Monday, 18 February 2013
Friday, 15 February 2013
Monitoring week 6 - Finishing off
This week in my schedule I allowed lots of contingency time to be finishing off my magazine pages development on InDesign, which proved necessary as I was still working on my Contents page on Tuesday, and I also allowed plenty of time to check over all my final products, and to export them and upload them onto moodle to be marked. Luckily, although there have been setbacks throughout the production I tackled them quickly and efficiently so this week I was right on target to where I need to be in my schedule. I used my time wisely to check over my products, make little adjustments and correct things like spelling mistakes or other faults, and the extra time I allowed for exporting and uploading my product came in particularly handy as I had a few problems here. I had problems exporting a few of my documents properly for a number of reasons. The first was my front cover which I made on photoshop which when I exported as a JPEG came out blurry, despite having use high definition images, I soon found the problem which was that I had created it on a low resolution document, although of the correct size, which explained why even the text was blurry, having fixed this I had to make a few amendments to the document because of the new resolution, which didn't take too much time, but it all adds up. The second problem that I had was that some of the objects imported into my InDesign pages that had been created on Photoshop such as the common paint splatters I have featured throughout my magazine came out blurry when I exported the InDesign documents as JPEGs. I had overseen this before because it is common for images to look blurry in InDesign so I didn't realise there was a problem. I then found it was because the orignal photoshop files were too small and of too low a resolution. I then created new identical ones of a more appropriate size and resolution and replaced the objects before exporting again successfully. Having to re-do these did not hinder the overall outcome but it did take time. Finally another problem was that I hadn't set up one of my InDesign pages correctly, with it 5mm too short in height and so I had to change this to match the rest and then re-arrange and resize all the objects on the page appropriately to fit the new proportions, again which was time consuming. Even following these problems when I came to put all the exported JPEGs of pages onto one big InDesign document, I had to work out how to do it because unlike most peoples' products, I had three triple page spreads not doubles which made them awkward to fit onto InDesign pages, having to have the third page of each article on a double page template, with the other page left blank, so this part was quite time consuming. However I predicted that this stage of production would take a lot longer than I would expect and that various problems would crop up which is why I allowed a lot of time for it and additionally lots of contingency time.
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Contents Page development
Stage 1 - Setting up the layout
For the first stage of development for my contents page I first of all created my title, using the exact same typeface and font attributes as my cover, a technique I have seen in many high budget magazines. I teamed this with the brush font Levi Rebrushed which is one of my set title fonts, and contrasts greatly with the main title font as it is lower case, artistic and informal. The combination of quirky hand written fonts and bold serif fonts is another technique I have seen in other magazines, which I think is artistic and professional looking. I then created text boxes in the first column where I planned to list the content of my article, I broke these up into sections so that the contents is broken up and not too overwhelming, and created text boxes for the sub headers reading the titles of each of these sectors. I also created 3 graphics frames, the first for the main picture which is of Darrien Wright, the cover model which is the largest, also I created two graphics boxes underneath which were both the same size, filling the width of the second two columns of the page, therefore the same width as the contents list on the left. These will feature two other pictures representing two other articles in the magazine. Finally I have created smaller text boxes, which will contain page numbers for each of the articles that the images represent. I did not find this stage difficult because for structure I copied the layout of a professional magazine's contents page, I spent a lot of time looking at magazine stylistics and structures prior to development and this included contents pages, which gave me the idea to use these two fonts, which I have planned since creating my bible and flat plans.
Stage 2 - Importing Text and Images
For the first stage of development for my contents page I first of all created my title, using the exact same typeface and font attributes as my cover, a technique I have seen in many high budget magazines. I teamed this with the brush font Levi Rebrushed which is one of my set title fonts, and contrasts greatly with the main title font as it is lower case, artistic and informal. The combination of quirky hand written fonts and bold serif fonts is another technique I have seen in other magazines, which I think is artistic and professional looking. I then created text boxes in the first column where I planned to list the content of my article, I broke these up into sections so that the contents is broken up and not too overwhelming, and created text boxes for the sub headers reading the titles of each of these sectors. I also created 3 graphics frames, the first for the main picture which is of Darrien Wright, the cover model which is the largest, also I created two graphics boxes underneath which were both the same size, filling the width of the second two columns of the page, therefore the same width as the contents list on the left. These will feature two other pictures representing two other articles in the magazine. Finally I have created smaller text boxes, which will contain page numbers for each of the articles that the images represent. I did not find this stage difficult because for structure I copied the layout of a professional magazine's contents page, I spent a lot of time looking at magazine stylistics and structures prior to development and this included contents pages, which gave me the idea to use these two fonts, which I have planned since creating my bible and flat plans.
