Main Task - Music Magazine Double Page Spread Second Draft

I made relatively few changes for this draft, but I feel that they definitely improve the quality of the double page spread and were worth doing.
The first change was the re-positioning of the pull-quote so that it was directly within a single column rather than bridging across two. I did this because I thought that in its previous position, although more interesting, the text box mucked up the alignment of the text so that it looked perfectly square on the right hand side but jagged on the left hand side. Moving it solved this, and it also meant that all the text in the columns was moved down slightly, therefore achieving my other objective of making the text closer to Kerry's head. I did in fact add more text as well to make the text get even closer to her, but it ended up detracting from the photo of her face and also was difficult to read as there was only one word a line.
The next thing I changed was the cutting out and text wrapping of Kerry Anne's main photo. It was fairly unnoticeable, hence why I didn't mention it in the post itself, but some of Kerry's arm and front had been made completely white instead of their actual colour when I used the clipping path tool to too great an extent. I rectified that issue in this draft by using different clipping tool settings (previously I used detect edges, this time I used Alpha Channel) and making sure carefully that I had only cut out what needed to be cut out. Also doing this meant that the outer edges of Kerry's body and hair were cut out more smoothly, since it is more difficult in inDesign to manually cut and smooth things than it is in Photoshop.
Other than some very minor text editing, the final change I made was to change the font used in the standfirst and contextual paragraph from Georgia to Book Antiqua. I did this because I wanted to retain the formal impression that Georgia gave off but wanted something a bit less obtrusive and bulky. When one compares them side-by-side the difference can easily be seen, or at least I can easily see it.
Hopefully this is of a high enough standard to be my final draft, but I will need to get opinions from my teacher and classmates before I can decide whether this really is the case.

Main Task - Music Magazine Double Page Spread First Draft

Well, here it is. My double page spread.
It seems my worries about having to possibly cut out some of my text were unfounded, as it in fact turned out that I needed to add more text to try and fill up the space! In an ideal world I still would have liked to have written a bit more, so that the text reached the top of Kerry's head on the right-hand page and there would have been less white space. However, I can try and do this in a later draft.
I used the software Adobe InDesign CS4 to create my double page spread. I used this rather than Photoshop (which I used for the cover and contents) because Photoshop is primarily a photo manipulation program, as I learnt the hard way when manoeuvring the different pieces of text one by one on my contents page. InDesign is different in that, as the name suggests, it is a program for designing things, such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines and books. I found using InDesign quite challenging though, since it functions almost completely differently to Photoshop and therefore took a lot of time to adapt to. Once I got the hang of it though I found it to be extremely useful, so I am glad I persevered with it.
I still used Photoshop in the creation of the DPS, insofar as I still had to use it to edit my photos. On both the pictures I pumped up the exposure and cropped them, and the band picture on the left I also placed into a polaroid-camera type frame. The right-hand picture took an amazingly long time to crop as I had to go through the usual process of lassoing and then erasing stuff a bit at a time, and then perfecting it all with the blur tool. That probably doesn't sound too strenuous but it really was, since I had to be careful to cut away only the background and not accidentally cut off any of Kerry herself, and the picture was of a really large size which didn't help. I think that some parts of her still look slightly as if they were cut out, but overall I feel I did a pretty good job.
I found it quite difficult to arrange the text in a way which I deemed to be interesting, and it was mostly a process of trial and error in which I tried many different layouts and combinations (some of which I'll post later in a step-by-step DPS section). After the headline of the article I had what I considered to be the "background information" paragraph (though its official name is a standfirst): a section of text which gives the reader a brief overview of who the article/interview is about/with and why this person is interesting. Underneath this I had the names of the interviewer and photographer (both fictional of course, as putting "Chris Coales" for everything would be boring). I placed the names here as I noticed from my research on music magazines that this is the usual place for putting them; in fact there are very few instances indeed on double page spreads where this isn't the case.
After this I began arranging the text in columns, with the first section of text in the columns being an introductory paragraph: a section written in prose which sets the scene and possibly describes the interviewer meeting the interviewee. I used this section to provide more contextual information on Kerry Anne and briefly describe the surroundings. I typed this section in the font Georgia, the same font I used for the "background information" paragraph, because I wanted to use a different font from the one I was to use for the actual interview so as to distinguish between them. I think I achieved this quite well, and I don't think that the fonts clash too badly at all.
The next, and longest, section of text was the interview itself. I used the font Calibri as it is sans-serif which distinguishes it from Georgia which is serif. I also feel personally that Calibri has a comfortable simplicity, the kind that can be put to good use in magazines where there is a lot of small text to read. I put the questions in bold to show when the interviewer was speaking, and separated each set of question and answer by a single line for uncluttered readability. I also copied a quote from the text out and enlarged it and coloured it red, as this technique of taking an especially interesting quote from an article and drawing attention to it is used regularly in music magazines.
I wrote more than I originally meant to here, and there are less stages involved in making something in InDesign than in Photoshop, so I will not need to do a post this time showing step-by-step information of how I made my double page spread. As always, comments are welcomed.

