national geographic book cover

For this unit I had to make a cover linked to the national geographic books, so this would include the layout of the book, the borders, text, font, space, cover used etc.

To start making the cover for the book I got pictures taken of me with a college camera and a film light, the light would help the pictures come out better and highlight parts that weren't dark, I would use the pictures I took and wanted onto my cover.

An edited version of a photograph, adjusted the brightness and
added a blue effect

The original version of the picture with some adjusted brightness

With the photos I would then edit them on photoshop with filters and effects so they would look different and even change the quality of them, I mainly adjusted the contrast and brightness on them before adding on filters and effects like glows, smudges and blurs.
With the effects of the photograph done I moved onto making the layout of the Nat Geo linked cover in illustrator, following instructions I was given with measurements of what size to have the borders and text, what font to use etc. along with what effects to use and what percentages of opacity to use.

A slightly edited photo, adjusting the brightness

A cover that I'm happy with how it
turned out with its 'ghost' effect

For the layout I was given instructions of how big the border and text was going to be and what kind of font to use, so I first did the border before moving onto the main title text which would be in a New Times New Roman font, the sub-title text also being in this font but as a smaller size.

An overall screenshot of the illustrator file when I was making
the cover and adjusting text and the adjusted photo

I started editing and adjusting the photograph where I have my hand stretching out towards the camera, though there were two versions of this, one where my face was visable and another where my dreads were covering my face. With these two pictures I overlayed one over the other and changed the percentage of the opacity of the photo where my dreads where covering my face, giving this cool looking 'ghost' effect which I also thought looked professional.


I then started working on another photograph I had taken where my dreads were being held up in different directions by other classmates for the photo, I thought it would turn out quite cool and different, though it had caused a problem.
When I looked at the photo where my dreads where pointing up, it did not look very professional or how I wanted or expected it to look like, the way this cause a problem was because cutting it out in photoshop was quite difficult to do, I tried with the auto select tool but it wasn't working properly by not selecting everything or selecting stuff I didn't want included, so I did it manually with the pen tool instead.

The cut out photograph did not look very
professional with it sitting at the bottom of
the cover

A better version of the cut out photograph,
stretched out without being distorted to
fit the cover better

I saved both the cut and uncut version of the photograph and tried them both out on the cover, but due to the size of the photograph the cut version looked out of place and unprofessional by sitting at the bottom of the cover, and I wanted to avoid stretching the image to fit the cover since it would become distorted, though I did increase it's size so more of it would fit onto the cover. The image wasn't tall enough to fit the cover though I did try to stretch the image a little bit while trying not to make it disproportional, it worked OK and didn't look too silly, though it could have been improved but I did not have enough time to take new shots for the cover that could be better planed out and better looking.

A different photo I used and put onto the
cover, which does look better

Because of this problem I used some of the other images I had took and manipulated them in photoshop as well so that the are interesting to look at and close to professional looking, then transferring them onto the illustrator file of the cover and adjusting its size to fit it.

An overall screenshot of my work when adjusting the the cut out
version of the photo where my dreads where being held up

The un cut version of the photo adjusted to
the covers size

                                                                           

The cutout version adjusted better on the cover
so it wasn't stretched and disorted

 I tried again with adjusting the both versions of the cut and uncut photographs file, without stretching it too much that it looks disproportioned, to fit the whole page, they didn't look that bad at all and I think it worked well. I think that the completely white back ground with the cut out version of the photograph is not as good as the uncut version of the photograph, the shadows and background shapes and bits seeming to fill in the space and look quite good. I think that the image works well and it's interesting and not boring.

Overall I'm kind of happy with how stuff turned out, some of them a bit unprofessional looking and frustrating to do, this being the cutting out of the photo, but others seemed to actually fit the cover and look quite good and interesting, this being mainly the uncut version of the photograph.