For the second stage I imported the pictures of my model, and the two other smaller pictures that represent my other two articles and also the text and sub headers that make-up the actual contents. One of the things I struggled with sightly here was that the pose of the model is a little awkward, and for all of it to fit in the box that makes up the structure of my contents page it looks a little small, however by increasing the size I filled up more of the space, even though parts of his feet are chopped off, yet you still get the full impact of the pose. The rest of this stage of development was easy because I had a clear structure which I think made it seem easy to read and has the correct balance between looking busy and interesting and looking too crowded. The fonts I had planned to use that are part of my font pallet for branding look effective also so I had no problems here. At this stage I felt my Contents page looked really professional but lacked the colour and texture that I aim to continue throughout my magazine for branding.
Stage 3 - Adding colour and texture
For my third stage of production I added the desired colour and texture that is consistent throughout my magazine by changing the colour of 'March 2013' to blue, and used the same blue for the messy paint stripes behind my tow columns of contents. I added an extra small column of contents and made the two smaller images smaller, because I felt they were two big and distracted attention from Darrien, who was meant to be my main image. I also wanted to create stronger definition between different parts of my contents, because I felt they were all too the same and seemed to blend into one, without anything to break them up. For this reason I made the page numbers bigger and changed them into the opposite colour - white, which I felt made them stage out more, and I altered aspects of my article titles and their descriptions, making the titles upper case and bold and the descriptions regular case and normal. Making these sort of adjustments improved the appearance of my contents page a lot and refined it in terms of branding, I did not find it difficult because I created present templates for features such as the paint splatters, and I have worked with the font Fundamental Brigade (used for the main body of contents) on my front cover and experimented with it so I had a good idea of what sort of settings would work most effectively such as spacing between letters and lines, boldness, and uppercase/lowercase etc.
Although what I was doing I felt I spent a fair bit of time creating my contents page, perhaps more than I would have liked to, because I found it difficult to replicate a contents page from a professional magazine that would also be suitable for mine, because unlike cover pages where a good choice of fonts and minimalist layout, and general simplicity can make them look very professional, contents pages are very varied from magazine to magazine. Contents pages rely on images from throughout the magazine that are striking, will draw readers in, and will look good together as a collection. I was limited with my pictures however because I didn't produce a whole magazine of pictures to chose from, so I only had 3 that I felt where appropriate, and only 3 articles represent. This was okay as many contents pages have only a few images like mine, but I felt I would have been less limited and could have even perhaps created a differently laid out contents page with more images had I took the time to photograph other things representative of some of my other articles mentioned just for the sake of the contents page.
Friday, 8 February 2013
Monitoring week 5
This week the aim has been to continue to develop and create InDesign pages for my remaining 2 articles and also create the cover of the magazine. Having finished writing for first drafts of both articles fairly early, and with little amendments to be made, my second drafts have been finished for more than a week, and so the time I built into my schedule to be finishing these I have used instead to get on with developing my InDesign pages. However I feel this was necessary because I work slower on InDesign.
Covers
This week I moved onto creating the cover of my magazine using the pictures I took of Darrien at the photo shoot in the QE studio. I found this much easier than developing InDesign pages and because I completed this quickly, and also because I couldn't choose one picture, I made 3 alternatives. I think that I was quick to do this because I had already created a mock-up front cover much earlier in the college year, which was very successful in appearance and in content also (e.g. effective sell lines) Having done this I kept the same sell lines, and the same type face properties such as font, spacing, size, uppercase/lowercase for all my sell lines, as well as the same properties for my masthead. All that remained to be done was to import the picture, pick out a colour scheme which would compliment it, and be readable, and arrange the sell line's around Darrien's pose. I found this fairly easy as I had already created a professional looking template cover, I just needed to tweak it and tailor it to the new images. I finished the covers early in the week and over the course of the week surveyed people to find their favourite...
