Progress towards final pages

So far for my work I have:

• The photographs from my cover and double page spread
• Decided on the fonts I will use in my final pages
• Chosen a colour scheme for my magazine
• Started work on my final products

What I need to do from now is:

• Find or take some more photos just for my contents
• Download or fix the fonts I'm using for the front cover in Photoshop (if not then find a good font in the default fonts)
• Create content ideas to use in my contents page
• Finish my final products

Work so far

After a bit of experimenting I finally found some colours that might look good as a colour scheme. I used all four of them to see which one looked the best and considered which would suit a rock magazine more. The green and the purple did not look that good when I tried them. The blue did look good however I'm not sure if it would suit a rock magazine. The red also looked good and might work with the genre better. Once my final products are nearly finished I might try using both of these colour schemes and seeing which looks the best. 

Also I have decided that instead of using an effect on my front cover main image, I would just leave it as the plain image as the effects looked a bit unusual and didn't work well with any colour scheme I tried. 

Currently I am having issues with using fonts from DaFont. I don't know how to download them and just type them onto Photoshop which means there will be no white background. I have screen shots of them saved, however they do have a white background and since they are slightly blurry when you zoom in It is impossible to just delete the white background with a magic wand tool as there is a white boarder around the letters which makes it look vey bad. I can erase this but it takes some time and I had problems just copying things over to Photoshop in the college and Javis Cocker magazine.

Finally I too come up with some things to put as content in my contents page. It is nearly complete, however all of the text currently just says "place holder" and the images are just purple boxes showing where they will be. As soon as I work out what to put on and get the photos I will replace these.

Photoshop Experiments

when trying to get a colour scheme for my magazine using the photographs I had taken, I found it fairly difficult. I then came up with an idea that maybe if I edited the image on photoshop, it might help give me some idea for a colour scheme and it may also look better and more interesting than just a normal photograph.





I took the photograph I wanted to use as my front cover image for my magazine and used the adjustment tools on photoshop to edit the picture, for example make it black and white.





Original image:                                   


The image before I edited it.

















Black and White:



I made the image black and white hoping the limited colours in it would help me chose a colour.
















Polarised:

After a lot of clicking on various tools and testing what they do to the image I found this one. I'm not to sure about it and I really don't think I could use it on a front cover of a magazine, however I like how it is more interesting than just a plain image and looks somewhat more artistic.

Photography

When taking my photos it might help to think about what how make my picture better.

Techniques:
Some different techniques used in photography I might use.

• Shot distance
• Use of tilts
• Shot composition
• Eye line
• Tone
• Line
• Colour, including vivid, primary and monochromatic colour
• texture and hints on creating texture 
• Patterns and hints of capturing patterns

Shot distance types

ELS/LS

These are good for showing the insignificance of a character or for showing characters powerlessness within an overpowering environment. Also good for establishing location.

MLS/MS

These types of photographs are good for showing movement or a balanced tracking of characters and their environment. (MS is used most commonly in magazine front covers.) 

MCU/CU

these are good for portraiture of for moving image interviews.

BCU/ECU

these are good for showing the significance of the character of for showing characters as powerful. Highly useful for drawing attention to the characters emotions.

Tilt shots

Tilt up shot-Low angle 

Used to convey power or dominance

Tilt down shot-High angle

Used to convey vulnerability or weakness of a person in a shit and to demonstrate a dominant point of view.

• When taking my photographs I will be using a few different types of shot distances, however for things like my front cover I will most likely be using a mid-shot (MS) as this is most commonly used.

Written questionnaire results

some percentages have been rounded up to the nearest whole number.
5 people were given the questionnaire, they could give more than one answer.

Question 1: "What is the first thing you see on a magazine?
Out of 7 answers given, 3 (43%) said the first thing they see on a magazine was the main image. This means I will have to focus on my cover images and make sure it draws readers in. 

Question 2: "Why do you read the magazines you do / what makes you want to?"

Out of 6 answers given, 3 (50%) said they read magazines because it contains bands or musicians they are interested in. 2 (33%) said they read it because the contains of the magazine interests them. This means I should focus on bands / musicians a lot when making my magazine.

Question 3: "What kind of article do you like to read? (what is it about)"

Out of 6 answers given, 4 (67%) said they like to read articles about interviews or question and answer sessions with bands or celebrities. This shows I should definitely make my article some form of interview or Q&A.

Question 4: "Do you like to read articles about male or female people?"

Out of 5 answers given, 4 (80%) said they would prefer the article to be about a female person. This strongly implies that I should make my article about a female person.

Question 5: "Would you like competitions?"

Out of the 5 answers given, 100% of the answers were for yes. This means I should use the idea of a competition to bring people in. 

Question 6: "If yes, what kind of things do you like to win?"

Out of 5 answers given, 3 (60%) said they wanted tickets as prizes. This implies that I should use tickets as the competition prizes to try to interest people more.

