Production Blog - 21st March

Progress:
Last week I started putting together my front cover on Photoshop, and I also did further developments to my article for my double page spread. 
It's been a little bit of a challenge using Photoshop to do my front cover and progress has been slow, but I'm getting there and everything seems to be going alright. But I will need to start working faster because there's still a lot to do- finishing article and doing double page spread on InDesign.


I encountered a problem where some of my text layers on Photoshop had rastarised and I couldn't edit them, so unfortunately I had to delete the layers and start doing them over again. 
Also when I added the barcode to my front cover, it was a '.jif' so it only showed up as one image but it was actually 2 which flicked between one another. Therefore I couldn't edit it, so I had to delete it and find another one which was a '.jpeg' so it was editable. 
I have learned how to do more things on Photoshop, and learned how to overcome problems and achieve the same result.
(Images below updated throughout this week, to show the gradual development of the front cover.)

Front Cover 1st Draft- after roughly putting together my front cover and experimenting with lots of colours, I decided that using a separate colour for each sell line and enigma was too chaotic. Although they gave the right connotations for the mood of the article they were representing, the cover looked too mis-matched and there was no structure to it. Therefore I developed a '3 colour' colour scheme, this way the whole of the front cover was integrated and made sense, it also matched and meant that the different aspects of the front cover flow better together.  

Front Cover 2nd Draft- After developing my colour scheme it was much easier to make everything match and lay it out in a way that made sense. I used different opacities, colours, fonts, coloured outlines to the text to make each one different and stand out from each other. I also made the masthead much larger than it was before, this meant that it catches the audiences eye easier and doesn't get lost among all of the other text on the front page. 

I also added a price, a website and a date underneath the masthead, this gives it an additional professional feel to it because may magazines have aspects such as these on their front cover. A banner has also been added at the bottom of the front cover, it has another image on it do act as a different sort on enigma to get the audience interested in what is in the magazine. This makes the magazine look more professional because it doesn't just look like only text has been added, and also because it's been rotated it makes the front cover more visually engaging because everything doesn't follow the same gradient.

Front Cover 3rd Draft- in this draft there's nothing changed apart from the lightbulb. I changed the exposure to make it look like the lightbulb is turned on to give the image more life because then it's not all the same exposure.

This is the final draft that I have done of my front cover, I decided that the enigmas and sell lines were all too big and there wasn't enough variation in the sizes. I look at the fronts of some magazines and saw that generally there's many sell lines and enigmas, and they're all quite small, but because my target audience are teenagers and big-bold-bright things capture their eye I didn't want to reduce the sizes too much. Therefore I made the 'How long have we got left?' smaller, and added in an 'Exclusive!' sell line, therefore I reduced the sizes to make it look more professional but also didn't lose touch with my target audience.


Targets:

• Finish front cover on Photoshop
• Write more of article
• Begin double page spread on InDesign

I will achieve this by continuing to write my article at home, and also by getting more time to edit by using my frees to get things finished- therefore I won't be rushing it in the lessons.
I will have to develop InDesign skills, and use them appropriately when making my double page spread. 


Contingencies:

• I might encounter some problems with creating my double page spread on InDesign, and I would have to ask my teacher for help with some aspects of the software. 
• I could experience some technical difficulties, therefore while I am doing my work I will save it in different places every 5 minutes or so. That way if anything goes wrong I won't lose a lot of work.