This document summarizes Alicja Morawska's production diary for a magazine project. It details her process of designing mock CD covers and magazine spreads. For the CD cover, she experimented with layouts, fonts, and background images before settling on an image of a wasp. For the magazine spreads, she conducted a photoshoot and worked on image editing and layout in Photoshop and InDesign. She created double page spreads focused on mental health and tattoos, incorporating photos, text, and graphic elements to complete realistic magazine layouts. Throughout the process, she refined her design choices and worked to establish a consistent style across pages.
Presentation on the Basics of Writing. Writing a Paragraph
Complete Production diary
1. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
When production started, I hadn’t been able to collect any photography to begin work on
the articles, so I started trying out different ideas for the CD cover I had planned to make. I
knew what the general layout was meant to be like so I began with adding the list of songs
and artists to the back half of the cover.
This was quite easy to do as it was simply
creating a list of fake music. I looked at
pre-existing products to help me
understand what the standard layout of
the text should look like, making a clear
difference between artist and song, as the
CD would feature a collection of different
bands that had been picked out by the
magazine for a free copy to its listeners.
I knew that eventually I would have to
come up with a name for the magazine
anyway, as it would have to go on the front
cover and be mentioned in articles, so the
name Royalties was picked so that I could
put it on the CD case. I thought about what
kind of thing I’ve done before, and what I
learnt from my research to decide on a font
and style. The yellow was something I knew from planning that I wanted to use and the font
was chosen as it was slightly eroded and gave the title a more rough, grunge appearance.
I knew I needed some kind of splash text across the front as well as the
title, so using the same font with less added effects I decided on this as a
place holder, as I wasn’t sure if it would be the final version of the layer.
Now came the background image, which I struggled with for a while. I
was able to take a few pictures that I thought might work by now but
when it came to pasting them into the file and seeing how they would
look, I wasn’t happy with the outcome as the writing on the cover
interrupted the images and I just couldn’t find a way of making them
look good. The birds eye views of the lighters I was hoping to use the
most, but the writing made it very unclear what the image actually was,
and trying different affects didn’t help improve the overall apperence.
The stack of CD’s was another area I wanted to go into but after putting
it into the photoshop file it became clear quite quickly that this would
not work, as the verticle lines of the cds made the writing across both
sides of the case really hard to read. I had to come up with something
that I could use. I went back to my research and focused on another
style, really plain background with one main thing on the image for the
audience go look at. I remembered that a few months back I had taken a
picture of a wasp that had gotten stuck inside against a window, and
thought about using that.
2. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
The image I chose was a detailed image of a wasp
against a blue background, meaning that I was able
to fit the entire focus of the picture between the title
and the slash writing at the bottom.
I then brought my attention over to the back of the
case, starting to add the aspects to make it look more
realistic such as adding a few record company logos
to give clear indication to who released the product,
as well as adding text stating that the cd is not for
resale purposes.
With the CD case finished, I started to move onto the articles. I brought two friends into the
studio for a photoshoot, as this would allow me to collect images for two double page
spreads at once, meaning that later I wouldn’t have to worry about not having the images
ready, something that I know I made a mistake with during the print rotation earlier in the
year. During the photoshoot, I experimented with different light settings and wanted to
make sure that I was going to get a range of images, to be able to have options when
choosing the tone of the pages later on. I decided to continue with the model I originally
picked for the mental health article and would later decide what the other models photos
would be used for. I felt confident in being able to use the studio as I had taken time during
research to get used to how the room works.
The first thing I did after choosing my images was free transform it into the correct size for
the double page spread, and after experimenting, decided to use the gradient tool to make
the image come together into the same shade of black where the text would be. I spent
some time trying to figure out how to fix some of the imperfections on the models face and
came across the spot healing tool which allowed me to use the surrounding pixels to correct
some of the minor details. I thought about how I was going to lay out the rest of the page
that surrounded the model and where the text was going to be placed. I decided that I was
going to set up a new guide along the page, equal distance from the top and bottom that I
could use to add in details such as page titles and page numbers across the top, and things
such as photographer credit and a few lines of text along the bottom.
3. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
I wanted to add more to the left-hand side of the
page as I felt it looked too empty so I re-read the
article I had written for this spread and picked
out a pull quote that I placed over the model,
using quotes on separate layers to be able to
control them better.
I came back to my mental health double page
spread at the start of this week and found that a lot of the layers had flattened down,
meaning that I wasn’t able to edit them. Luckily I’d done most of what I wanted from
Photoshop on this save, only having to place a rectangle box over some text that wasn’t the
right size, allowing me to move on to putting in the article using InDesign without it causing
too much of a problem.
Once I had the finished image in InDesign I could start adding the copy of the article I had
written for this page. I’d tried working out how many words it would take to fill in a piece of
A4 in two columns ahead of writing it so I wouldn’t have to worry about it being the wrong
length, but when it came to placing it in the two columns that I’d made it was quite a bit too
short so I had to add additional text to the artist’s answers to make sure that it looked good
and I wasn’t left with a lot of empty space.
4. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
I started work on my second double page spread that was focused around tattoos, as I was
able to get the photoshoot done at the models house, using natural lighting outside to make
sure that the tattoos wear easily visible. I knew that the person I’d picked has experience in
being used as a photography model so the directing went smoothly. I wasn’t able to get
hold of a camera so I borrowed a phone that was able to control shutter speed which I felt
was important because of the brightness that day. All of the photos looked good on screen
but when I brought them over to my mac, I found that some of them came out very dark,
the background had pixelated and it was hard to work with.
Luckily some of the images came
out correctly and I decided to spend the day trying out different photos and seeing if any of
them would work or if I would have to go back for a second photoshoot. the most important
thing for me to decide if I would need to reshoot the images was the lighting and the
colours, so I started trying out different light and saturation levels, using filters and
experimenting with colourizing the image. I focused on one image that I was favouring to
work with.
Here is the original image,
that I thought was too bright
and needing to be toned
down. The second is through
a sepia style filter, which I felt
I would work with if nothing
else could work. The last
image I went around the
model and put her on a
separate layer from the
background, to experiment with
lowering the intensity and brightness of
the environment and adding different
hues and RGB curves to the model.
I finally decided on the levels that I wanted the image to be and thought it
to be the final, but after discussing with my tutor about any additional
effects I could add to it, I went about creating a sort of shadow that is on a
separate layer, coming out separately from the main photograph. I did this
by outlining the model using the elliptical marquee tool to create a blank
space around her so that the layer underneath could come through. I then
added another layer of the same image underneath and moved to the left
of the top layer so that you could see and imprint of her that was less
visible to the side, slightly like a red and blue 3D style image.
5. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
The blank space allows the under layer to
be seen in a lower opacity and although
the design wasn’t planned I really like the
affect that it has given the image. Once I
got the right half of the page done I
needed to work out how I was going to
create an area for the article to go where
the writing would be easily visible.
Currently the left half of the page is a very
dark brick wall and I’m considering using
another gradient like I did in the previous
double page spread. But as I got into trying out different colours and lengths of the gradient
I found that it wasn’t giving me the appearance I wanted. Looking at it I think that it wasn’t
looking as smooth as I would want, having the bright colour
flow into the middle of the page but then being blocked off
again by the edge of the brick wall. After trying out several
different shades and colours, I ended up deciding on having
the entire left half of the page being a solid colour. I wanted
the left side colour to be linked to the main image
somehow so I went to Adobe Colour where I pulled the
main image in, and it extracted a colour wheel for me
based off of the shades that it found in the photo.
