Double Page Spread

This (above) is the final of my double page spread. As you can see, I have used a unified house style when creating it by using the same colour scheme as I have for my contents and front page. Below are a selection of pictures which will explain how I managed to achieve it. The first thing that I did was to load up a blank page on InDesign. To do this I had to make sure the dimensions were that of an A3 piece of paper and also include six columns. The reason I chose to have six columns is because many magazines with double page articles are split into six parts. The image on the left is of three magazine articles that I found. After putting them together you can see how each one is split up in to the six different sections via the green lines I have added. So, due to the six columns in most double page spreads, I followed this convention when producing my own. When I was near the end of creating my double page spread, I noticed that my magazine did not seem to resemble any columns at all. This was because I had managed to change the settings somehow on the screen and gotten rid of the template for the columns. The original is on the right hand side (without the proper columns). Once I realised that I had produced the wrong this, I simply reloaded another document and copied and pasted each item onto the new document and placed them into the different columns. It also meant that I was able to add more to the interview as there was more space to fill up. On my final double page spread at the top of the post, you can see the six columns due to the way the text is on the page.

The next thing to do after establishing the six columns, was to add the black bars that you see on either end of the page. I did this so as to continue with my house style. My contents page had the bars there, so I wanted them to appear on my double page spread too. In order to create them, I used the rectangular marquee tool just as I did when using Photoshop and drew a long box. The rectangular tool is the second one down on the tool bar on the right hand side. After this, I placed it in the position I wanted it and then copied the bar. After it was copied, I pasted it so as to get another bar and then moved that into the opposite side so as they mirrored each other. I did not want the bottom bar to stretch the whole length of the page as I felt that it would swamp the whole page and not look authentic.

The title of the article was the next thing to create. I simply used the person in questions name, in this case, Nick Woods. To do this, I created two different text boxes. I made two different boxes so that I could place each word in different places on the page and not just keep them in a line, which would look plain. Both pieces of text are in the font Futura, which is the same font that I have used throughout the project. The colour of it is similar to the title of the magazine. Because the front cover and contents page were created in Photoshop, it was difficult to obtain the exact same colour in InDesign, so after a long time of playing around with the colours, I managed to find this colour -the colour of the text- which I thought was the closest I could get to the colour I have already used for the other pages.

After the title was in place, I added a pull quote. The idea of using a pull quote is to give an insight to the reader to as what is going to appear in the article they are about to read. I included two pull quotes in the article. One below the name of the article, shown on the left, and one actually within the article itself, shown on the right. The pull quote on the right was inserted into the middle of the article for a number of reasons. Firstly, it breaks up the reading a bit so as the page is not just full of small size 12 font text. It is also there to interest the reader. Upon reading this quote, some people may ask themselves 'I wonder what was asked to get that reaction' thus making them read the article to find out more.


After the first pull quote (left hand side) was inserted on to the page, I started to enter the text from the article that I had already written. The article was produced on Microsoft Word originally and then copied and pasted into text boxes in InDesign. I wanted the introduction of my article to be written in lines as opposed to in the six columns that I had produced. In order to do this, I created a text box where I wanted the writing to be and made it big enough so as it spread over two of the columns. After the writing was on the page, I started to edit it to my preferences. As you can see on the image below -GET IMAGE IN JPEG FORMAT- I have added a few drop capitals and also some colour to some of the text. The first letter is a drop capital as this follows the conventions of a typical music magazine. An example of the drop capital can be seen here. The drop capital is something that EVERY magazine seems to do without fail. It is done to show the reader where the article starts and also makes the page more appealing. I did it to show a sense of authenticity to my magazine. As well as the drop capital, note that I have put a few of the words in a different colour. The words are Sound HQ, and Sound. I did this because I wanted to highlight the word sound every time I used it to remind the reader that they were reading an article from their favourite magazine, SOUND. The title of the artists album was put in bold so as to define that word from the rest of the text. I did it also to show that if at a later date a reader would want to return to the article to find out some information, then the key part is in bold.