Having created my 3 alternatives I could not choose myself which was my favourite, and I got rather mixed opinions when I casually asked my friends and teacher. For this reason I carried out a survey with my target audience. Although they were not strictly the ideal primary audience for a dance magazine, they were of the same age (16-19) and the same tribe (townies/trendies) From going this I learnt that the middle cover received the most votes with 14, second was the cover on the left with 6 and third was the one on the right with 1. Because of this I have chosen the middle one as the front cover, and to use the image use in the cover on the left on the contents pages.
Article 3 DPS
The second task that I set myself this week was to create a double page spread on InDesign for my third article '7 Styles of Dance you Never Considered' I found this double page spread much more challenging than the first and second DPS because of it's complex structure. Although I had ideas for stylistic such as fonts, and the use of oversized numbers that was effective in my first article, because it is a list article it was much more complicated and difficult to set out. First of all I had a variety of paragraph sizes for each section, and images that were of a variety of sizes and shapes, which must coincide with their related section of text. This variety of imagery also made it rather difficult to pick out a complimentary colour scheme for the whole collection of images.
Stage 1 - Setting up the Layout
In creating the layout for this article I made two large frames for a couple of the images I particularly favoured, and wanted to show the off, and also because I felt making them dramatically large would attract the attention of a reader flicking through the magazine. I created different sized frames for a range of different sized numbers to break up the page a bit, and make it look a little more interesting and a little less structured. I also made a variety of different sized and shaped frames for additional related images, which would also add variety and interest. Although not every section of text follows them I created three columns. Having certain sections of text reformed to columns would tidy up the appearance of the article I felt, as even with an explosive layout, there was still lots of text to be imported that would need a clear layout.
Stage 2 - Importing Text and Images
Next I imported the text of my article and my images. I had to play around with font sizes, image sizes, and image wrapping settings to ensure that it all fit on the page, which I found was quite difficult and tedious. I also had to keep swapping the sections around so they fit in the boxes and were still in close relation to the images which represented them, so that a clear link could be made. I also had some difficulty in wrapping because for some images like the oversized ones on page 1 and 3, I wanted to keep the picture's natural background, with the text sitting on top, but I wanted the text to wrap around the shape of the model. Because I couldn't wrap it to the image's alpha channel, which would allow it to follow the line of the model if she was against a transparent background, but in this case would simply wrap around the square image, I instead draw circle frames to create my own wrapping, which the text complied by, stopping it from running over the top of the model. After doing this I thought that the structure of the InDesign document looked clear and professional, but in general the InDesign document was very plain and black and white with not that much colour, especially for a young person's dance magazine.
Stage 3 - Adding colour and style
To add a little more life to my article I added several collage style techniques, ideas that I got from Company magazine. I added a couple of the paint brush strokes that I have previously used in articles using the template I created and changing the colour and orientation. I also added a lined paper pattern behind some sections of text, changing the colour to match the colour scheme. I added 'rays' around each of the styles of ballroom dance which looked like they'd been drawn on. I felt this draws attention to them, and breaks up a long piece of text and makes it seem more lively. I added grey highlighting behind the subtitles that I had put in uppercase form of the Courier New font, a branding technique that I've replicated throughout my magazine. And done a similar thing with the title of the article, putting a black highlight behind the text and inverted the text colour, which makes it very bold and eye catching, and because it is unusual it has a quirky, arty, stylish appeal to it. Finally I added some simple thin black lines to divide up the sections into a sort of table, just to add definition and clarity, something which I again took from reading Company magazine.
Overall I feel that I have worked well this week in producing a cover and another double page spread both of which I think are successful. I am glad I have reached this target because the double page spreads have been rather tedious in finding ways to make them work and allowing time to play around with different things to find the best outcome. I have completed what I aimed for in my schedule, but I think it important that I make a start on my contents page over the weekend and aim to have it done by sometime in the beginning of next week, because I want to allow time to make changes to my work after having them reviewed by my teacher, and being aware of how long InDesign pages can take I intend to devote a fair bit of time to creating the contents page.
