Front Cover Design (Digital)

I started my digitising my front cover designs, seeing how the type and image would work together. 

I started with a newspaper like border and title box. 

I looked into the size of the words seeing how they could be broken up, I felt that the most important words where 'living planet' then 'report'

I didn't like the separate box for the date and so I moved it beneath, but I didn't like this with it looks randomly placed. 

I had also looked at the panda, it didn't seen to fit right in the border, again I didn't  like this alteration either.  

So I looked at putting the image within the border like a frame. 

And then I changed the panda.

I decided it was the border that was restricting the layout, and I looked back at my initial sketches and started again with the design.

I then tried a more ambiguous idea for the image and I just used the ear, it reminds me of the shape of the planet(circular) but slightly skewed, so it almost looks like a country/continent. 

I still felt that the text looked like it was floating and so I applied a single line. 

I then remembered that a broadsheet would be folded at least in half and so the bottom half would be plain and what would be on the back too ? and would it flow if there where to different things on the front and back, I didn't feel that this would look good and so I reverted to the panda. 

I did play with a few other layouts that I had sketched previously. 

I kerned 2014 so it spread across the length of the word 'report' so it all appears as if its in one column. I also think the space lets you read the numbers easier.

The year at the bottom looked too distant to the title of the report and so I moved it up to the title and I felt that this looked better. 

As well as this the copy fit well in-between the negative space of the image/ logo. I also felt that it is clearly the WWF logo and people would still recognise this, yet it is not just the logo as one image. 

Final Cover: