FHM cover

FHM website


For this creative piece, I was set the brief of designing a cover for a magazine, drawing on the appropriate codes and conventions. The software I utilised to design the cover was Adobe Photoshop CS3, which provided me access to a wide number of tools and options which proved to be exceptionally useful. For example, the easy managing of individual layers allowed a freedom of image editing that would not be possible on a less technologically advanced program, such as Microsoft Paint.

The obvious sources of inspiration for this mocked-up cover were the front covers of multiple issues of FHM. These provided me with a plethora of necessary information that proved to be essential in getting the 'feel' right, in terms of both style and themes.

A key aspect of getting the cover to look right was the fonts, an aspect which could be easily over-looked, yet would cripple the 'authenticity' of the mock-up if not properly observed. For example, even something as minor as the use of serifs on fonts would have stuck out horrendously.

It was crucial for me to capture the same tongue-in-cheek, self-aware style of writing commonly seen on the cover of FHM. As such, I followed the common example of subverting audience expectations at the end of a list through the inclusion of Barry Chuckle after Lou Ferrigno and Steven Segal under the 'FHM's Action Heroes' subtitle. I also included pop culture references in the form of variations of well-known quotes, such as 'He also cooks' and 'You'll like him when he's angry'.

Puns also feature prominently on FHM covers, so I utilised 'Fox Hunting' as a title for the piece on Megan Fox. I also put a slight tilt on the piece of text which displayed the name of the covergirl, Bianca Gasgoigne, another commonplace feature.

There was a slight issue with the picture I used, as most FHM covers usually have the model occupying the middle vertical third of the page, with the text flanking on either side. However, due to the size and proportioning of the image, I had to fit the text around the image as best as I could. As such, there is less text on my cover than would normally be found on an FHM cover. An alternative solution would have been to cut the model from the background using the lasso tool. However, this would have proved time-consuming and would probably have significantly reduced how professional the cover looked overall after completion.


Foucault's ideas of narratives and technologies of the self are crucial to bear in mind during the creation of the magazine cover. The cover must convey the content of the magazine and make the readers feel like they need the magazine to self-actualise. However, this is often counter-balanced within the magazine, as the primary job of the magazine is to shift copies and make a profit. If the readership managed to fully self-actualise, they would no longer have a need for the magazine. As such, there is a delicate balance between offering the readers means, or 'technologies', through which they can improve themselves and advertisements and features which keep the readers needing the knowledge within the magazine.

Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital are also relevant. As a magazine embedded in popular culture, FHM often seeks to be up to date with (and sometimes ahead of) current trends. FHM commonly maintains a balancing act between contemporary representations of masculinity, such as looking after appearances and dealing with emotions, whilst also tapping into elements of a 'retro' representation of masculinity and a fondness for days gone by. For example, the current main theme on the FHM website is a revisitation of the Sixties, in terms of fashion, jokes, sports and key issues which remain as relevant today.

Arguably the most crucial media theory in terms of magazine covers is the ideas of Louis Althusser. Interpollation is vital in a world where hundreds of magazines are easily available to audiences, meaning that in order to succeed and secre profit, magazine covers must draw attention to the magazines and urge the reader to pick a copy up and investigate further.

How has my creativity developed through using digital technology? cont...

Last week, I took part in a workshop where I learnt the basics of the website creation software, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004. In this workshop, I learnt a variety of skills which will aid me in the creation of my website homepage in the A2 Media coursework. These skills include the ability to create links on pages, editing backgrounds and page layouts, indexing individual webpages and editing layers in Photoshop in order to make them suitable for the purposes of the website.
By applying these skills, I should be more capable of creating a more professional looking homepage with well-formatted links, images, video and text. This workshop provided with an entirely new set as skills which I did not previously possess. While beforehand I was quite capable of utilising HTML to format a page layout on MySpace, I had no first-hand experience of building a site from the ground upwards.
I found the process of creating the website taxing, as the method of creating the site indexing is very regimented, with little room for mistakes. One key issue was the fact that if mistakes were made early on, they would often not be noticed until further into the process, with any mistakes often proving difficult to trace.
In contrast, however, the visual layout of the page, such as the choice of fonts, images and backgrounds, did allow some degree of creative input, drawing on semiotic codes to create meanings within the audience.

