Double Page Spread Development

The double page spread was probably the hardest aspect of all 3 elements for me to produce. While I had had ideas for the other two before starting, I quickly discovered my ideas for a double page spread definitely didn’t work when taken to paper. My plan was to make everything look like it was written on to a pitch, like on pitch advertisements, or team names/logos in American football. This was a difficult effect to get right, and was deemed inappropriate for the readership.

I decided again to simplify and try and keep as many of the visual themes as possible. I felt by now I had developed a good style throughout and wanted to carry this over. With the guides already made up (See previous posts) I first setup a black box layout, similar to those used on my contents page. With this visual style kept, I was a bit freer to change the style for the rest of the page, as is often seen in magazines. After playing around with different variations, I decided to carry over the “exploding paint blots” from the cover style. I also went for a distressed look to my text as I felt this looked more professional and gritty.

I used Freshman for my header font, a classic Collegiate font. Using the same custom brush set as I did for the Cover picture I applied them to the text to make it looked slapped on. Then using the rubber tool, picking different brush styles and different opacity levels, I lightly rubbed away section of the text for the “distressed” look. I carried these techniques over to my images as well, using the paint splats to this time define movement instead of noise. I felt this helps show the hard hits and physical nature of the American sports. To take the images away from their various backgrounds, I mainly used the Extraction tool. This lets you define an area you want to extract by drawing around the image with a pen and then filling the shape made to define the extraction area. This was useful where magic wands weren’t helpful.

I had up to this point been using a solid white background. This felt a little flat to me and needed something discreet in the background. I used rows of stars behind the headers and body copy, again with the slightly rubbed out distressed look. These were put on angles in the corners. Lastly, I put a column of stars in gutter. This gave it a more defined looked and pushed home the American style.

When writing the body copy, I didn’t want it to just be generic straight columns.  I used quotes, using the Freshman font, and the rubbed out distressed look. Placing these large font quotes in between columns so they crossed over into the text safe zones meant that when it cam to writing body copy, the shape of the body copy morphs around  the quotes. This helps add discreet change to the shape of the body copy.

Ideas

A while back, when creating my masthead, Simon encouraged us to be creative with the formations of the words. After a one to one, I was told to consider different ways to present the words, such as focusing on sound, more exploration of symbolism and positioning of the letters. Below are examples of the experiments in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator:

Cover Development

Developing the Cover for the magazine was a key element of the project. It had to be grabbing for the audience, but actually appealing to them. I wanted to have an image that was relevant to my double page spread on American Sports in the UK, but wasn’t sure whether firstly it would alienate the audience or if would I have the resources to take an image that conveyed my themes. In the end I decided to keep it simple, taking inspiration from Time Magazine covers, where the main image is a facial portrait.

So my concept was to have a generic American football player on the cover just looking forward at the camera. I looked for some time for a place I could borrow or use an American Football helmet but this wasn’t possible. To show the audience what I wanted to convey I would use the classic “war paint” sun block that football and baseball players wear in America.

With the concept ready I took a range of shots, asking a friend to pose for me, wearing a sports top with padded shoulders to give the effect of an American football jersey with protective pads. I took photos of different poses, such as a dead pan face, a smile, a scream etc.

I chose the scream shot as I felt it was the most powerful. The next step was to take it on to Photoshop, separating the model from the background. I then Desaturated the image (turning it greyscale) as I later planned to heavily contrast it with any colour on the page. However, this made the image slightly flat, especially with the relatively low camera quality of the original image. To give it a little bit more depth, I ever so slightly changed the “Curves” of the image. This tool lets the user precisely decide how light is used on the page, manipulating the Input and Output  tones. This just gave the image a little bit more “pop” than before.

The next step was painting on War Paint (as my model had refused to put it on). After using a range of different, brushes, layer blending options, layer styles and artistic filters to try and make the stripes of paint look real. However nothing was really working. I had to figure out a way to work around the unrealistic war paint (as without them there is no way to identify it is an American Football Player). 

I took inspiration from a music Video, where when the singer screams, an inky stylised sketch of the singer is layered over the actual footage. I took a similar concept for my main Image. Using a downloaded set of custom brushes for Photoshop (which I had from previous out of college project)I took my image, and using the colour selecting Eye Dropper tool, took a colour from the image, and then added an exploding paint brush ink blot coming off of the picture. This gives a cool effect, giving more fury to the screaming football player, and justifying unrealistic colour. Lastly I added yellow stips to the jersey. This once again gave more pop off the page to the image which was dearly needed.