Covers
This week I moved onto creating the cover of my magazine using the pictures I took of Darrien at the photo shoot in the QE studio. I found this much easier than developing InDesign pages and because I completed this quickly, and also because I couldn't choose one picture, I made 3 alternatives. I think that I was quick to do this because I had already created a mock-up front cover much earlier in the college year, which was very successful in appearance and in content also (e.g. effective sell lines) Having done this I kept the same sell lines, and the same type face properties such as font, spacing, size, uppercase/lowercase for all my sell lines, as well as the same properties for my masthead. All that remained to be done was to import the picture, pick out a colour scheme which would compliment it, and be readable, and arrange the sell line's around Darrien's pose. I found this fairly easy as I had already created a professional looking template cover, I just needed to tweak it and tailor it to the new images. I finished the covers early in the week and over the course of the week surveyed people to find their favourite...
Having created my 3 alternatives I could not choose myself which was my favourite, and I got rather mixed opinions when I casually asked my friends and teacher. For this reason I carried out a survey with my target audience. Although they were not strictly the ideal primary audience for a dance magazine, they were of the same age (16-19) and the same tribe (townies/trendies) From going this I learnt that the middle cover received the most votes with 14, second was the cover on the left with 6 and third was the one on the right with 1. Because of this I have chosen the middle one as the front cover, and to use the image use in the cover on the left on the contents pages.
Article 3 DPS
The second task that I set myself this week was to create a double page spread on InDesign for my third article '7 Styles of Dance you Never Considered' I found this double page spread much more challenging than the first and second DPS because of it's complex structure. Although I had ideas for stylistic such as fonts, and the use of oversized numbers that was effective in my first article, because it is a list article it was much more complicated and difficult to set out. First of all I had a variety of paragraph sizes for each section, and images that were of a variety of sizes and shapes, which must coincide with their related section of text. This variety of imagery also made it rather difficult to pick out a complimentary colour scheme for the whole collection of images.
Stage 1 - Setting up the Layout
In creating the layout for this article I made two large frames for a couple of the images I particularly favoured, and wanted to show the off, and also because I felt making them dramatically large would attract the attention of a reader flicking through the magazine. I created different sized frames for a range of different sized numbers to break up the page a bit, and make it look a little more interesting and a little less structured. I also made a variety of different sized and shaped frames for additional related images, which would also add variety and interest. Although not every section of text follows them I created three columns. Having certain sections of text reformed to columns would tidy up the appearance of the article I felt, as even with an explosive layout, there was still lots of text to be imported that would need a clear layout.
Stage 2 - Importing Text and Images
Stage 3 - Adding colour and style
To add a little more life to my article I added several collage style techniques, ideas that I got from Company magazine. I added a couple of the paint brush strokes that I have previously used in articles using the template I created and changing the colour and orientation. I also added a lined paper pattern behind some sections of text, changing the colour to match the colour scheme. I added 'rays' around each of the styles of ballroom dance which looked like they'd been drawn on. I felt this draws attention to them, and breaks up a long piece of text and makes it seem more lively. I added grey highlighting behind the subtitles that I had put in uppercase form of the Courier New font, a branding technique that I've replicated throughout my magazine. And done a similar thing with the title of the article, putting a black highlight behind the text and inverted the text colour, which makes it very bold and eye catching, and because it is unusual it has a quirky, arty, stylish appeal to it. Finally I added some simple thin black lines to divide up the sections into a sort of table, just to add definition and clarity, something which I again took from reading Company magazine.
Overall I feel that I have worked well this week in producing a cover and another double page spread both of which I think are successful. I am glad I have reached this target because the double page spreads have been rather tedious in finding ways to make them work and allowing time to play around with different things to find the best outcome. I have completed what I aimed for in my schedule, but I think it important that I make a start on my contents page over the weekend and aim to have it done by sometime in the beginning of next week, because I want to allow time to make changes to my work after having them reviewed by my teacher, and being aware of how long InDesign pages can take I intend to devote a fair bit of time to creating the contents page.
Saturday, 2 February 2013
Monitoring Post End of Week 4 - Slow but Expected
This week I have been working on my InDesign Page for my 2nd article, and have been making good process, but I have not dedicated much time to my Media Coursework this week as I had a big Art Coursework deadline that I built into my Schedule.