Double Page Spread Article - Second Draft

Despite titling this blog post as a "Second Draft" it would probably be more accurate to call it a rewrite. This is because I came up with more ideas for the article after doing the cover and contents page, and also I underestimated how much I would have to change the interview from being about a young man to being about a young woman. After some experimentation I found that it is possible I won't be able to fit the entirety of the article on the double page spread, and although this make me sad that some of my hard work may be wasted I must do what looks best for the magazine. I will abandon my feelings and ignore sentimentalities such as these, all for the sake of creating the best music magazine I can possibly make. As Chairman Mao said in his Little Red Book, "[A Communist] should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any individual, and more concerned about others than about himself." I am a Communist, in that I am more concerned about the overall standard of my work than my petty individual pride.

My CD Cover Designs

As stated in my last post, I had decided to design some CD covers which I may be able to use on either my contents page or double page spread, or even on a later draft of my front cover. I came up with the three covers posted below which I made in Adobe Photoshop, but before condemning them please consider that I was trying to experiment and I am likely only going to be using one of them, or two at the most.

The first cover I did by using the magic wand tool with different tolerance levels to cut out the girl from the background. I removed the colour from the picture and then applied a rainbow gradient effect at 50%, so that it overlaid the background and the picture of the girl but so that the picture was still clearly visible. The reason for applying these effects was because I named the album "Not Always Black and White", and placing a rainbow colour scheme over a desaturated girl is obviously relevant to such a title.
 
For the second cover I applied some slight lighting effects, but went for a much simpler design overall. I didn't feel that anything would be gained by using snazzy effects, and so left the photo pretty much as it was (though cropped down of course). I used a white font as it mainly went over the girl's black hair and white is clearly visible on black. I used the font Harrington as it looks elegant and sophisticated, and the photo seems more in fitting with this. I noticed from the album covers research that the band/artist name is usually much larger than the album title, and I took this into account and applied it myself.

For the third and final cover I cropped the photo, but then decided the picture looked a bit boring by itself. I began to experiment with the different filters in the Filter Gallery until I found one that made the image look more exciting, but still suitable for an album cover. I eventually found and applied a filter called dark strokes, which made the image darker and blurrier (but in a good way) and gave the image an overall gothic feel. I'm not too happy with the background, font or album title, but this particular cover was meant mainly to test out different image effects. One interesting thing I did do to the text was to position each letter of "DEAD" individually and apply a tilt to each one. I personally quite like the slightly comical effect it gave, but whether it was suitable for the image I'm not too sure.

CD Cover Research

I decided that I would try and make one or two CD album covers to put on either my contents page or double-page spread. I thought it would be an effective way to add more factors to my magazine to emphasise its musical-ness. The following are covers which I collected off the internet and thought to be relevant. I particularly looked at covers showing the faces of females, as most of my photos are of girls' faces.

Double Page Spread Article - First Draft

The following is the article/interview I wrote for my double page spread. I did this when I thought that I was going to have Jonny on my cover when I was about to do my third set of photos, but then he let me down and I was unable to use him. Therefore for my next draft as well as making the article better I may need to change the person being interviewed to a girl, but that shouldn't be too difficult.
I tried to retain the more colloquial language that music magazines tend to us, though as stated before I am trying to create a more respectable magazine, which is why I did not swear constantly. I was a bit worried about including certain bits, such as the final joke-type question, but as said before there is still time for me to make improvements.

Magazine Photos - Second Attempt

The following photos are, as one could deduce from the title, my second attempt at taking photos for the music magazine. Like last time I am only including a selection, since there were some that were either extremely similar or extremely bad.
And now, the differences in this set of pictures from the last. Firstly: I used girls. I did this because I had access (bad choice of words) to girls who looked a lot more mature and therefore better suited to be in a band, as opposed to my friends who do just look like teenagers messing about. Also these girls are more attractive than my friends, which means that the potential audience of my magazine will like them more and also I'll have less work to do on Photoshop. Another major thing that I changed was the setting; previously I had gone for the garage band look but this time I used a white background which gave the whole thing a more professional feel. The clothes the girls were wearing were better than before, but still not really perfect. They looked very good and cool individually, but had little coordination all together.

Magazine Photos - First Attempt

Below are photos taken from the first set of pictures I took to possibly include in my magazine. I organised after school one day to gather three of my friends at another friend's house. I asked them to bring their own clothes, ones which would give the impression of them being in a band, and I got them to do a variety of different poses in my friend's garage. In the first few pictures everyone is still wearing their suits, as I thought it would be interesting to experiment with more than one set of costumes. In some shots they are holding/using instruments, in others not.
Overall these pictures didn't turn out all that well, though that should be forgiven as this was my first try. The main reason for my failure is probably the setting, since a garage (despite the popularity of garage bands) is probably not the best place to take photos for a professional music magazine. Another problem is likely that that friends I used didn't look enough like they were in a band. One of them (Jonny - the boy with glasses and a hat) looked actually quite suited to be a musician; the other two did not. Also a problem was that their clothes weren't really coordinated enough, so even if each of them looked like rock stars they wouldn't have looked like they were in a group. I tried to take all these factors on board and improve on them when taking my next set of photos.
Also, please forgive the somewhat deranged layout of the photos; Blogger makes it exceedingly difficult to post multiple pictures in any sort of sensible order.