Drafting and planning

I used the given picture of Trent Reznor and the NME magazine masthead to create a possible front page for NME magazine.
To begin with, I imported the masthead into Paint.Net to crop and resize the masthead; also to position it in a specific place - I stuck to the left third rule like NME  usually does to stick to the generic conventions of NME magazine's. After that, I imported the MCU of Reznor into a new layer. To edit the image of Reznor I used the magic wand to remove all parts of the image I didn't want to use, I used the deselect tool to enable movement of the image. I've positioned Reznor over the masthead because NME is a well known magazine and it's not unusual to have a part of the masthead covered - this also makes him seem very dominant and popular by having him positioned in front of everything else; it shows that this NME edition is focused on Trent Reznor.
On finishing the manipulation of the two images, I saved my work as a JPEG file and imported it into Microsoft Publisher. I used Internet Explorer to research a typical NME magazine and to understand what kind of cover stories I could include - I went on to Trent Reznor's wikipedia page and looked at the similar artist's on the right hand side of the page. I included a skyline which gives an exclusive offer to meet the stars of 2014 and a puff which displays the first taste of Renor's soundtrack - linking to the main artist. The main cover story and anchorage text connects with the main image. I used a screamer and 7 cover stories which keeps this full of information to keep the readers interested. I made sure I included the selling line, bar code and the company website. I understand the main image used is successful as Reznor is making eye-contact with the reader, enticing them in the magazine.
This creative NME task has given me a greater insight into understanding how to construct my own magazine front cover and I'll definitely be able to refer to this task when constructing my next magazine cover. I can take the layout as a template for my own music magazine as I could stick to the left third rule and use an MCU which I found is common linking to my second post on the 11th of September.