Completed Cover

My Magazine's Cover

Today, I completed the actual cover of my magazine, and it is a lot different than what I originally visualized. The following is an analysis of Paw in Hand, what was originally "The Paw."

In terms of the media techniques that we learned in class, I implemented multiple. I went for a close up of my dog to capture her happiness. Her radiation of joy and excitement holds the heart and attention of anyone who looks at the photo, making it so that anyone passing by cannot help but pick up my magazine. The focus on her only aids in achieving that. I also worked with mise en scene. I touched up the shot with increased lighting. This creates a more happy atmosphere, as a bright, sunny day outside is one of the best settings for pets. This helps establish the mood I am going for, as my purpose contains the well-being of pets, and by having a pet in this beautiful day for my cover, I express that. I made sure to consider my location for this cover shot. It is clearly a grassy backyard, a place that would make a dog comfortable as they are outdoors with nice, soft grass. And in the background, I captured a kiddie swimming pool. This implies that this dog is happy due to the large amount of love it receives. This dog has a large family with kids that like to have fun, and love to have fun with their pet.

I conducted research by looking at many other animal magazines. I looked at many different issues of many different pet magazines for my cover, including Dogster, Modern Dog, and Dog Fancy. I know that my magazine does not only concern pets, but since my cover model was my pet dog, these covers served as inspirations that I took advice from. I knew that I had a large audience since many people love animals. This being the case, I knew I had to incorporate a cutesy approach to my cover, which would successfully catch peoples' attentions. This was mainly achieved by the adorable shot of my dog Judy.
I had many plans for my cover's production. I had created a sketch a while back that showed the planned use of serif fonts, two models for my cover, a pet and a stray cat, a separated masthead, etc. This sketch's plan did not carry much over to the final product, as I realized it was difficult to mimic what was drawn on Adobe Indesign and Photoshop. I made sure to keep some aspects though, such as the serif font and the sectioned masthead. I planned many photo shoots to try and get the perfect image for this cover. I made many visits to my friend's house where he had two pet dogs that were given different amounts of love. I thought these would be the ideal models for my magazine, as this provides a divide that my original plan contained. I wanted to get a profile shot of both dogs facing each other, capturing the differences of where they sleep. One sleeps in the more-luxuriant, occupied living room, and the other sleeps in a cold cage in an empty garage. There were many difficulties however, as the models were very difficult to capture in the way I envisioned since they would not sit still, look at the camera, listen, etc. In the end, I decided to plan a photo shoot with my own two pet dogs, Judy and Max. It was here in my backyard where I took the closeup of Judy in my cover and many other pictures that will be displayed in an example spread later.