During the developpment of my InDesign page I found the process much quicker to complete because during my mock up process I established branding aspects that I have decided to use throughout my article in terms of font, colour, and layout aspects. Also I did lots of preparation before hand by drawing flat plans which I followed diligently when making this InDesign page, and luckily worked out just as effective and strong on InDesign as in the flat plans. I created folders of fonts and colour codes and shape templates like the brush stroke of colour that I use behind my article titles (the idea taken from company magazine) which I can change colour depending on the colour scheme of the article. I found organizing everthing this way also sped up the production process greatly. Also this quite an easy article to create on InDesign I felt because it is the most formal, and therefore required the most simple, sophisticated layout, which was easy to construct, the text all fitted in very well, and I did not need to add many things or alter things for a more exciting appearance because of the tone of the article.
Stage 1 - Setting up the layout
For the first stage of my development I laid out the InDesign page with text boxes and graphics boxes for various excerpts of text and images. I found during the mock-up process that I couldn't find a way to text wrap around another piece of text, and so for the quotes from Darrien and Cathy I have set up graphics boxes for the quotes to go into so I can wrap other text around them. I will create the quotes in the way I want them to look on photoshop and then import them.
Stage 2 - adding article and quotes
After importing the article and creating photoshop documents for the quotes from Cathy and Darrien, I found that the article fit well in the plan I had mapped out with the adjusting of font size for the main body of the article and the sub headers and the spacing between the paragraphs.
With the main body at around font size 10 and the sub headers around font size 13 (varied depending on the length of the sub header) I felt that the article looked clear and easy to read, and with the sub headers in a bigger size, underlined, and in the bold font 'Nouvelle Vague' (one of the set fonts I chose for sub headers throughout my magazine) they created easy access points for my reader to jump in and out of the article depending on which sub header interested them. The spacing between the paragraphs also made them clearly separated.
I added I drop cap to the first paragraph creating a clear entry point, and for the sections on careers advisor Cathy Hodgson and Teaching, I felt entry points were also needed. Because I didn't want to use more drop caps as I thought this would look unprofessional, I increased the size of the first two or three words to draw attention to the beginning of each section and create entry points but in a more subtle way.
For each of the quotes I surrounded them with oversized speech marks to draw attention to them and for a stylish, quite serious look. I chose quotes which I felt were quite emotive, and therefore will appeal to the reader and make them think either about taking up a job in dance in general or looking into teaching as a career.
For the breakout box at the end of the article which includes a tip from Cathy, I used the font Courier New, grey highlighting in the background, and an asterix in a scribbly, handwritten font. All aspects which make up a technique I intend to replicate throughout my magazine (see first article 'Eat Yourself Fit!') which creates branding throughout my magazine, and is inspired by a similar technique used in Company magazine. Using this technique separates it from the rest of the article, which not only draws attention to it, but also shows that the main body of the article is shorter than it would appear, and doesn't seem as lengthy, and so it won't put people off.
Stage 3 - adding colour and pictures
The first thing I did was add the pictures. I chose these pictures not only because they were good in themselves but also because I thought that they enforced really good diagonals into the text. The first is just a simple picture of a photographer in relation to the paragraph about dance photography, which breaks up a page which would otherwise be purely text and may appear boring and off putting for the reader. The second of Darrien and one of his students in the studio is good because their lines, and the angle and composition of the picture is very striking and therefore attracts attention. The parts of the studio you can see are well lit and so they make working life in the studio appealing, and the similarities between him and the student has an emotional impact on the reader because you can see how his teaching has effected the student. Also the determination on both of their faces has an emotional impact on the reader and is relative to the oversized quote where Darrien mentions how much he loves improving the confidence of a student. An angle of teaching that many people don't realize and therefore discover through this article. I chose to put both pictures in black and white because I felt it enforced a stylish, sophisticated tone, and I aim for this article to be fairly formal and serious in comparison to my other articles because of it's content.
Next I felt it was necessary to add some colour, although I though it looked clear and professional to have the simple black text on a white background, and so this aspect remained, I felt it was lacking life a little. Just adding a simple pale blue border aided this, and also lifted the text and made it seem smaller, so that the text heavy first impression is weakened slightly. Simply highlighting the sub headers (a technique inspired by Company magazine) also dramatically broke up the text on the 3rd page and added a little life. Finally putting the breakout box at the end in green also separated it further from the main body so that again the main body seemed shorted and more condensed, and the article as a whole more broken up.
