double page spread part 2

after realizing that my title was not in a suitable location and route of the eye would not flow as well as i had hoped, i had to move it so i re-sized my pictures to fit the new location of the title and moved the title to a place where the route of the eye would lead to the article(above the article, below the main picture). Also, i used shift and the re-sizing tool on my titles so that they were in proportion but larger and more noticable to the eye,

Once i realized that my magazine did not look up to a true professional standard, and the route of the eye was incorrectly placed. I then replaced the re-sized picture and added my titles in, meanwhile placing my main two columns of the text back to where they were as i deemed them fitting to stay where they were as i got a member of the class to look at my article and they managed to follow the text, they did not obstruct route of the eye, which meant that the article still worked as normal.

This became the final product. i noticed a large area of black space which i minimized with my best efforts by adding my logo in at the end of the article in large letters, which also makes it recogniseable to my readers so they know where the article is from. I considered the idea of enlarging my texts or removing pictures but i did not find any suitable ways to do these without ruining my overall desired look and looked unprofessional to my own eyes. In retrospect, i do believe that i could of improved it by rearranging the article and text from the start but i did not know this until i did more research into double page spreads.

Double Page spread Process

firstly, i placed all my text onto my page in the desired layout and used the drop text tool to make my text flow naturally. Also, now my boxes are aligned, i started to realize that i had large white gaps as my photos did not fit into the correct areas appropriately, so i decided to come up with a solution:

 I solved this problem by adding black boxes whilst in zoom of 200% or more, so i could close up all the white gaps that were irregularly sized. This meant that every space that was blank was covered eventually. I encountered one more problem whilst covering these spaces in which were pure black.

after i noticed this space in my text box i noticed had a large black space i couldnt remove, so i decided to add my logo into the box afterward to fill the room and say it was a 'HOMESICK EXCLUSIVE'. This was to add my logo to the page which seemed appropriate, and also it helped somewhat fill up the page's black space.


The next problem i encountered were that my boxes had become uneven and the text would not align correctly which made my double page spread look unprofessional. To combat this i re-aligned and resized the boxes with text in until they fit perfectly.

After i corrected these problems and added my pictures back in to fit. i have removed all problems that i encountered during it using zoom, boxes, space filling and resizing. I believed that i had finished but i encountered some more problems which i have addressed in Part 2 of this post.

Font Choices

FOR MY MAGAZINE, I CHOSE ONE CONSISTENT FONT:
Helvetica.
there are many variations of it in my magazine, for example:

 this is an example of my use of a helvetica, bold and oblique, slanted to the angle of 24 degrees clockwise. this is a rendition of a popular clothing design brand and band logo( Supreme and Your Demise) which people will recognise.

 

another example is my titles were Helvetica Bold. i used this as it isa common font in the design world as apart from its clarity, it also looks standard and professional

how i edited one of my photos.

first off i opened the photo in photoshop.. then i went into image > image mode > grayscale (as you cant use RGB colour with black and white) so i could convert it to a dominant grayscale.

next and finally i pressed CMD and L to access the levels to alter my photo, and set the levels to what i saw fit, which was: Black: 0, Gray: 1.38 and White: 183

this gave the desired effect i wanted for my photo which was to highlight the foreground and give it a more vintage feel.

how does your magazine represent particular social groups?

with my magazine, my social group i have represented is teenagers.

my use of language is a major factor in this. i have used a lot of informal language such as 'riffs', 'wicked', 'radical'  in my magazine which is a use of teenage vocabulary and slang of the present use of my audience. also, i have used vulgar language(but blanked out) for my teenage audience such as f**k, c**t and s**t,which i, myself as a teenager use frequently and my audience used it as well as the artists they listen to. this helps them connect with the article and writer so they are most intrigued.

i also represented the alternative dress+fashion sense by including people of my audiences age and fashion sense. if they see people who dress similar to them they will be interested in the article the person is in. similar fashion senses represent my audience.

what new technologies have you learnt and used in this magazine

in this magazine i learned and harness the new technologies granted to me by the Mac: Abode InDesign and Adobe PhotoShop


with InDesign i learned about many new tools:

Bleed
the bleed tool allows you to go over the magazines margin, which means it will let you go over with pictures which gives 5mm less constriction, something professional magazines use a lot to make it flow more natural on the pages. This allows the picture not to cut off and leave small white gaps as it continues off of the page.