After finally having the basis of the page realised, I thought about what I could do to make
the page look more interesting. Personally, I really like the tattoos the model has around her
shoulders and I wanted to try and frame her and the page using them. It took a little while
to work out how to do this, but once I got the process down on the first layer the rest were
easy to follow. I did this by looking over the photographs from the photoshoot and finding
the ones where one specific part of the tattoo was facing the camera so that I
could get the design from the best angle. I pasted the entire image into the
document and delete everything around it that I didn’t want so that it was
easier to work with when I enlarged it. Once that was done I would use the
magic wand tool to delete anything that wasn’t the same colour as the ink. I
found I had to change the tolerance on the tool as in some of the images the
skin tone was too close to the tattoo due to the intense lighting. When I was
left with nothing but the tattoo on the layer, I went into image adjustments
and changed the contrast to be the highest it could be with the darkness at
the lowest setting, making the image entirely a black outline. When finished
creating all the layers I worked out where I wanted the placement to be so that it would
frame the model. I also went through the same process with the only tattoo that the model
had that isn’t visible in the main image, a bison on the inside of the left arm, as it gave me
the opportunity to include the part of the article that refers to it, even though it wasn’t
visible on the model.
6. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
I needed to continue the house style that I began in the first double page spread, using the
same font for the article title in the top left corner. The title for this part of the project is Ink
Review and in the article, it begins by saying that this is a monthly review of different artist’s
tattoos, giving a better idea of what a reader could expect from the magazine in another
issue. i went through the same process, but realised that the left half of the page was still
very blank and I felt it would look too bland if I added
the article now. To fix this I got the idea to use some
of the leaf deasigns around the title, making it seem
as though they’re coming out of box.
I also wanted to add a box to hold the photography
credits, to make the page seem more realistic. The
last thing I wanted to add in photoshop was a pull
quote from the article. I chose something that gave the
readers a general idea about what kind of direction the story
went. I really like how this double page spread came out,
even though I wasn’t able to have the layout I planned out in
pre-production, I did try to hold onto as
much of the planning as I could. I saved the
file as a JPEG and moved it to Indesign where
I had to figure out how to make the article fit
in around the pull quote. I wanted to
continue using columns as I did in the
previous double page spread, as it would
enforce a house style, but this meant having
the pull quote interrupt the columns. It was
easy enough to do with some moving around
and making sure that the gaps between the
top of each line were the same length, as I
wanted to make sure that it didn’t look
unproffesional. The blocks of text at the top
are equally spaced, as I had to make sure the
entire article fit onto the page but wanted to
avoid the large amount of blank space on the
right of the page. The botttom half of the
writing starts equally but was adapted to fit
the bison tattoo. The last thing that I did with
this piece was changing the questions to
italics, as they weren’t very clear in the
regular text and I didn’t want to use a
different colour as after trying out some
options I found that having the entire page
be two toned worked the best.
7. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
Once the ink review was done I started work on the
second photograph that I took during the studio session
with the model for the mental health page. It took a
little while to pick which out image I wanted as some of
them came out blurry due to having the wrong setting
on the camera which I know I will really need to pay
more attention to when I next work in a studio. In the
end I decided on this image as I felt it was a very
different pose to the other two, the lighting is really
good on it and I had idea about how to work with it.
Another reason I wanted to use this image was because
there was very little editing to it that I actually had to
do apart from some light heal spotting around the face
to reduce any blemishes. Because the image I chose
actually cuts off at the edge of the screenshot, meaning
that the hand and knee aren’t visible I knew I would
have to do the second half of the page as a solid colour,
so to do that I actually used the eyedropper tool and
found a shade of green that I liked from the models
hair, ensuring that it was a good enough contrast for
the white text of the article to be visible. Now that was the general layout of the page done,
I didn’t want the entire right side to only be article, as I thought it would be too dull
compared to the other two spreads I had done. I thought about the other images
from the photoshoot that I didn’t chose as the main image because I didn’t feel they
looked that good when made A4. I went over them again and picked out four that
looked good in their own smaller sizes and made a border on the right side of the
spread, as it gives the reader a better understanding of the personality of the artist,
as well as giving them more to look at rather than just a big block of writing, which I
really wanted to avoid. I gave each photo the same white stroke around the outside
as well as a drop shadow, to give them all a kind of boarder, as I didn’t want them to
look like they had just been dropped in. I also wanted to make sure that they fit
inside the guides I had for the page, so that they didn’t interrupt the rest of the file
The next thing to do was continuing the house style by adding the rectangle
containing the title of the page, using the same font and size as before. I also wanted
to make sure that I continued to credit photographers as I had done, because it
makes the page look more realistic as a part of magazine.
