have had to start my production work from scratch completing a draft of both my front cover and contents page also. It had also then came to my attention that the post I had created earlier on in my blog analysing my first draft of my front cover and contents page had been deleted somehow. This post is the same post however just a little postponed. 

Front cover:

Things I am pleased with:

I am pleased with the image on my front cover I think it stands out and is of a very high quality, my front cover follows conventions of music magazines of my genre. I am pleased with the different shapes I have used and the title stands out a lot I think, the black shape that the anchorage text is on instantly brings peoples attention towards the main image. The colour scheme I am very pleased with also it looks very professional and the shapes run as a theme throughout the front cover also which i think follows conventions of house music magazines that I have researched particularly 'Mixmag'
Problems that I have encountered with fireworks and how I have overcome them: 
On fireworks i have struggled to make my masthead a high quality because I have featured images of equaliser's as part of my masthead. Because these were images i have had to print screen it was hard to achieve a high quality. I have overcome this by finding out how to sharpen things on fireworks which enabled me to achieve the quality I wanted
I also found that stretching my main image made the image loose its high quality too, and i have spent a lot of time on taking high quality images. By holding shift down the image does not get pixelated.
I also found it hard creating shapes on fireworks this was a very straight forward technique on any other software's i have used but because fireworks is quite complex it was a challenge doing this. I overcame this by searching on line how to move and create the types of shapes i have used on my front cover.
Improvements I would make to my front cover:
I will possibly look into improving the image for my front cover as having it how it is affects how the masthead appears, i would also like to improve my magazine front cover by adding more cover lines and content to the front cover. Adding a date and a price may make my front cover look more professional.



Contents page:
Things I am pleased with:
I am pleased with my main image for my contents page it represents my artist and what the main focus of the magazine is on. I also like the range of images i have used for different artists as this will attract my audience. I like the colour scheme I have used to as this links in with the pastel colour scheme of my front cover. I have also featured a lot of content in my contents page too which is good on a contents page as it is all about the content and readers having an insight into what is inside the magazine.
Problems that I have encountered with fireworks and how I have overcome them:
I had problems with maintaining my colour scheme because the colours I had previously used for my front cover were colours that i had specifically picked out. So therefore when it came to the production of my contents page i had to look for the colours again which took more time than expected especially as fireworks is very complex. I overcame this by adding the colours i used to my custom colours so therefore it almost saved the colours i was using to save time and of course this has ensured that my house colours run through my magazine production. Another problem that i did encounter was also separating the letters for my title 'contents', because the letters are in the same style as the masthead. I had to create the letters individually because of the style i have separated them into. It was quite tricky working out how to crop each letter and then use the magic wand tool to still create a title that had a good quality. I overcame this problem by simply searching on line how to crop/cut images on fireworks and i was able to do so easily.
Improvements I would make to my contents page:
Although i am happy with the production of my front cover and contents page i would firstly like to improve it by adding my masthead to the page and the date in order to fill the gap above my main image. I think with the gap their the layout looks less professional. Id also like to change the layout of the 'contents' of my contents page all the text on the right side doesn't look like it is following a layout and perhaps looks a little distorted. Id also like to add more images to my magazine that i have taken personally of 'artists'. In order to show my skills and how i have developed when knowing what makes a contents page attractive etc.