After the writing was added, I inserted two different pictures. One is of the cover model himself, and one of something that I created on Photoshop. It is important to include a picture of the interviewee so as the reader one to use as it shows the young age of the artist, which is what I was trying to convey in my interview. The photo is a long shot which had to be edited in can see who they are reading about. The picture is an appropriatePhotoshop and then brought in to InDesign. The original photo is on the left hand side. I had to place it into Photoshop and use the magic wand tool to cut around the figure. After I had cut around him, I placed him onto a new transparent document and saved the image as a JPEG. After this, I used the Import button in InDesign and brought the edited picture in and placed it where I wanted it. The text then had to be fitted around the model. I did not want the text to be wrapped around the figure. This was for two reasons, the first one being that if the text had have been wrapped, then the page may have looked to cramped. The second reason is simply because I could not work out how to wrap the text around the figure! Even after watching many videos on YouTube, all of which were in a different language, I could not find anything that would work for me. I think that the picture may have been on a different setting, however I am pleased that I couldn't wrap the text anyway. The other image to be added to the page was the tape. Shown on the right, I designed this in Photoshop on a friends computer. When I had taken the pictures of my model, we started editing them as he had Photoshop capability. When doing so I wanted to create something similar to an album cover. My friend suggest that instead of being the same as everyone else, why not create a tape. I liked the idea so found a picture of a tape on the Internet and dropped it into Photoshop. After de-saturating the image, I placed a white bar over the top of the tape using the rectangular marquee tool. The writing was then placed on top using a text box and a font called Just The Way You Are from the dafont website.

With the magazine now on verge of completion, I wanted to add that extra bit of authenticity. To do this I included who took the pictures for the article, who wrote the article and also included a page number. On the left you can see how I signed the article. The camera and pen were fonts taken from the dafont website. I wanted to use the idea of a pen and camera instead of putting 'writer' and 'photography' which in my eyes is boring and too similar to everything else. Although I am trying to achieve a conventional magazine, I feel that it was important to add my own features so as to make the magazine my own!

Contents Page

As you can see from the two contents pages above, they are similar in the conventions that they have used. Both have a larger picture in the top right hand corner, possibly to show what the main focus story is. As well as this, they appear to use a unified coloured shceme so as the page does not look too busy and over the top. If more and more colours were used on the page, then it would be likely that the page would look a mess and you would not want to read it. The colours would have been selected so as to coincide with the colour scheme on the front cover which is what I hope to achieve. The last notable thing between the two pages is that all of the written information is down the left hand side. Nearly every contents page in the magazine industry does this. It is so the audience can recognise that the page they are on is a contents page and also so that the information is layed out clearly for the reader to follow.

The first stage for the contents page was to start with a blank white page. Most pages are split in to thirds in magazines so I had to be careful not to make fonts too big. In order to stick to this convention, I decided to split the page up using different lines and bars. The lines were created with the rectangular marquee tool. I made very thin boxes and filled them with the same colour as the front cover title. I then placed each bar individually so as to give me a rough guideline of how much writing I wanted and how big to have the text. As well as this, I added another two black bars to the page as I wanted to continue the pattern from the front page.

The next thing to do was to add the word 'contents' and the picture. The word contents was produced on three different layers so as to achieve the stacked effect. I chose to show the word like this so as not to simply have the word 'contents' written in a line as this would become boring and too cliche. At the end of the contents, I put the word 'sound' in smaller letters to the contents so as to keep the house style of the magazine. I wanted to make this style of magazine mine so 'professionally' added the name of my magazine there as some other magazines do. The picture that you can see at this stage of the production took some editing.


