Contents Page

The image below is an XXL contents page, as you can see its very simple and modern with hardly any text. The reason i wanted to copy this particular contents page is because the artist on the right is Nicki Minaj who is a new hip-hop artist and is very popular at the moment.

I asked my friend Natasha if she would pose like Nicki for my own contents page. I used a black skirt, belt and top similar to hers to get the clear link. I used my own cannon camera to capture my images, I also searched on YouTube to find a Nicki Minaj based makeup video which i used on Natasha, I searched other images of Nicki Minaj so that i could get a wide range of poses to choose from, I also edited a lot of my pictures so that i had a wide range to choose from, the link below shows my own images.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61217461@N07/sets/72157626263263825/

Once I had chosen my main image for my contents page I uploaded it into Photoshop and selected the pen tool so that I could select around the edge of my image, allowing me to save it into its own layer. I then opened Indesign and opened a rectangle frame tool and placed the layer image of Natasha within the box allowing me to place her into the right place, i wanted to keep her in the third column on the right so i could fit the text in neatly.

I edited my image of Natasha on my laptop at home, i basically moved the colour temperature up and the brightness to give her that airbrushed look, i also turned up the contrast to give it an edgy and sharp result.

For my head mast 'contents' I wanted to copy the original magazine XXL and create the mirrored effect. To create this I used a similar font in Indesign and adjusted the letters so they sat on top of each other as you can see below, to create the mirrored design i had to upload the text into Photoshop and flip the writing, once I did this i saved the back to front image into it's own layer and turned the gradient down making it identical to the contents page I copied.
                                                

Once I had saved the mirrored image into its own layer and in a jpeg format i opened the rectangle frame tool in Indesign and placed the layer within the box which then allowed me to move the image to wherever it looked best.



For the information on the contents page i used the font, Lucinda Calligraphy which looked very similar to the magazine i was copying. i adjusted the width and length of the letters making it just right. In the right hand corner there is a text box which tell you where and how much the outfit Natasha is wearing, this is to create the whole magazine effect.

The image below is my Final Result ...