This week i planned to have finished all 3 DPS's and therefore i could begin to create my front cover and contents page. However due to the push back of my interview article i had already began my front cover. This week began with me finishing off my front cover by adding the rest of the sell lines. When looking at other magazine i found that their front covers consisted of a lot of page variety and therefore i decided to include a couple of button sells and brush effects. I also added a buy line, base line, barcode, website, date and price to ensure my product look as professional as possible. I also wanted to continue the layering effect so therefore i brought the models head over the top of the masthead. I feel as though i have covered too much of the masthead which count have a harsh impact on the identity of my magazine.
The second day of this week was the day i was able to finally complete my interview. The interview went very well however i asked a lot of spontaneous questions in response to her answers which i feel as though i could have prepared myself for a little bit better than i had. After listening back to the recording of my interview i also found that i hadn't put the dictaphone close enough to her as it was fairly hard to try and understand what she was saying due yo it being very quiet. I then spend a good few hours making notes on the different aspects i wanted to include in my article. I wrote one draught in 3rd person and another draught which was if she was telling the story. I then showed this too members of my target audience and 8/10 of them preferred being told the story directly from the interviewee as it made it seem more believable and real. I therefore created a second draught of this article and gave it a few more entertainment values rather than it being a straight transcript. I also said in my schedule that i was going to research how to write interview articles but i felt after reading a few of these out of magazines this was an unnecessary thing to do.
I then began to design the DPS for this article. I firstly created a header for it reading 'How to tame your man'. I used a mixture of two fonts for this as i felt this would tell the reader exactly what my article was about. I then inserted the text and realised that not all of the text was going to fit on one DPS. I then came up with the idea to create a double page spread, i looked through lots of magazines of my genre and found that a lot of them had a photo lead. This influenced me to do a similar thing within my product. I decided to have the first page containing the header followed by one main image. The main body of my article could then sit comfortably on the other two pages as there wasn't a lot of space taken up by the header. Due to the fact there was only going to be the article, quotes and images on this page, i didn't quite know how to continue the layered effect i had created throughout the whole magazine. I decided to give the last two pages a textured background as this would then give the main body of text a slight lift out of the page.
The 3rd day i had my photo shoot which i had booked for 1hr 30mins. After taking several images of the idea i had for this article, i had second thoughts as they may slightly offend some people and be seen as too provocative. My clients target audience would certainly not approve. I therefore had to change my entire idea which therefore had an effect on how long my photo shoot took. I took a wide variety of different shots to see which i felt best suited the feel of my article. In the end i decided to use imagery that made the couple now look very happy and therefore create a sort of idilic image as the majority of couples will aspire to be how they are. Looking back on m,y double DPS's i now see that this may be interpreted in the wrong way as the article is about sad things where as they look very happy so therefore the image and text may not connect in the way that i wanted them too. When editing the images, i accidentally clicked on the sepia effect and actually really liked it. I tried to get a colour in InDesign which matched the photo as best as i could and thankfully, it looked very professional. I also felt as though this gave a sort of romantic tone to the article which would go really well.
When showing what i had don't so far to my target audience to see if they liked it, they said everything really appealed to them except the header. I then came up with several more headers to show to them to see which they preferred. Out of all 6 of them, they all agreed the the quote header was most effective as it is very intriguing. Even though non of this was on my schedule i found that it was important to do this as since i had changed my whole idea on this article, i needed to know what my target audience felt as i hadn't had as much time to plan a while new idea. I then played around with the new header with different fonts as my target audience didn't like the last ones. I also changed the colour from red to a pale pink due to it being a girly article, i felt this would appeal more to my T.A. I then added the photos and positioned a few of them with cantered angles as this would draw the audience into the main article. I also added the quote inserts for when the article is skim read, i firstly had these as part of the text just in a larger font and a different colour but when i looked through other articles i found that they were usually on top of a shape of some kind. I decided to follow this rule as this would give my page more variety. I also created two breakout boxes, again to give my page much more variety. Both my quote inserts and breakout boxes needed to be text wrapped to ensure the page looked neat and clean.
This week i also planned to create my front cover, sadly i didn't leave myself enough time for this as i incorrectly estimated how much time my finial DPS would take. By the end of this week i managed to have inserted ill of my imagery into my contents page. I was strongly inspired by the layout of the leading magazine Cosmopolitan. I used a variety of my own imagery from the photo shoots i have had over the past year as well as a couple of fill images to give my magazine an energetic feel. I sadly went over my deadline by 1 day as i misinterpreted how fiddly and how much i needed to do to create a good, professional looking contents page. I didn't really plan my time effectively for the different font sizes, bold text, different colours, guide lines, page numbers etc. However when this was completed i was very happy with the vast majority of my product. If i had chance to go back there are a few small attentions to details i would like to change but sadly didn't have time.
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