Question 7: "Do you use magazine websites or online subscriptions?"

Out of 5 answers given, all 100% said no. This could imply that an advert about web-subscription would be on the magazine as they could be trying to push it and get more people into it. 

Question 8: "What kind of images do you like to see in a music magazine?"

Out of 7 answers given, 5 (71%) said they like to see images of the band / celebrity. This gives a clear indication about what I should use for my main images.

Question 9: "Would you like quizzes?"

Out of the 5 answers given, 3 (60%) said that they didn't want quizzes, this vaguely implies that I shouldn't use quizzes or at least not as a main sell line. However the answers were fairly close (2 yes, 3 no) perhaps if I had asked more people I would have got something different, therefor I could still probably use a quiz if I'm not sure what to have as a sell line or contents for the contents page.

Question 10: "Would you like free posters?"

Out of 5 answers given, 4 (80%) said they would like a free poster in the magazine. This is a strong indication that using a free poster offer as a sell line would draw in people. 

Potential Problems With My Coursework

Front cover images:

Problems with the lighting

(Problems with the camera flash):

When taking photographs in the past (particularly in the dark) I have noticed that the flash on my camera makes things look pretty bad. In order to fix this I will try to stay to places where my flash is not needed, or if I do need to use a dark area (for example, to get the dark background I wanted so I could make the text contrast it easily) I would try and make sure the flash doesn’t ruin the image by positioning my model in a way were it is not noticeable or where the flash being bad adds to the theme of the image (this being a Halloween issue means that poor quality lighting of the flash might make it work more).

Problems with the background (colour, etc.):

When taking my photographs for my magazine I will have to make sure the background is correct. You wouldn’t have a front cover photo with the background as just someone’s house. I will need to find somewhere where there is one solid background colour (for example using a white wall).

Article Inside Magazine

Language:

When writing my Article for my double page spread I will have to think about what language I use. A rock music magazine isn’t likely to use very formal language. Therefore I will have to think about what kind of language I use and if it is appropriate.

Techniques:

Another thing I will have to think about when writing the article is what kind of things I would use or more importantly how I will include it into the article. Things like pull quote or other things to make the article better and more professional. I will have to consider careful where to put them and how I can put them in.

Amount:

A less important thing I will have to think about is how much I write for my article. It isn’t too difficult as there isn’t really a certain amount, simply not too little and not too much. 

Images to accompany article

Editing:

One thing I will have to consider is that these images will have to be smaller than the front cover ones, however when taking them with the camera they will be the same size. This will mean I will have to manually make them smaller using Photoshop. I will have to make sure that I don't use images where the quality is effected by this (at least not noticeably). More importantly I will have to make sure that the images I use will still look okay and be easy to see and look good after the size has been decreased. 

Research into previous students work

What have i learned from looking at previous students work?
After looking at previous students magazines I have noticed that it is very important that I get my layout and presentation right as it can make a lot of difference. Also my use of IT, mainly photoshop, must be good as blurred or badly cropped images or font will make my magazine instantly look very bad.

How will I apply this to my own work?
I will have to make sure I use photoshop correctly and well when making my magazine so I don't do anything like poor quality cropping or other things. Also I will make sure i don't use any blurred images or fonts. I will put a lot of time and thought into how i do my layout and the presentation of my magazine.

Font ideas for my magazine

An important part of my magazine is the typography I use one it. To get ideas about what fonts I should  use on my magazine I went on a site called "DaFont" and looked at some of the fonts that were on there.

Fonts for masthead
When looking for fonts for my masthead I tried to look for bold fonts so they would stand out, however I also tried to look for fonts that worked with a rock music magazine, so things like eroded fonts.

One of the fonts I found that looked good was this one. I like it because it's fairly bold and stands out and it also matches the rock music genre of my magazine quite well. However this one may not be that good because of the back ground on each letter, this might make it difficult to work with as it's black and white, parts of it might end up being hard to see. 

Another one I found was this one. This one is good because it fits the theme of my magazine very well and it looks really good. Also it is a lot more interesting then just plain font. However I probably won't use this font as it doesn't stand out very well and it's a bit too fancy to be a masthead font.

Unlike the last one, this one does stand out fairly well and still fits the rock music genre. It looks really good and is basically just block capitals made more interesting. However the white line inside each letter takes away the boldness of it making it stand out slightly less. Other than that, I like this font.

Another good font I found was this one. This one is really good because it stands out a lot and is in block capitals which for a masthead is great. The eroded effect on the letters make it look a lot more interesting and matches my magazine. I don't really like the way it makes the letters look however, for example the N in this isn't just a block capital N, the middle part has been put right at the top. Also the eroded effect is good but the way it's been done almost fades the letters. Overall I really like this font however.