The only thing missing from my article now is the small headshot picture of careers advisor Cathy Hodgson to accompany her interview. I am not expecting to gather this till much closer to the deadline, as she has a busy schedule, but the type of picture I require is not at all complex, and will need little editing if that, and so it does not worry me that I will run out of time to slot this in at the end.
Overall I think that I have made good progress this week as I have completed the majority of tasks set in my schedule. However I am a little behind in that I have only just begun my 3rd article on InDesign, and so I am no longer ahead but ever so slightly behind. Saying this I think that this is due to the workload I have had this week from having to do Art coursework, and I suspect that my working pace will increase in the following week because I will be able to focus on Media again, and from doing this in the past (the week before this week just passed) I find that I get through quite a lot of work and may even be ahead of schedule again.
During the developpment of my InDesign page I found the process much quicker to complete because during my mock up process I established branding aspects that I have decided to use throughout my article in terms of font, colour, and layout aspects. Also I did lots of preparation before hand by drawing flat plans which I followed diligently when making this InDesign page, and luckily worked out just as effective and strong on InDesign as in the flat plans. I created folders of fonts and colour codes and shape templates like the brush stroke of colour that I use behind my article titles (the idea taken from company magazine) which I can change colour depending on the colour scheme of the article. I found organizing everthing this way also sped up the production process greatly. Also this quite an easy article to create on InDesign I felt because it is the most formal, and therefore required the most simple, sophisticated layout, which was easy to construct, the text all fitted in very well, and I did not need to add many things or alter things for a more exciting appearance because of the tone of the article.
Stage 1 - Setting up the layout
For the first stage of my development I laid out the InDesign page with text boxes and graphics boxes for various excerpts of text and images. I found during the mock-up process that I couldn't find a way to text wrap around another piece of text, and so for the quotes from Darrien and Cathy I have set up graphics boxes for the quotes to go into so I can wrap other text around them. I will create the quotes in the way I want them to look on photoshop and then import them.
Stage 2 - adding article and quotes
After importing the article and creating photoshop documents for the quotes from Cathy and Darrien, I found that the article fit well in the plan I had mapped out with the adjusting of font size for the main body of the article and the sub headers and the spacing between the paragraphs.
With the main body at around font size 10 and the sub headers around font size 13 (varied depending on the length of the sub header) I felt that the article looked clear and easy to read, and with the sub headers in a bigger size, underlined, and in the bold font 'Nouvelle Vague' (one of the set fonts I chose for sub headers throughout my magazine) they created easy access points for my reader to jump in and out of the article depending on which sub header interested them. The spacing between the paragraphs also made them clearly separated.
I added I drop cap to the first paragraph creating a clear entry point, and for the sections on careers advisor Cathy Hodgson and Teaching, I felt entry points were also needed. Because I didn't want to use more drop caps as I thought this would look unprofessional, I increased the size of the first two or three words to draw attention to the beginning of each section and create entry points but in a more subtle way.
For each of the quotes I surrounded them with oversized speech marks to draw attention to them and for a stylish, quite serious look. I chose quotes which I felt were quite emotive, and therefore will appeal to the reader and make them think either about taking up a job in dance in general or looking into teaching as a career.
For the breakout box at the end of the article which includes a tip from Cathy, I used the font Courier New, grey highlighting in the background, and an asterix in a scribbly, handwritten font. All aspects which make up a technique I intend to replicate throughout my magazine (see first article 'Eat Yourself Fit!') which creates branding throughout my magazine, and is inspired by a similar technique used in Company magazine. Using this technique separates it from the rest of the article, which not only draws attention to it, but also shows that the main body of the article is shorter than it would appear, and doesn't seem as lengthy, and so it won't put people off.