The original picture is here on the left. As you can see, the model is wearing glasses and these reflected the flash. In order to remove the flash, I watched a number of videos on YouTube such as this. The video was not that helpful for what I needed to do and after some thought I managed to crack how to remove the flash from the glasses. First I tried finding another image of the same model without flash and cut the glasses out and placed them over the image with the flash, but the skin tones were different so it did not look natural. Then I zoomed in to the eye and used the eye dropper tool (on the right) to grab the colour of the skin of the model. Once I had this, I coloured over the flash in the glasses to make it look like his eye, and re-drew over the glasses frame in black using a small paint brush. Because one eye was completely covered in flash, I used the clone stamp tool to paint another eye. To do this, I made the clone stamp the same size as the eye that had no flash, held down the ALT key and clicked. This meant that I could now paint somewhere on the screen and where I clicked would start to re-draw. I stared drawing over the opposite eye and the eye was mirrored over the other side thus removing the flash. As well as this, you can see a great deal of graffiti on the wall (left) beside the model. to get rid of this I made a duplicate layer of the picture. I used the colour picker tool to take the colour of the bricks and painted over the marks to cover them. Then, because you could see where I had painted, I changed the opacity of the paint that I had just used to 67% and the paint blended in with the wall removing the main graffiti that was there. On a new layer, I then drew a text box and typed 'Nick Woods' and used a font called Graffiti. Then, I made the text a dark grey colour and angled it so as it was at the same angle as the wall and also changed the opacity of it so as thought it looked like it had been sprayed on to the wall.

The following stage of the design was to add the text in. Initially I added all of the cover stories and put them under a heading of 'cover stories'. This was done to show the reader where to find what stories were on the front of the magazine. I used the same mixture of colours for the text that I used on the front cover to achieve the unified house style. I also included a 'Regulars' section as every magazine has a section that publishes certain things every week/edition without fail. I also included a competition for the readers as many magazines in the business today do this in order to achieve a higher circulation and readership.

The next part of the construction was to add more pictures and text. I chose to add a 'Next Edition' section so as to show the reader what to expect when they buy it again. I out the word WIN in capital letters in order to draw the readers attention to it. When you see the word win, you automatically want to know what is up for grabs and how to enter so I did this to encourage my reader to continue reading the magazine.

This is the final draft of the contents page that I am going to be submitting. To finish it off and add that extra bit of authenticity, I included details of the editor, cover model, photographer and edition of the magazine in the bottom left hand corner. You would be able to tell that this page leads on from my front cover due to the recurring colour theme and consistent fonts used throughout.

Contents Page Issues

This was the first ever contents page I produced. The idea was to have long shot picture of a male standing, however I didn't get around to doing that because I disliked the contents page altogether. There is too much writing on the page and everything was just too big so I produced another one. After producing this contents page, I cam up with another one to go with the original front page. It is shown on the right hand side.




The contents page on the left is the final piece that I am going to submit. It has a more coherent house style to go with my front page due to the yellow, black and grey coloured text. As well as this, there are more pictures on the page meaning the reader does not have to sit and read everything and instead look at pictures for reference.

Front Page

This is the original picture that I took to go on the front cover of my magazine. I did not want the photo on the front cover to have a background to it, as many magazines in the music industry have a plain background. Because of this, I placed the photo into Photoshop where I edited it. After editing, the final product was what is seen on the left. To achieve this (the cut out without the background) I used the 'magic wand tool' to cut around the outside of the model. It was tricky to do so as the colour of his hair was similar to the bricks behind him, and the computer could not recognise that the hair and bricks were two different things. This meant that I had large areas of brick on the picture and to resolve this, I had to zoom in and use the 'eraser' tool and rub out the bits that were not needed.





The picture above is the first stage of the music magazine front cover. As you can see, I have placed the photo on to a white background and desaturated it. I did this so as I could bring out the colour in the guitar. In order to do this, I used the 'history brush tool' to paint over the area that I wanted to appear in colour. After I was happy with the picture and the colour that I wanted showing, I added the title. The title is written in a font called Futura, taken from daFont.com. As well as this, I decided to make the colour of the title the same colour as the guitar so as it did not look strange to as why the guitar was in colour. In order to do this, I used the 'colour picker' tool and filled the text in the colour I had just found. I wanted the picture to be in front of the magazine title. I wanted this because all magazines do this and I wanted to follow this convention. To do this, I had to drag the layer that the picture was on and place it above the layer that contained the writing for the title. As well as this, I inserted two black bars to the cover. I did this so as to fill in blank gaps at both the top and bottom of the page and also because I have seen other magazines that have followed this convention in order to add cover lines. The black bars were created using the 'rectangular marquee tool'. Both of the boxes were filled with black and moved in to position at the top and bottom of the page. They had to be created on a new layer so as when they were moved, nothing else moved with it.