This particular one I really like. It works very well, it's all in capitals and the letters are clear even with the eroded effect meaning it stands out fairly well and The eroded effect means it works really well with my genre of music. However the letters aren't that bold meaning they could stand out a bit more, but they still stand out well without being bold.

This is another really good one. I like how the letters are bold and all in capitals, this was one of the things I was looking for. I also like how they're not just plain block capitals but look more interesting by moving the letters in each word out of place. There is still a slight eroded effect which means it fits the genre of my magazine, however the effect isn't as noticeable as i would like.

I think out of these fonts I found i would probably choose on of the last two a there were nearly perfect, they stood out well enough, they were in block capitals, they matched the genre and they will probably be easy to use on the cover. The only real problem is, while I would like to use one of these, I had trouble when doing my Javis Cocker magazine task because I tried to use fonts from this site and for some reason they didn't work well at all on photoshop. Hopefully this problem can be resolved.

Flat plan for my magazine

This is the flat plan for my magazine front cover. It is simile to some of the other designs I did as preliminary tasks before this one, but that design has worked fairly well so far, it as managed to get the photo in without blocking anything important, for example having the masthead over someones face, and it has looked fairly good one things like the Javis Cocker magazine front cover. The main image will most likely take up the whole page.

The text one it are in different sizes to show which is the most important information and to get the reader to see things before other things.

It has everything it needs including a barcode in the bottom right corner and the date and price in the top right corner.





This is the flat plan for my contents page. Somewhat similar to the one i made for the college besides the layout of the images.

Like the preliminary task it has bigger and smaller pictures to make  sure the reader is drawn to parts of it. It also has the title and images justified to the right of the page, however I moved the main image from the bottom of the page to the top right corner as i thought this looked better and would be better for making the reader see tat first as not only would it be bigger but people read from top to bottom so they should be looking there first anyway.

I also added a part for advertising things like online subscriptions for the magazine as a lot of magazines use that now.





Finally this is my flat plan for my double page spread. To make it look better and more eye catching I wanted to have either the main image in the corner of the first page taking up most of it, or the main image actually as the back ground for the entire two pages. This would be done by having the person stand a lot more to the left of the photo while the right side has less in it and is pretty much one colour, like black or dark colours.

It is important that the right side is basically one colour as this will be the side the text for the article goes on, if it is different colours it will be hard to find a colour for the text that is visible on the background of the photo, for example if the image was dark colours I'd use white text to contrast it and make sure the text was clearly visible.

Rationale Questions:

Colour scheme for magazine:

I do not know my colour scheme for my magazine yet as I need to match the colour scheme with the main photo. I am unsure what to use as my main photo right now and I am unsure what to use as my main photo right now.

When I choose my main photo I will take a look at the colours in the photo and decide what colours to use as my main colour scheme.

A good idea for my magazine would be to use a contrast of black/white or dark/light as this means it’s easy to make the text stand out from the images and can also look very professional.

Image Usage:

The front cover image will probably have one person on it, maybe more, and will be a mid-shot. It will take up the whole front cover with the masthead, sell lines and other things over the image it’s self in a way that makes the page look more interesting but doesn’t hide any of the needed parts of the image.

The main image for the double page spread will be of the same person or people on the front cover and will fill up most or the entire first page on the double page spread. It might be a interesting idea to take an image which covers the whole two pages but the page where the article needs to go unimportant parts of the image (for example if the image was of a person on a stage, the image would be of the person more to the left and the rest of the stage or other things on the right).

The contents page will use and image of the person on the front cover as the main image, this will be larger than the rest as shown on the flat plan for my contents page. The rest will be of other people as musicians or bands to show what would be in the rest of the magazine.

All the images I use on my magazine will be related to the rock genre of music.

Text/language Usage:

The language I will use in my magazine will be somewhat in between formal and not. This is so it can still sound like a magazine and like it’s talking personally to the reader, but also can be informative about what it’s about. Also this will make it easier to write, as I don’t tend to use a great deal of slang terms usually. It won’t be made to sound intelligent and clever using very formal language and long words, however it also won’t be very slang and informal. 

Layout and Font:

For things like the masthead, titles and sell lines I will use fonts like IMPACT in block capitals as this will stand out and make sure it’s the first thing the readers see. However I may look online to try and find some more interesting fonts that are textured, this would make the fonts look more interesting and professional. Generally the font will have to be bold and block capitals most likely. I will have to use different sizes of font for different things on my magazine, for example the mast head will be larger than the sell lines.

For things like the font in the article I will use fonts like Calibri as this is a simple font, which just seems like plain, normal text however it is also very easy to understand, including in very small sizes.

It might be interesting to use a diagonal title on my double page spread to create an “energetic layout” this might look good and be a more unique idea however I think I would prefer to use a straight title as this would still look professional and good depending how I do it and it would be easier to control the layout and make it look more organised.

A lot of the texts I used will be over lapping the images, as this will help the cover look interesting and better.