Double Page Spread 3

In todays lesson I focused on the text in the double page spread. I had previously decided to show an interview and continued this idea. I wasnt really sure what to write about so I had a look in some other country music magazines at their interviews with stars and used some of their questions and also some of the answers to put into my own words and create a character which would seem some what appealing to the readers. So far I have written about the interviewers and Laurens meeting where they first say hello and then get in to the questions that Lauren is asked. I continued with these questions and answers and then thought it would be interesting to have different colours for each section, for example the questions would be white and the answers would be black. I thought this would be a good way of seperating the two and making the overall double page spread more interesting to look at and much more appealing to read rather then all the text being black. Also in todays lesson, when I had finished my writing noticed that there was a large gap underneath the text which made the page seem to spread out and a bit messy so I moved the writing down a little bit and moved accross some of the writing from the other page and put in some more questions and answers. Although whilst doing this I found that large writing at the bottom of the page would be a good idea. I tried out some different fonts and colours and tried some different things I could say at the bottom of the page. I thought using Laurens name would be interesting as it refers to her name in the text underneath the heading of the two pages but it dosent acctually say who it is anywhere else and people would probobly get confused and wonder who she was if they didnt already know. I finally decided to use Laurens name to put on the bottom of the page to make the page stand out more aslo.

Double Page Spread 2

I was originally planning to use my main article feature of 'Christanium' however I thought it would be interesting to try to put in different types of people as my magazine woulod have to appeal to more then one person to be able to sell. So I decided to introduce a new country artist. Even though she is not mentioned on my front cover I thought that I could just make it seem as if it is the same magazine just a different issue. Today I started on my double page spread. I put into consideration my ideas about my double page spread and thought that I could just use cut out images and edit them on but it would look much better to do something fun with it. I had taken a picture of Lauren with her hands over her eyes, which I thought could look interesting, so I cut half the picture and changed the background colour to a mutual tone. However as I tried to cut out the background of the picture I accidently deleted the picture so I decided it would be easier to start again, I repeated this and managed to make the background the same colour as the page, I then found the other picture I had edited and pasted that on top of the other one to see what the effect was. I didnt think that it would come out well at all but I liked how the two pictures blended together so I decided to keep it how it was. I made the background of the double page spread a green colour which blended nicely with the colours in the picture. I realised that I had cut the picture so it only had half of Laurens hand showing so I thought it could look interesting to put a black line next to the picture to cover the end of her hand and to also make the picture stand out more.

Double page spread

For my double page spread I am going to have an interview with the main feature article which is presented on my front cover. My ideas that I have come up with so far is to have one page of the double page spread as a photo of the band and the other showing an interview that had been done with the band. I was thinking this would be an interesting thing to do, however I also think that it could be a bit boring just having a picture taking up the page so another idea I have is to have single pictures of each band member without a background and use it to go neatly around the page, although I am considering having one picture with just the band on and then cutting them out of the background and going behind the text.

Editing my plugs

When I started to edit my plugs I decided that it would be better to make the main feature article to be much more emphasised then the rest of the articles that are being described on the page. I thought that maybe if I use a different font for the bands name it would stand out. After trying this I realised that it dosent look much different to the other writing around it advertising the other articles in the magazine. Looking at the material I have at the moment, I like the writing and font size of the the writing around 'Christanium' so I tried to think of another way for the bands name to stand out. I tried out loads of different tools which could enhance my idea and came across a tool called 'stroke'. This tool puts a border around the outside of the word and can use a different colour to emphasise the word around the outside. I finally decided to use the colour yellow for the outside of the writing which could go with the background pictures without blending in with it.

For the fonts I have used French Script MT for 'Christanium' and used 'Georgia' for the other writing for 'On The Inside' along with 'Times New Roman' for 'Peoples Choice Awards' and 'ConcursoItalian B...' for 'Upcoming gigs' and other writing on the page. I thought it would be a good idea to use different font styles to make the writing appeal more to the audience.

Main Article Photo and Plugs

In todays lesson I focused more on the background and editing the pictures. I edited all the pictures I had liked from the ones I took the other day. The picture I chose to do was one I edited to emphasise the colour in the picture which is what was the most voted when I asked the target audience what colours they would like to see on a country music magazine, as they prefered the colours of the background rather then a plain colour. However I liked the idea of having the colour of the background one colour, although the picture that was chosen has a white background which is the pictures acctuall background colour so I felt that there was more variation in how people wanted the background, as it is a plain background but is the general background of the picture.

Looking at the country magazines by my competitors I have noticed that they do not put too much information about what is in the magazine on the front cover. I liked this idea as the image with the text would not be forgotten when the target audience look at the magazine. One example of a magazine with not much writing on the front is the magazine 'Country'. They use this techneque alot in their magazines as all the recent magazines they have produced latley seem to have most the information on the contents. Although country music magazines only focus on the main article and other details which can be found in the magazine I like the idea of filling the cover up a little more then just the main article. So I decided that the best thing to do was to use this technique but where appropriate add some other relevence to the other articles in the magazine, for example, use more plugs to tell the reader more about the magazine.

Masthead and Puff

Today I decided to focus on the masthead and the puff on the top of the page. I tryed out many different fonts and finally came accross a font I really liked and decided that it suited my idea of country music connotations and that I could try out different colour and techniques on this particular writing to make it more interesting for my masthead. As I was experimenting with different tools on photoshop I came across one particular tool which I thought was really fun to experiment with. I used the tool 'Wave' to make the masthead take up most of the room at the top of the page so it almost touches each side of the page.

I wanted to make the colour stand out more so I thought that maybe a shadow of the writing would make the overall effect of the masthead much more interesting. I tried to locate a tool that would enhance this idea, however I couldnt find any tools which would do what I wanted the text to do so I thought that maybe putting another layer of the same text in a different colour would emphasise the masthead a little more. I tried out some different colours that would look good and found a colour that matched the picture that I wanted to use as my front cover. I used this colour, which is a browny pink colour. This could also connote country music as when I asked my friends who were into country music which picture they would rather see on the front of a country music magazine and they said the colour is mostly what made them think it was more country then any other as it reminded them of the country hats that people wear so I thought that this masthead colour would be much better with this pinky colour and the black over the top.

I then focused on the puff which I decided to use a plain font but a black colour to emphasise the black in masthead. I tried to make it almost bold to stand out and draw attention to the reader without taking to much focus of the main articles that I will be putting on the page and will not distract the reader to much from the masthead so they know what the magazines name is.