Inset Spacing
the inset spacing tool allows you to make sure the text you put in the box does not touch the edges, a more professional look for the magazine. if the text is spaced in equally in all boxes it gives out a much neater and composed look to the text and stops it flowing over at the side

De-hyphenate
the de-hyphenate tool allows you to remove all unnecessary hyphens(long words that have prefixes and flow over the side of the box do this) which makes all words look a lot less messy. after looking into Front, NME and Esquire i had noticed they only use hyphens in words that are double barreled and de-hyphenate everything else, so i did this too.

Drop Text
This allows text to flow from one box to another. this is used by magazine designers to make sure the text keeps flowing naturally and doesn't look broken down. When writing an article it needs to flow mid sentence into the next box so the reader follows the text into the next box and doesn't just stop reading, it helps keep their attention focused on the articles.


Page Break
the page break tool is used combined with the drop text tool to keep the presentation of the text professional so you can align the text as desired. i used this tool to make sure two of my columns of text were aligned so they finished at the same point. this made my magazine look more like NME magazine which makes sure its text looks neat and is easy to read in columns.


PHOTOSHOP:

image mode
image mode allows you to change the photo to a more printable colour set(CMYK + GRAYSCALE) which is useful asit is required that you change from RGB to CMYK or GRAYSCALE. but i also used the image mode 'GRAYSCALE' for the effect of black and white in my photos, as you cannot change CMYK colour photos to black and white so choosing a gray scale would help to emphasize a black and white effect with more boundaries to influence.

levels

the levels tool edits the amount of black, white and grey in the picture. i used this in combination with grayscale to give a stronger black on my photos for effects to make my photos look more appealing and professional, also if the blacks fade away the background it can allow a focus on the centre or main object in the image, so people will actually notice what is in the picture.

An example of the levels tool being used. it has put more grey emphasis on the people in the picture so they are more noticed that in the original black and white picture.

content aware fill
i used the content aware fill tool because it can erase people/undesired object by replacing it with content similar to the surrounding of the area. i used this on my front cover to remove undesired areas, such as overlapping branches(which i did not recognise before entering the photo onto the cover) which would of given a more DIY, unprofessional photographic affect which would not appeal to my audience as there is already a market for unprofessional


BLOGS
By using www.blogger.com i have been able to show my progress with my College magazine and my Music magazine. I was able to post photos, videos and document attachments to my posts to show photo choices, screenshots of progress, a video explaining my technologies used and even though i did not use a document attachment i could use it to post my base draft texts. This technology was aware to me before but i have learned how to maximise its effect and use it to track my progress and evaluate my coursework.

This is the upload screen for Blogger. I have used this technology to upload attachments other than text to my blog so i can show my progress easier, i can also upload screenshots of this Mac to show processes of how i perform tasks, and constructed my final product.

SURVEYMONKEY
another technology i learned of is surveys. the technology i used was a website called  www.surveymonkey.com. this website allowed me to ask people, via facebook. this meant that people on my facebook friends could answer my survey and helped me decide what my audience(people aged 16-23) wanted to see(genres, articles, colours) and allowed me to plan via graphs. here is an example of a graph i took a screenshot of for my blog.

above: a graph from SurveyMonkey showing the percentage of people who liked each genre. i chose to base my magazine on the top 3 genres: metal, hardcore and pop-punk
i used this technology to make the ease of appealing to my audience as i can find out what my audience want in the magazine via SurveyMonkey.

FACEBOOK
Facebook was another technology i used in conjunction with SurveyMonkey as it allowed me to get 20 survey responses from people in the age range i wanted (16-23) of both male and female. the technology of social networking websites allowed me to survey people of a certain age group, similar interests and other connecting factors.
MAC 
another technology that i learnt about was the Mac. it has many applications of software that i used (InDesign, PhotoShop, etc) for my project. It has a function of selective screengrabbing, by using cmd shift 4, you can select what parts of the screen you want to screengrab and then they become a picture file. useful for when you are explaining the processes of how you constructed the product,

Front covers of other magazines analysis

This is Front magazine. it is a lads magazine with music related subjects. it is aimed at purely male audience of 18-25

it uses the appeal of its 18-30's male audience sexual desires by including an exposed woman on the cover who is fairly attractive. many sexual references are made on the front covers. 'get paid & get laid' and 'i shagged a pirate' which appeal to the sexual imaginations and intrigues them. the vulgar language suggests they are of a a working class background. the colours used are black, white, pink, red and blue. these are either manly or sexualized colours. the layout is simple and easy to read as they believe that the most attention will 

be paid to the pictures not the writing unless its easy to read

Front magazine use bright colours and sexy pictures of women to attract their audience which is young adult men (18-30) as the font and picture draws them towards the magazine and convinces them to buy it as its in their interests. .

this has taken influence on my magazine as i have used the idea of simple and easy fonts to keep my young audience's attentions on the article.