When deciding layout, I sketched ideas firstly before developing prototypes on the computer. While I had a general design concept, I needed to make different variations to find the style most effective and appealing to my audience. After handing out a questionnaire with 3 different designs, my results showed me to take my original concept, and take some from other designs, namely the “sidebar” on the left hand side. With the image and design finished I compiled them on screen.

In Photoshop I first added the Vector Layer of my Logo (becoming a vector smart image in Photoshop) as my masthead, and then got onto the design of the side bar. This was made of a black rectangle and then the information as well as my “symbol tagline” for finger on the pulse. These were separated by the “CMYK” colour dots which I had used in the Contents page, as it was important for me to keep an ongoing visual style throughout. With my image now placed at the far back of the image, everything else laid over the top.

A problem I had here was that dense black from the image made the masthead unreadable. As it was supposedly a new magazine, I couldn’t afford to put the image over the mast head as the brand isn’t known. To tackle this problem I place the masthead on top of the image, gave it a thick white stroke and a drop shadow. This made it look good and also successfully separated it from the image.

I then put up the various sub-headings. There was a problem with original layout as the subheadings were on top of each other like this:

Sub-Heading
Sub-Heading

This made it hard to identify whether topics were related or not. So I differed slightly from my original concept, placing them in completely separated  sections of the page. I also wanted to use a sticker effect. To do this, with a ellipse tool I made a circle (keeping the dimensions using Shift and Alt), gave it a white stroke and a slight drop shadow, then warping the shape of the circle to look like one corner has not been pulled down. Next, I separate out the effects layers from the layer, and then warp the drop shadow, under the unstuck section. This part has text over it look like part of the sticker.

Finally, I wanted a background to the image of the football player; something that suited the visual style of my magazine as a whole. Once again I was looking something with "pop" and a pulsing energy to it. After trying different things such as tares through the page or pulses, I decided to use the grid used in the contents page. Then with multiple Cyan, Magenta and Yellow circles, each with a Darken Blending option I created a line of colour blobs behind the player. Although not particularly relevant to the subject, it was suiting to the style and gave the extra level of visual interest I was looking for.

Now I just had to group things into the proper layers and place everything where it needed to be, allowing room for print errors around the side before having my final Cover.

Creating Layouts

Today we began creating the layouts for our double page spread. This involved creating all the guidelines and measurements for gutters and margins, so that when it came to creating the spread, we would know how to layout the page and create the guides.

This inolved calculating the areas for each column of the page. After first creating margins (remembering the Optical Centre, where some margins are larger than others), we are left with the amount of "safe space" we can use to add our content. To get the width of each column we want to use, we decide on the size of the gutters and the amount of gutters, and use these figures to calculate the size of each column. I used a classic 3 column by page layout, as it thought it was simple and gave me room to add all the elemnts, hopefully in an intrestring way.

I drew this out on Photoshop, which lets you create custom guides for yourself. Using the rulers to measure the space (using the calculations from before) you can then pull guidelines out from the rulers and place them in the places you want.

I also drew this out on to paper. This way I could quickly sketch out a plan, deciding where to place different elements, noting design choices etc. This is helpful as a designer so you don't get stuck when you come to working, and works well as evidence that you have thought through the process.

Supplementary Photographs

While I will be using as many of my own photographs as possible, to get the magazine looking more professional, I will need to use some Photographs by other people for instance pictures of celebrities or of events I wasn't at. There are many ways to go about this in a professional way.

Firstly, I have been looking at websites of related media, e.g. local sports teams or American Sport Organisations in the UK and emailing them asking them to give an estimate price of how much it would be to buy the rights to the images. These are just quick emails explaining the project and what is needed from them. Although it is unlikely that these sources will reply, but showing evidence of my contact shows I have made an attempt at getting the copyright.

Next, I looked at Royalty Free Stock Image websites. These websites offer you images for free, and the form of payment is a credit on your media. For instance, if I take an image from one of these websites, somewhere in my magazine I will have to show a  link or copyright name for the Photograph. You see these often in websites and magazines so is a perfectly legitimate way to get secondary photographs.

Lastly, using Getty Images, an App gives you a quote for the full publishing rights of an image. The user says how it will be used, the type of media, length of time of use, size and multiple other factors to give you a price of publication. This is a great way to get pictures of celebrities or events that I can’t photograph myself, and the database of choice is huge.

I will next move into my own original photography.