At this point I was a little stuck on what to add to the page because I still felt it
looked too bland but I didn’t know what else to incorperate. After playing around
with some of the options for a while, I found something in the shape tool. It looks
kind of like a water mark left by a cup but I thought it was worth trying out so I went
around the model to place her on a layer on her own separate from the original, so
that I could slide the shape in between her and the background. The colour I used I
8. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
thought worked quite well with the green as it was the
same tone but complimented each other quite well still.
This made the image look a bit more interesting and gave
the page something more unique. Due to the border of
pictures taking away from some of the space that was
designated to the article, the spacement of the pull quote
was quite obvious to me as there was quite a bit of blank
space above the model. I went through the article and
found something that would seem eye catching to a
reader that also related to the title of the article.
The finishing touches on this piece were adding the page number to
contine the house style, as well as experimenting with placement of
another one of the water ring shapes that I found. I felt it a bit odd to only
have the one splash of orange across the entire page so I found another
simliar shape, add the same effects to it and tried out different placed I
could put it, where it wouldn’t disturb a lot of the white article. This ended
up being the bottom right corner of the page below one of the images. It’s
not a lot of additional colour but I felt it balanced the pages out a bit
more. Adding the text was the final step, which I found an issue with as I
had written too much to fit into the already limited space. I went around
this by moving the text up to eliminate as much blank space as possible,
and playing around with different spacing between the letters.
9. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
The next thing I focused on getting started was the festival poster. After spending some
time thinking about how to use the flat plan I had made in pre-production I realised I wasn’t
going to be able to do it on A4 like I had planned. This meant having to come up with a new
layout quickly. The idea that I got was to made the colour scheme and background quite
simple but clear as to what the poster is advertising and focusing more of the text. What I
wanted to do was use images of crowds from the internet, editing them in a way that makes
them practically unrecogizable and layering these images on top of one another in various
shades of the same colour.
This was the first stage that I went throught with trying out
different styles of editing in the images of the crowd. Using the
filter gallery I found a style that outlines the colours and shapes
of the image in a more simplistic way. Whilst I do enjoy the
style of this and feel as if I may try to use it in another project, I
didn’t feel it was exactly what I wanted this poster to look like.
That’s how I came to the conclusion of using a colour overlay
on each layer of to leave me with the shape that is still obvious
as to what it is whilst making it much simpler as a background,
also leaving me with a general colour scheme that I could work
around that I felt would be much easier to add text to. I wanted
to make the background more like something that I had
planned out in my pre-production, including more links to actual
music rather than just having the background be a crowd so I
included my own images of instruments, streatching the darkest
colour over to the top of the page. This really brough me closer to
what I wanted my poster to look like and I was already very happy
with how it was starting to come together. Once the background
had been done it was time to start on the part that I had been
more worried about and that was the layout of the text across the
entire page. I knew that this was going to be something I would be
concered about and that is why I chose to look into the layout for a festival line up layout for
my practical research. the first thing I did was add a title to the page, clearly showing any
person that reads the magazine or passes the poster on the street what it’s about, with a
more distinct font that could become a recongizable part of the branding for that festival
should it become more well known. I wanted to make sure that the year was placed
directlyin the middle of the page, trying to spread the top line out equally so that the space
between the two words was close enough to the middle to help give the page more
symmetry as the rest of the layout was pretty split down the centre and I wanted to try to
keep hold of that as much as I could.
10. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
I thought about how many dates I wanted this festical to spread over, knowing that the
original idea was to have it take up three days but that being apart of why I decided to look
at a different layout as I wasn’t sure if I would be able to fit that amount of bangs onto an
A4 page. I wanted the event to seem more exciting than the standard one day music festival
that would be put on by the city council
so I chose to do it over a weekend. I used
the font American Typewriter for a lot of
this page as it was similar to the font I was using for the house style of the magazine, as it
helped support the idea that the two things were connected but I feel that this slightly
chunkier more readable font worked better for the poster. The yellow colour I chose to
accent the page was picked because it was the same tone as the lightest colour of the
background and I wanted to avoid using black on the page as much as I could because the
bottom half of the background was already quite dark and I wanted the text to all be easily
readable, as well as trying to enforce a lighter colour scheme to try and get the message
across that this is a summer festival and it’s a mixture of all the different sub-genres that will
be performing. The shape that I used behind the dates is actually from a font that is entirely
made up of brush strokes, so I had an entire keyboard worth of options to chose from, as
well as trying to make sure that every detail i put into this helped contribute to the theme.
The next thing to do was to add the headliners
in a larger size below their respective dates and
fonts. The names that I wrote down came from
the back of the CD I’d made so that there was
some level of connection between the two
products, however as the line up started to take
shape obviously there wasn’t enough band
names on the CD to make up the entire event,
but they were all used. I wanted to make sure that each of the headliners names were
spread out eaqually, not overlapping onto one half of the page, where I needed the divide
to be between the two dates of the festival.
Once that was done finished, I had a lot of the page left and needed to create a line up of all
the other artists that would be performing. This was definetly the most time consuming part
of the poster, mostly due to the fact that coming up with this many realistic sounding band
names is very tedious. I created two text boxes of the exact same size and justified both of
the paragraphs so that the text would start and end on the edge of each text box. Because I
had a set font size going through the entire line up it took some experimenting with what
names would fit in best with each other as some of them left gaps that I thought were too
big and didn’t look how you would expect a festival
poster to. Whilst some of them were easy fies of
simply switching two names around that fit in better
on the line with one another, others meant
changing the spaces between the letters to make
sure that it fit in properly. The final thing I had to do
with the line up was changing the height at which
the periods sat on the line, as I wanted them to be
sat in the middle of each line, floating at the same
height so that they looked better as spaces between
the band names.
11. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
At this point I had everything that I really needed on the page that made it be a festival
poster but i wanted to make it look more realistic and proffesional so after looking at some
more examples of real festival poster I wanted to add some general information about the
event and some sponsors. The information
I put at the bottom of the page so that it
didn’t distract from the design of the page.
I made the font simple and used it to give
general information about the event including
location, date, social media links and a website.
The social media icons I found on google and
colour overlayed to match the accent colour of
the page. Around the outside of the information
space I added sponsors that I knew made sense
for the event and were already popular music
festival sponsors.
12. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
With the festival poster done, the next thing I had to work on was the comic book spread. I
had managed to get the pictures in the exact location that I had planned on taking them, a
local comic book store in the city centre where the model frequents. I added the image into
photoshop and I knew from the start that because of the contents of the background image
I would have to create some kind of gradient or overlay on one side where the text was
going to go. I tried out different ideas using a text box because I hadn’t used one in the
project so far but chose against it to continue a house style of avoiding them.
I chose to make the gradient black as it wasn’t a colour I had really worked with yet and i
found it really hard to find a colour that worked with the background because of how many
different colours there were to chose from, and no matter what there was a contrast that
didn’t look good, but I was happy with how the black looked and I knew that it would make
adding text a lot easier than if I had tried to place it directly onto the main image.
