So far so good

I think...

Alright, I think I made major progress, but I don't want to jinx it. I designed what I think will be the magazine cover using Adobe Illustrator. I drew inspiration from the layout I had planned last week in order to figure out where to place the masthead and what size to use in relation to a grid, placing it in the top half of the top thirds.

I also drew inspiration from the layout of the cover of Kinfolk magazine. Kinfolk is a lifestyle magazine which is why i haven't referred back to it much... however, it is a high-end lifestyle magazine with simple design and an artistic look. Look at the cover of Kinfolk magazine:

From here I decided to use white space to create a border where the letters of the mast head are only half way into it. I liked the idea of doing this because it made the cover more interesting as the letters where not stuck inside a set boundary. For the font, I decided to use Morva because of its elongated look that allowed me to make the font bigger without while keeping the whole name of the magazine in one line. The only problem I had with this font was that there were no accents, so I made one out of a circle and a triangle:

Right now, the cover does not have a picture so I simply put a pastel orange background as a place holder. I also came up with the selling line "Off the menu" which provides both clarification as to what "à la carte" means as well as a piece of branding information that suggest recipes inside the magazine are unconventional and perfect for foodies. Finally, in the bottom left third I put the issue month and place for the barcode to have sort of "placeholders" for these. Without further ado, here is the design of the cover:

I plan to place cover lines in the outer halves of the side thirds in order to leave the main focus for the cover picture in the middle third.

Hope you like where this is going!