Stage 3 - adding colour and pictures
The first thing I did was add the pictures. I chose these pictures not only because they were good in themselves but also because I thought that they enforced really good diagonals into the text. The first is just a simple picture of a photographer in relation to the paragraph about dance photography, which breaks up a page which would otherwise be purely text and may appear boring and off putting for the reader. The second of Darrien and one of his students in the studio is good because their lines, and the angle and composition of the picture is very striking and therefore attracts attention. The parts of the studio you can see are well lit and so they make working life in the studio appealing, and the similarities between him and the student has an emotional impact on the reader because you can see how his teaching has effected the student. Also the determination on both of their faces has an emotional impact on the reader and is relative to the oversized quote where Darrien mentions how much he loves improving the confidence of a student. An angle of teaching that many people don't realize and therefore discover through this article. I chose to put both pictures in black and white because I felt it enforced a stylish, sophisticated tone, and I aim for this article to be fairly formal and serious in comparison to my other articles because of it's content.
Next I felt it was necessary to add some colour, although I though it looked clear and professional to have the simple black text on a white background, and so this aspect remained, I felt it was lacking life a little. Just adding a simple pale blue border aided this, and also lifted the text and made it seem smaller, so that the text heavy first impression is weakened slightly. Simply highlighting the sub headers (a technique inspired by Company magazine) also dramatically broke up the text on the 3rd page and added a little life. Finally putting the breakout box at the end in green also separated it further from the main body so that again the main body seemed shorted and more condensed, and the article as a whole more broken up.
The only thing missing from my article now is the small headshot picture of careers advisor Cathy Hodgson to accompany her interview. I am not expecting to gather this till much closer to the deadline, as she has a busy schedule, but the type of picture I require is not at all complex, and will need little editing if that, and so it does not worry me that I will run out of time to slot this in at the end.
Overall I think that I have made good progress this week as I have completed the majority of tasks set in my schedule. However I am a little behind in that I have only just begun my 3rd article on InDesign, and so I am no longer ahead but ever so slightly behind. Saying this I think that this is due to the workload I have had this week from having to do Art coursework, and I suspect that my working pace will increase in the following week because I will be able to focus on Media again, and from doing this in the past (the week before this week just passed) I find that I get through quite a lot of work and may even be ahead of schedule again.
New Pictures of Darrien in the studio teaching - Successful!
After having one unsuccessful photo shoot of Darrien Teaching, and then a test run of new camera settings which seemed to work, I did this photo shoot with a lower shutter speed which let in more light, and during the day, with the shutters of the studio up, allowing in much more natural light. These things improved my pictures dramatically.
(Original)
I have created many quick alternatives to consider such as black and white alternatives which are more dramatic, and cropped alternatives which give more focus to the face and their expressions.
For each of the pictures I have to tweak the levels and vibrance just a little to improve their appearance. Also for the cropped pictures I sharpened the image slightly using the unsharp mask not just to fix the image but to give a slightly artistic appearance. And for the black a white pictures I adjusted the curves slightly to make the images even more dramatic.
Overall I did not find this process difficult as there wasn't much editing, and so I completed it in good time also.
(Original)
(Original)
(Original)
For each of the pictures I have to tweak the levels and vibrance just a little to improve their appearance. Also for the cropped pictures I sharpened the image slightly using the unsharp mask not just to fix the image but to give a slightly artistic appearance. And for the black a white pictures I adjusted the curves slightly to make the images even more dramatic.
Overall I did not find this process difficult as there wasn't much editing, and so I completed it in good time also.
(Original)
(Original)
Friday, 1 February 2013
Studio shot pictures of dance teacher Darrien Wright (for front cover)
There was very little editing to do for these three pictures as there are already very good pictures. For each I had to adjust the tone and colour slightly for a clearer whiter hue. At times Darrien would exceed the white backdrop or the white backdrop simply wouldn't be big enough to constitute a front cover image, and so I had to replicate the existing white backdrop using the clone tool and brush tool to extend it further. I found this fairly easy because I have a fair bit of experience with this tool.Also for each of the pictures I did a little airbrushing on Darrien's face to give a more even skin tone, again using the brush and clone tools, both which I find easy to work with.
However the first picture of Darrien doing a straddle jump required a little more editing. Firstly his right foot was cut off a little by the lights (since it was such a wide jump, and was difficult to fit in the studio with the space given) To fix this I took a sample of his right foot from an alternative picture of him doing the same jump where his left foot had been cut off, and carefully placed it where his right foot would have been, blending it in and making it look natural using the brush and clone tool and the burn tool to create a slight shadow behind it. I found this more difficult but I think the results mean that this photoshopping goes unnoticed.
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