Front Cover design Idea's

In this post i will be displaying all the information and idea's i have for my front cover, this ranges from things like font, guides in which i wont let my text go over or fall out of and images and prototypes of my front cover early in the design process.

My Idea's:

All of the fonts chosen are fonts that match to what i'm basing my booklet off of and have been used at some point in the actual game, i chose to do this to stick with a general theme and appeal to those who do know what the booklet is already about. My first font is Compacta, this font is used mainly in the title of the TeamFortress 2 game and would be recognised throughout the people who play or have seen the logo before. 

Compacta:

I will use this font in size 72 pt as my title, my reasoning behind this is because 72pt is a large size which fits why i'd be using the font in the first place; to create a title.

I will apply a drop shadow to this title but alter the settings so its spread is to the max, its opacity to the max and size around 3 pixels to give a nice coloured border around the text. This brings me onto my next point, colour. For my colour scheme i have decided to go with the original colours of the games logo and symbol, these colours range from two different shades of brown to yellow so making my magazines cover and text the same colour and style would make it fit for purpose more and appealing to existing players and catch the eyes of a few new people in the process.

colour Swatches

These are both of the colour swatches the logo uses, i want to incoporate them into my work because they will fit to purpose and match who my booklet is aimed out and what the general theme of the game and logo is. Instead of leaving them as just solid colours, i wish to take it a small step further and apply them both together as a gradient which will span all across the front cover and act as a background for it.

Gradient for background 

Here is my idea for a the gradiented background using both of the colour swatches above. I like how this has turned out and will be using a full scale one for my Front cover background. If i do adjust anything, it would be the direction in which the gradient darkens gradually and that would be from drawing the gradient tool directly up wilst holding the shift button to make sure it's completely straight and my gradient isn't skewed at all.





Before i write up all my text, i would like to construct a box and work area for me to put my text into, to do this, i created multiple shapes. But before i get into that, i'd like to talk about the guidelines i set in place for creating the midground box. Here are the exact dimensions i used for creating my front cover.

• Overall width of canvas - 14.8 CM
• Overall height of canvas - 21 CM

 Margin dimensions:

• Margin width 1 - 1 CM
• Margin width 2 - 13.8 CM
• Margin height 1 - 1 CM 
• Margin height 2 - 20 CM

Using these margin lengths and widths i was able to create something like this, it showed me where i should keep my text in line with and how i should be making my midground structure.

 From the guides, i made this which fits into and doesn't overflow to outside the cyan guides. The text added is the content for the front cover and as you can see, doesn't overflow or go outside of the box structure i made for my work.

Next i will be showing the full complete front cover for my booklet with the gradient added, box structure, text and logo + banner.

Here is my finished front page with every mentioned above taken into account and included. I will be using this for my booklet and making tweaks if needed. The outcome of the front page i am happy with, but if i was to go over this again or do something different it would be where i layout my information and where i place my images. But for times sake, this is my finalised front cover and i am overall, happy with the results.