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!