Today's Lesson Update

In this lesson, I made various changes to all four parts of my coursework magazine.

With my Front Cover, I just added onto my cover-lines to fill in some of the negative space:

With the Contents, I fixed the top and bottom layouts and made some adjustments to the pictures and text:

I also changed the image for the contents page as I used a picture similar to the previous one on my DPS and wanted to give off a different vibe in the contents:



I then added a signature ,created on Adobe Illustrator, to my Editor's Letter as it was a common convention of editor's letter's in other magazines therefore I felt like it added professionalism and made it seem as if it was a real magazine:

The last thing I did was just move the page numbers to the outsides as that is how it is on most magazines:



Moving onto the Double Page Spread's I changed the numbering on both the double page spreads like I did with the contents page:


Then I focused on working on the 2nd page of my double page spread and starting with the journalism. I changed the image on my double page spread and the typography of the pull - out quote:


I then played around with the colouring and font of the pull - out quote and changed the colour of the word "respected" to gold to make it stand out and add dramatic effect:


Lastly, I focused on writing and re-structuring my article. I tried out the question and answer format however I did not like it as I felt like it did not fit the theme I was going for in my magazine, and also the style of a biographical profile was used in 2 of my case studies, Brick and Fader, and these are the ones my magazine is mostly based on therefore I thought it would be appropriate to adopt this style. This was my first attempt at restructuring my article and trying a biographical profile format:



I expanded on this throughout the lesson and this is what I had by the end:



However, as these are my first attempts at it, I will probably change it to make it better as this is only a first draft.

First Draft Feedback Evaluation

In yesterday's lesson we were asked to give and receive feedback from our classmates. During the lesson I received feedback and used this to better my work.
For example, my classmate Sammi gave me this feedback for my front cover:

From this I saw that she was correct about the colouring of the text and Angel therefore, using this feedback, I added a drop shadow to the text to make it stand out therefore easier to see on the grey background and got rid of the double effect on the main headline to avoid the blending in:


Also, she gave me feedback on my double page spread:


From this I did move the text box away from the centre by a small margin to avoid it getting cut off. I also tried different pictures for the first page of my DPS but I could not find one that went as well so I kept that.

First Draft - Front Cover

Front Cover (1):


Front Cover (2):


(Currently I am deciding between which one)

First Draft - Double Page Spread

Double Page Spread Introductory Page:


Double Page Spread:

First Draft - Contents Page

Contents Page:

Contents Page OverPrint:

Photography

Out of my pictures from my studio photoshoot, these were there best ones. This is because they seemed the most professional as my model was posing according to how I wanted it and what suited the different parts of the magazine - when it was for the front cover she was serious and her eyes directly looked at the camera, when it was for the contents and double page spread she varied her poses and they were in the right angles and showed the background off but not too much. The other ones I took, they either were not framed properly, did not seem to be that professional or would not fit onto my magazine and the theme. With some, they were good but there would be no space for them.

Biographical Profile Examples

These are a few interviews that I am looking to emulate when creating my double page spread article in terms of layout, language and structure. Using Thinglink, I have directly highlight what it is about these articles I want to create/ why I want to recreate it. The first one comes from Fader and the rest from Brick. Both of these magazines are two of my case study magazines:

Today's Lesson Update

In today's lesson I focused on improving my front cover. As I gotten feedback from both teachers on the spacing and size of my cover-lines I worked on improving those.

As you can see from this I made the spacing on the sides of the front cover slightly wider , as well as made the font bigger. I moved the "Issue 5 NOV/DEC" that was originally under the masthead and put the "around the globe" cover-line there as it was a recommendation from ms and I felt like it looked better as well. I shortened the cover -lines as they covered the main picture too much, especially when the text was enlarged. I also added a black background behind each other the main cover-lines as I felt like keeping it plain white was too bland and the black background added something that was missing:


However, I still felt like there was too much negative space even after making the text bigger so I added another cover line to the front cover to fill in some space:


By the end of the lesson, this was my finished Front Cover:


I also did some work on my double page spread towards the end of the lesson, by adding more questions to the interview. I will most likely change this a lot on my final version though:

Photography Call Sheet - Studio

Call sheet for my studio photoshoot:

Today's lesson - Journalism

In today's lesson we focused on planning the journalism of the magazine for the DPS. We analysed two different double page spread , Q&A's and looked at the language and type of answers/questions that were being given. We then planned out questions and answers based on our own artist that we have featuring on our double page spread for a test:

This is my first draft- some of these questions i will keep and some I will alter. I will also expand on the answers of course, and make sure the language in both the question and answer is informal and fits the genre more.

