LO4: Final magazine pages

LO4: Drafts of magazine

Front Cover

Here I am using the Characters tab to edit my strapline. In this tab I can edit the width, height and spacing of characters to make it appear more prominent on the cover 

The most noticeable change here is probably that I changed the background to black, this was so that the cover was better suited to the dark connotations of this genre of music. This also means that the white text comes off the page much better I think.
I also decided to extend the white banner at the bottom across the whole page.



 Here I have created a sticker by using the elipse tool. After I rasterized the shape I used the eraser tool to remove parts of the sticker to make it appear more like the sticker in my reference front cover.

 In this screenshot I am recolouring my sticker and using a heavier erase tool to make it appear more like the sticker on the Kerrang cover.

This is the first draft for my front cover. After my previous screenshot I added a white banner beneath my Masthead to make it stand out more, I also turned down the opacity on the Masthead's Drop Shadow to make it appear more subtle and so that it made it appear more like a shadow rather than an indent against the white background.  I have also added more banners to follow the typical conventions of a front cover and re-positioned my sticker to where an image of the album previously was. The most obvious problem, I think, with this draft is the large area of white space on the left side. Another problem with this version are the 'posters' as they don't visibly stand out like they do on the real magazines I have looked at. I will change this by making them appear more vibrant, I will also rescale the main poster as it is hidden behind the main cover image. I will also need to add another colour to my cover in order to make it stand out more.

Double Page Spread

This was the first draft of the Double Page Spread, But I then decided this image would work better as a title page and so I transferred the existing text on to the new Double Page Spread.

This was the second draft to my DPS (Double Page Spread), as you can see the Text has not yet been transferred to the image and the band's logo is anchored to the image. I then changed this so that logo was on a separate page all together (left). In a similar fashion to my DPS Title Page I decided to use the logo as a border for my text.

After creating this page border I then moved from Photoshop to Adobe InDesign, this is because Photoshop is only a photo-editing software whereas InDesign is a publishing software and was therefore more useful for creating my article. In this screenshot I am using the Columns and Margins dialogue box so that I can correctly align my text to fit typical conventions of a double page spread of a magazine- like the example below.

An example of an actual Double Page Spread (Kerrang Magazine)

 This is the third draft for my magazine's DPS. Again, following typical conventions of a magazine double page spread I have; inserted a quote in the centre of the article to catch the eye of the reader, made a Lead before the main body of the article to introduce the reader to the article and placed the main body of the article in columns.

I took inspiration from this Rocksound Double Page Spread (right) when creating this. This is most noticeable in the Lead paragraph which is highlighted so that this stands out to the reader more and is generally just more aesthetically pleasing. 

CONTENTS PAGE

LO4: Sub editing task

In my peer asessment I have been told to be more aware of my use of language, due to the age of my target audience I think this is a suitable amount of explicit language but I will be careful to not go too over the top. I could also censor this to make it more suitable.

I have also been told to be careful about the way I phrase things, e.g 'jab at his ex-band'. This could be classed as slating so I need to phrase this in a nicer way.

I'll also be removing 'Schecter' this is a brand of guitar but this may be unclear to the reader as to what a 'Schecter' actually is. 

I will also be adding a title and a lot more text to this article as I've been told it is too short.

LO3: Setting up InDesign

When first creating a new document in InDesign this dialogue comes up. This dialogue box is used to change the specifications for the document I am creating.

I used these arrows in this dialogue box to change the size of the document. I changed these measurements so that they match an existing magazine (NME 16 April 2016). As this is my contents page I only need to set up one portrait page.

 This dialogue box allows me to change the orientation of the page.
For my double page spread I set this to landscape. I then changed the size to A3 (below) as the double page spread of course needs to stretch over two pages.

As my double page spread has a border, I used the Margins and Columns dialogue box to adjust where the columns for my main body will be placed on the page.

LO3: Setting up Photoshop

When creating a new Photoshop document, this dialogue box comes up. 

To make my front cover I changed the width and height to match that of a real magazine (NME 16 April 2016).

I use this dialogue box to change the resolution to 300 ppi as this is the resolution needed for printing.

I used these rulers to outline important things for my front cover. First of all I put in the margins which are 0.56cm in to the page, just a little below the magazine I measured. (Kerrang's May 2016 issue has a 0.6cm margin).

LO3: Final house style designs

LO3: Demonstrating conventions of a music magazine

LO3: Evidence of production

LO3 and LO4: Photographs

Best Photographs

Pastiches

These particular shots were taken to pastiche other existing photographs. These two images (right and above ) are high angle shots. This is used to make the reader feel overpowering as well as making the image just look more interesting. 

I did experiment with this a little bit when taking my photographs as I thought it would look good on a title page or double page spread - like the RockSound one above.

These are two photographs where I focused on  this high angled shots.

Editing Photographs

Editing Cover Image

Above is the original image. After opening the image up in Adobe Photoshop the first thing I did was use the spot healing tool to get rid of pimples, blackheads, moles and stray hairs around the glabella. 

Here I have switched to the regular healing tool to get rid of 'bag lines' under the eyes and to add some more colour to the area around his eyes. After this I switch between the spot healing tool and regular healing tool to finish smoothing over his face. I do this to get rid of blotchy areas of skin, smooth over cracks in his lips and make his general complexion look smoother.



Using the quick selection tool I select the centre of his eyes and use this dialogue box to change their brightness. I do this to try and make him appear less drowsy.

The image above shows a comparison of the final version (left) and the original (right).

Editing Title Page Image

This (above) is the original image prior to editing.

Like my cover image, the first thing I did with this image was put in to Adobe Photoshop and smooth over both of the model's features to remove pimples and other blemishes. Then using the magic lasso tool I outlined them both and copied them in to their own layer so that they could be edited separately. I also coloured Lewis Foxhall's hair (right), so that it appeared slightly more vibrant.

This is the image after I added a black and white filter to the background, I removed this however after deciding that Lewis Wright (left) blended in to the background too much.

Editing Double Page Spread Image

 Here (Above) I am scaling my image by simply using 'Free Transform'.

 Then, like with my title page image, I used the magic lasso tool to select the two models and re-layer them. I do this so that I am free to edit the background as a whole without it affecting the images of them. The dialogue box in this screenshot is used to change the brightness of the background.
Because I am having an article on this image I decide to darken the background quite a lot so that the reader is able to focus on the text much easier.
As the image is a little short after it has been scaled I use the clone tool to cover a whole section of the left hand side.(Right)
Then I use the blur and healing tools to patch up the visible line from where the image has been cloned. (Below)

After fixng the visible line in the photograph I then used the blur tool very faintly over the entire background again so the reader can focus on the text. I then added a black-to-transparent gradient over the top with a very low opacity for the same reason.

After this the image was ready to edit as a DPS so I set up all my reference lines using rulers and imported the band logo.