How has my creativity developed through using digital technology? cont.

Since the writing of the previous post, I have experienced further examples of digital technology aiding my creativity.
One such example would be the medium through which I am publishing these essays: blogging. This medium potentially allows access to a vast audience across the globe and allows all of my writing to be stored in one place and date-ordered. It also allows the embedding of images and websites which I feel are relevant, allowing me to present any sources of inspiration and the final media product within the blog with relative ease. The ease of accessibility linked to blogging is reflective of proliferation of new media technology such as Web 2.0, with blogs being highly popular and accessible through a large number of websites.
Photoshop has also furthered creative development, as it allows the creation of images which would otherwise be either highly difficult or, in some cases, impossible to capture. As such, we can be more imaginative with our ideas for the image-based elements of the coursework module.
I already had some self-taught knowledge of Photoshop, as I often used the program to edit and resize photos before uploading them to social networking sites. However, my knowledge was rather limited, as I had previously had no real reason to further explore the tools available. After the workshop though, I now feel more confident in using Photoshop to perform more complex actions, such as superimposing images onto backgrounds in a more tidy and professional manner and adding more appropriate effects to both images and text.

How has my creativity developed through using digital technology?

The coursework module proved to be a difficult task at times, with a learning curve that was on occasion extremely steep. However, all stages of the production of our two creative pieces offered many chances for my creativity to develop. One particular aspect that allowed my creativity to flourish was the prevalence of digital technology during all stages of the creation of the products.
During the pre-production stage, we sought to inform the creative process through researching existing media products. An example of this research included the viewing of a number of opening sequences from films on YouTube and DVDs. The opening sequences we watched included ‘Goodfellas’, ‘Snatch’, ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Scream’ (as well as a number of others). ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’ provided us with interesting scenes and shots involving the boot of a car, ‘Scream’ offered us an insight into one particular way of creating a suburban horror and ‘Snatch’ presented us with a generally well-made opening and a generated a certain degree of inspiration. By studying existing examples of well-established opening sequences, the group was able to better understand the codes and conventions of the genre we intended to work within, as well as noting effective techniques and styles utilised by professionals which we could carry over to be used in our own production.
Access to the internet proved to be a great asset during the pre-production, with much of our inspiration coming from pre-existing materials. This demonstrated what a great advantage there is to living within an age when vast reams of information are easily accessible.
During the actual production stage of the creation of our product, we filmed our product digitally using a DV Camera. As these were handheld and significantly lighter than traditional stock cameras, they allowed us greater manoeuvrability and enabled shots to be captured from awkward angles, such as the shot we used in ‘Roadkill’ of the underside of the car.
The post-production stage also saw digital technology playing a key role, as we edited our piece digitally using the Windows Movie Maker program. This program offered more examples of our creativity being stifled by the limitations of the program than opportunities for our creativity for flourish. A key limitation was the issue around Roadkill’s title slide, with the limitations of Windows Movie Maker forcing us to use Photoshop to find an appropriate font then insert the font as an image into the edit. However, this issue meant we had to think outside of the box to find a solution; so to some degree, these limitations did aid the development of our creativity.
Copyrighting issues did prevent us from seeking out more obvious choices of music for our production. However, the wide availability of music CDs allowed us to access a suitable soundtrack for our piece (after a rather long-winded hunt through the available archives). The songs could then be easily ripped from the CD to a PC, with the files then being easily importable to our production during the editing stage. This allowed for easy inter-changeability between tracks, allowing us to test out multiple solutions to our soundtrack problem.
Our distribution of our product was done entirely through digital technology, with YouTube being our medium of choice, as it allows potential access to millions of users and is a far more effective form of distribution for low-budget film than a hard-copy release. A key lesson revolving around the use of YouTube was the down-scaling of video quality when a video is uploaded to YouTube, a lesson which we unfortunately didn’t fully notice until after the final distribution of our product. This issue crippled our product, both visually and in terms of professionalism, as our fonts became unreadable due to the pixel distortion. However, I have been able to learn from this mistake and will as such use clearer fonts which are less prone to becoming unreadable during the A2 coursework module.

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