I then applied this to my DPS :

Today's Lesson Update

In this lesson I worked on improving my front cover and contents.

For my contents page I realised that I had placed my articles on the wrong side as 'features' were articles that are special to the issue and 'articles' are just the regular ones however I just mixed it through both. This meant that I had to organize my contents again to make sure that they were in the correct place. Looking over it I realised some of them were still in the wrong place so I need to fix it:


For my Front Cover I just enlarged some of the text to see if it would look better but this is just a test and it goes too over the model and I will probably end up re-arranging the layout of my entire front cover:

Photography

Today's Lesson Update

As yesterday I took my photographs in the studio, during this lesson I started to add photos to my first draft magazine and see how it would fit. Due to the background of my pictures being a mix of black and grey not white, I had to change a lot of my magazine colour scheme wise.

Starting off with the front cover, I had to change around the initial colouring of most of the cover lines due to the background being grey not white and some of the colours clashing. Additionally, I had to change the shade of my gold as it looked yellow on the front cover so I needed to adapt it. I also started to toy around with the image and the hustle masthead. 

From this image you can see that I darkened the gold and rubbed out the masthead to make it seem as if she was in front of it to make it seem more professional. I also changed the colouring of some of the cover lines to white in order to make them stand out clearer as they sometimes blended into Angelic or her clothing which made it hard to read taking away professionalism and also making the same mistakes as I did on my college magazine:

I later decided to change most of the cover-lines to white to avoid this blending in - however looking back over it I may change some of the colours again as some still blend in:

I then went on to my contents page. I didn't change much except for adding a picture onto the middle. Sir then advised that it would look better if the picture was placed on the side, not in the middle as in a real magazine the staples would be there so I changed it from this:

to this:

I then went to work on my Double Page Spread. For both sides I could see that when the picture was placed next to a white background it did not look good as it the two sides did not blend well together. I then tried to change the sides without the picture's background to the same type of grey but as the background in the picture is different shades I couldn't get the exact shade of grey and it looked weird therefore I just changed the background to black. However, I felt as though it looked bad with the purple and black on the first side of my DPS:

So I changed the colour scheme of this part to gold like the rest of it instead of the purple:

This is what my DPS first half looks like so far:

I then moved onto the second half of the DPS in which I chose a picture and changed the background and colour scheme as well. I also added a pull quote but did not add to my journalism.

Lesson Update

During this lesson I used it to mainly focus on my Double Page Spread and Contents Page.
I firstly continued on with the two parts of my double page spread. I added a pull - quote to the side and completed the writing in the stand-first:

I then started to work on my actual double page spread. I started off testing the journalism - this is the writing I've done so far:

I then worked on the organisation of my pictures and pull quotes:

Today's Lesson Update

During this lesson, I went back to my Front Cover and DPS, as well as continued constructing my contents page.

Initially, I went back to my contents and started to work on my 'editor's letter'. I looked at XXL and Brick's editorials and from this I gathered that they mainly talked about what they particularly liked or enjoyed in it and then talked about what the issue has to offer the reader, therefore I tried to emulate this however I need to fix it as there are some spelling mistakes and things I want to word differently:
, 
I then went back to my front cover and changed a few things such as the skyline. As I had made it a clear point in my magazine proposal that my magazine would not only focus on hip hop and r&b music but also the culture surrounding it, I thought that this was a more appropriate skyline then my previous one as it clearly highlights the content of the magazine as well as the genre. I also took away the 'Global' as I think this element was clear through the cover - lines:

I also changed the positioning of this side cover-line as I felt like it would cover my cover artist too much when my picture will be added.

Moving on to my DPS, I started to write my actual article for it, remembering to use the convention of a drop cap to start it off:

Lesson Update

In the lesson I had on the 14/11/16, I mainly worked on improving my contents page and starting my call sheets.
This is the progress I made in the lesson:
 From this you can see that I began to add writing to my contents page, below the headings. When writing the contents I tried to make the writing a mix of formal and informal as when I was analysing my case studies, this was the trend used and since my target audience starts from quite young and is linked to hip hop I wanted to make it appropriate as my readers would more commonly regularly speak using slang and 'teen-speak' then formal english. I tried to show this through the use of words and phrases such as "servin looks" which means to look good and "lit" which means cool:
I also started to add pull quotes to the contents page:

By the end of the lesson, I had completed both sides of the writing on what the articles that had been displayed on the contents would be about, I completed one pull quote and started thinking of what to write for the other one, and added social media links to the magazine to link to adding various platforms to the magazine: