Final Magazine Layout

I am currently designing my final magazine layout. I am going to base it on the Libyan riots and the magazine layout template I am going to use is this one from Vogue.

I began with this photo of a woman in the Libyan riots.

It came out grayscale in photoshop but I decided I liked it more than colour because it has more gravitas. I tried putting the font in the bottom left corner, as in the inspiration piece, but the overall lightness of the background made the white type hard to read. I tried putting the typography in black but it was even more hard to read because there is more black than white in the background. Then I selected around the type with the marquee tool. I then created a new layer; selected a light gray from the colour palette dialogue box; and then set the layer mode on difference; then using the paint bucket tool filled the selected area. I then duplicated the chosen text layer; right-clicked 'rasterize text' on the duplicated layer; turned off original text layer via the eye tool; and on the rasterized type layer, cntrl-I to invert the colours. With the bottom word 'freedom' I repeated the first steps and then found that half the text couldn't be read because of dark background; so on the rasterized type layer I used the square marquee tool to create a selection around the word 'freedom' and inverted the selection using cntrl-I. This allows the audience to read the word in the lighter type format. The third line of words 'to be' I selected the difference-layered box over the word and dragged it down so that half the word was exposed to the lighter background, giving an asethetically pleasing effect. I left some of the words without a layer box because it created contrast and interest. Then I duplicated the original photograph and inverted it. Then I selected the woman's hands and deleted the inverted layer within the marquee box exposing the inverted background below the original background.

I am pleased with this final piece. I chose the words 'the only thing to be gained is freedom' because I feel it is a true message. I would not change this.