The next thing to do was to add cover lines to the magazine cover. I started with the 'Nick Woods' as he is the main focus of the magazine. I wrote his name in the Futura font and made it white in colour as white is the obvious colour to go against black. Below the name is a quote from the magazine article I have written. The colour of the writing is the same colour of the title here. I did this to sort of mirror the colours and vary them around so as not to use all white thus making the cover appear boring to the consumer.The speech marks at either end of the quotation were difficult to produce. Initially, the whole quote was on one layer, however with the speech marks at either end, there was a large gap between the two lines. To over come this, I had to put both lines of the quote on to separate layers, and add the speech marks on in another layer. By doing this I was able to position the text and quotation marks in a place that looked the best and most professional. The two other cover lines I added were put in yellow and white. The yellow has been used to highlight the name of the artist and I did this so as you are drawn to that first. The large '+' sign was added on a separate layer and made big so as to draw the reader to it and make them see what else they are getting in the magazine apart from the obvious story about 'Nick Woods'.





The next stage of the creation of the front cover was to add more cover lines and authenticity. The new cover lines are the yellow writing in the black boxes. They simply tell the reader what else to expect in the magazine. The major addition to the magazine at this stage was to introduce the barcode section. It was created. in Photoshop with different shapes and tools. The first thing I did to create it was to create an outline that would bee used so as I knew what size to keep the box. I did this by using the rectangular marquee tool and made very thin lines. After I had an outline of a box I started adding text and other boxes. The top part was created by making a text box and writing inside in a yellow font. The second part meant that I had to create a yellow box via use of the rectangular marquee tool again. Once I had filled it in yellow using the bucket tool, I again used the text box to create more words and this time put it white in colour.

The barcode underneath the yellow box is something that I took from the Internet. I probably could have made one on Photoshop however it would have taken a very long time and a great deal of patience and time using different brush sizes. The only other thing that took some time to create was the selection of rings next to the word 'com'. I had to make a variety of circles both black and white and placed them in order to create the effect I have.







This is the final draft for the front cover of the magazine. I have added an Issue number and a date in the top left and right corner to add that extra authenticity. As well as this, you can see that all of the text is in line with each other and justified. For example, the left hand side is all aligned; the end of Bruno Mars, New York and Takeover are all in line with the end of the title page. It is essential that most of the text is aligned so as the magazine face does not appear too scrambled and confusing.

Front Cover Issue

The two images above represent a typical music magazine front cover. The medium close up shot of the model is the most notable thing with the two so I wanted to follow this convention when producing my magazine. As well as this, the model is positioned in front of the title so as to convey their importance within this particular edition of the magazine. Usually the cover model is the person that has the most time given to them within the magazine. Another convention that both magazines have followed, that I too will do, is to use the same colour scheme. Using too many colours on the front cover would make it look unappealing to the target audience. By simply sticking to 3 or 4 colours, the you keep the magazine in order and not look too messy. You would also notice how different words on the page are in different sizes and colours to others. This is to add emphasis on certain words. As well as this, the larger the word, then probably the longer the article is within the magazine. It is usually the models name that is the largest word as they are the main focus of the magazine.

The two images above are of two front covers that I produced. The one on the right hand side was the original cover I was going to use for the final piece of coursework however I decided against this. The model looks to young for the article I have written about him (a drug ridden song artist). As well as this, I did not have appropriate pictures to use for my double page spread and I did not want to use a different model for the article based product as magazines in the industry today use cover models as their focus of the magazine and you would find an extended story or interview based around them. Because of this, I opted to do another photo shoot with another model and produced the front cover on the left of the screen. I kept the layout exactly the same however changed the colours. I did this as the picture did not suit a red colour theme. I thought yellow looked the most appropriate as it can be visible seen against the black that is on the page. As well as the yellow colour, I started playing around with the colour of the background before I had properly assembled everything. The background was changed to blue, but as you can see from below, it does not look very appealing to the reader so I changed it back to white.

Potential Photos 2

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These are just a few pictures I took of another person. In order to create the moving image above, I went on a website called Picason where I uploaded a few photos and then copied the link into my blog. It is a gif format. I used the hat and the glasses to make the model more like a singer as him standing there in just a suit could make the magazine more like a fashion one. After looking through all of the pictures, I opted to use the picture below.