What I?m going to do only works with Photoshop CS.
In Photoshop CS you can now type on or in a work path. Now that the circular selection is a work path, grab your type tool and place it over the path and click to enter path/text editing. This is a great feature that is obviously very practical.
I?m going to type in the on-cover price.
You will see this all the time on many magazines. Especially on these youth market magazines they?ll often add backdrop colors (gee, pink and blue...)..it depends on your market (and season). Obviously you don?t want the price TOO large unless it?s Free.
Use your character palette with leading and kerning to get the type to fit just right. This may take a few minutes but it?s worth it to get that built-in professional look. I go over the Character palette in depth in the Madison Avenue advertising design tutorials.
Go to the Paths palette and make the circle a selection again by right clicking as shown and choosing Make Selection.
Now create a blank layer and fill it with yellow. The path is still there if you ever need it but now we hav a yellow circle backdrop layer for the price tag.
When you are done getting the cover price tag built within the path field and happy, go ahead and rotate the text editing field to that it points in as shown.
Now go ahead with the rectangular marquee tool and create another selection so that it overlaps with the top bar as shown.
Now just create a new blank layer and fill it with the exact same color as the top pinkbar fill. This in effect, is creating an extension of the backdrop. Make sure that this fill layer is beneath the price layers.
Go ahead and grab another great picture for your magazine?s target market. Bring that in and scale it down.
Place it so it?s around the same size as that color fill and on top of it. One thing that you can do is (making sure that it is RIGHT on top of it in the layers palette) create a clipping group/mask by going to the layer menu as shown.
This will place that layer ?within? the pink fill layer. Now you can move or continue transforming the new layer to just where you want it.
To get rid of the extra pixels create a selection again so that just the edges of the pink are showing equidistantally (is that a word?) and click on the new layer mask icon. Here I've control clicked on the layer but you'll want to manually use the marquee tool (guidelines help again) to get the selection where you want it with a little pink on all sides showing.
Go ahead and create a smaller text layer as shown; something such as HOT to put in between that space we left (you could have done this earlier too).and go ahead and rotate it. This little technique is done all the time but it is catchy and appealing (or appalling if you don?t like the magazine).
Go ahead and create some layer sets if you want and drag appropriate layers into them for organizational purposes. This is by clicking on the folder icon in the middle bottom of the layers palette. Here I?m hiding all of the layers in the set by hiding the layer set.
Let?s bring back that image I brought in earlier because I though that would make a great cover shot.
Our demographics for this magazine isn?t motherhood or home owners. Remember you want to follow the techniques and principles that are prevalent throughout that industry; these are what clients are looking to pay you for as long as you can do it in an innovative way. Be open to designing in different styles and genres and making yourself versatile while building your portfolio. Show them what you can do.
Here I?m going to bring that drop shadow down that I dragged (drug?) to the new text layer. Look at your design and just keep eyeballing things to see what else isn?t just right and go ahead and move things around, rotate, scale, change colors, etc. until you get them where you feel it is just right.
This text...
...was getting kind of busy being stuck over here so I moved it over and entered to make it into two different lines to ?wrap? it around the other headline.
As a magazine or commercial graphic designer, get very comfortable with using the Character palette. And have a great font collection! It?s your ally also. You should end up with something like this.
More Tutorials: 