 This is NME magazine. It is an 'indie' genre magazine made for a predominantly straight white male audience aged 18-30.

The cover uses a white background with two standing out + recognizable famous figures to draw the attention of its readers. the contrast of white on black allows the focus on the people.

The logo is recognisable and would be the next object in the route of the eye which would instantly let fans of NME know that this is an official NME magazine.

There is a headnote is a large yellow + white bold font which attract the eye to read that after the logo.

The headnote is short and snappy which instantly grabs their attention to read on.

The main article overlaps the picture and is the next on the route of the eye. the fonts are red + white which stand out on the black jackets of the people in the picture so it is easily read. it has the largest font which puts the main article at the biggest attraction to the reader, making it the most important figurehead of attracting the reader. They also have a pull quote from the actual article which says 'I was worried the Monkeys would think i was having an affair' the choices of the words 'worried' and 'affair' grab the readers attention as they are exciting verbs.

There are 4 side articles which use bold, red fonts to catch your eye after the main article. they use adjectives like 'special' and 'exclusive' to keep the reader's interest. also, a slight use of over dramatics 'Vs' which makes it sound like there is something dramatic going on which would intrigue the reader.

The magazine appeals to its target audience by using large fonts and short sentences to keep them interested as most male orientated magazine are not 50/50 on text and picture output, they go for a more 60/40 style so short sentences are used to make them read the articles and catch their eyes..

This is Rocksound magazine. It is an 'alternative' magazine aimed at predominantly straight, white males of 18-30

(This is a spanish print of it, but i cannot find the original UK print so i will translate from it)

The cover uses a photo of a famous iconic singer looking up with a shallow depth of field photo. this photo allows the focus of the reader's eye to stay on the 3/4 body photo of the famous person pictured here(Oli Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon).

The logo is the next object in the route of the eye. even though it is partially overlapped by the photo, it is still easily recognizable by fans due to its commonplace white font with a red outline. unlike other magazines, the whole logo is in lower case. This is against conventions but it is used to make an easier recognized logo.

The title is the next thing the reader will notice. the title overlaps the lower body of the famous person in the photo.  The title says 'Bring Me The Horizon' in a messy scribbled font(which they use for their own logo, recognized by fans) with a red and white colour fil. This is to represent the English flag, as the band hail from Sheffield, England. It promotes their Nationality and will attract an English audience. Below the title, there is a subtitle saying 'Suicidal Tendencies'. This is a reference to the connection between the band's album 'Suicide Season'  and the famous Punk band 'Suicidal Tendencies'.  The word 'Suicidal' is a rather strong, dramatic word which would interest the male audience.

After this, a few bands included in the magazine are listed on the upper left of this title. They are some of the bands included in this magazine. Using simply the band names in red + white fonts(to contrast with the background) suggests this is a male audience due to the short sentences or just one word descriptions of the content inside. There is also a smaller picture below the band name 'Staind' which suggests they are a popular band and people will be attracted to read on if they recognise the picture.

On the right side of the main picture in the right third there is a diamond shaped white box with PUNK written in large letters with the bands 'Lagwagon', 'Cripple Bastards' and 'H20' listed underneath. This suggests that these 3 bands are of the Punk genre and people who like that genre should read on. the articles are not described which could be used to attract the reader to look into these as they do not know what could be included inside, although this could have a reverse effect not giving any interest at all.

There is a headnote which says 'compilation with free download' and lists the bands included.  The use of a free giveaway entices the reader to buy the magazine to not only read but get a free CD download included.

finally,  the bottom third has an 'also' tag which lists bands included in the magazine. this is for people who want to read about specific bands in the magazine and can see if they were included.

Rocksound magazine appeals to its target audience with short sentences, a simple design and the use of darker style imagery as this is what appears on  album covers.