I went through the article and found a line that I thought would be appropriate for the pull
quote. The only place I could put it were it would work well was over the models chest and
the positioning worked well apart from the gap where his shirt was, but due to his jacket
being black, I was able to put a rectangle shape in the same colour where the text would be
that isn’t very visable but still makes reading the quote much easier. I really tried to make
sure that the font I chose was the right theme for this spread, editing it to make it look like
it’s been pulled straight out of a comic book with the colour scheme and light yellow stroke
that goes around it.
The next part of the making this spread was adding all the house style details, continuing to
do the same thing of using the accent coours from the spread. I used the same effect from
the pull quote on the article title and the same colour on the page number. This spread I
was able to complete really quickly as there wasn’t many editing aspects that I wanted to
add to it and having planned it out earlier on in the project meant that I could easily get
through production. The last thing I had to do on this spread was adding in the article which
caused very little issue, simply adjusting the size to make sure the text all fit.
13. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
During the half term that was three weeks into production I was able to go to a festival and
gather more images for this project. I wanted to use one of the images to create a festival
review page, not including a lot of text as the idea that I had for this was that it would be
the introduction page to a long event review spread over multiple pages and that the
opening was very asethetically pleasing rather than focused on providing information.
The first that I did when beginning this spread was include
the logo of the festival that I attended. i found one of their
old festival posters and cut out the shape, and colour
overlayed it so that it would be the exact scheme that I
wanted as well as being a solid colour. I was lucky in that the shape of the logo for this
festival fit really nicely over the top of the stage that is in this image.
The next thing was adding something above where the logo had been placed and below
where the article title would go as I was left with a lot of empty sky space, and I knew that I
needed to provide information somewhere on the
page and it seemed like the best place to do it. I used
the same font as I had been throughout the entire
project for main article text.
Adding the same house style to all the important parts
of the page, the same fonts and sizes were used, and
the house style was becoming something I could do
without much thought and worry. Using the right side
of the spread I included pictures from other acts that I
had seen that day and wrote a brief description of what
each of their sets were like, meaning that if a reader
was to flick throught the magazine and only wanted a
simple idea of what the event was like without looking
into more detail, then it was available to them.
14. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
To continue on from the previous page I had created, I wanted ot create another review
from the festival, with the idea continuing that if I had more time I would have been able to
create a review of mulitiple different acts over a number of pages, this being the first. I went
through all of the images that I took during the set and found this one that I could tell I
would easily be able to turn into a double page spread, even with a finger over a part of the
lense, due to where the lighting and the focus of the image was. Due to the finger over the
lense as well as the need for space to put the article I used a black gradient on the left half
of the page as it suited the colour scheme and tone of the image, and it was a smooth
transition into the solid colour.
With the very basic layout of the page being complete, I started adding the house style
details, continuing to use the accent colours of the image.
I then found the artists logo online, knowing that the
original was black and wouldn’t be visible on the
backgorund of the image, and tried different colour
schemes to make it fit in with the overall style and
theme of the page until I found one that worked well. I
went with the same shade of orange as the accent color
and adding a white drop shadow to outline the text.
15. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
Something I knew I needed to make for this project was a contents page
however up unitl the last week when I had the images from the festival
available, I wasn’t sure on how I was going to produce it, as I didn’t know
what images I wanted to use. Luckily because I had made sure that I was
gathering usable images during the event I was able to find something.
The main image is from the headliners performance from the festival,
which works well for the issue as it includes an indepth review of the
event because of it’s link to the genre that the magazine is based around.
I really liked the shade of blue that the sky above the stage was so I
decided to streatch it out over the rest of the page above so that the
bottom half of the page joined smoothly onto the top half and provided
me with a solid colour to put my text over.
I then added the two house style details I needed for this page, the title
and the page number and I chose to use the yellow colour from the stage lighting as the
shade works well with the dark blue background and is a nice accent colour for the page.
I knew how I wanted to layout the contents page, having three columns of text referring to
different articles with the page number and a breif explaination to what each one is about. I
realised that I didn’t want the entire top half of the page to only be text columns when I got
to this stage as I thought back to all the different contents pages I had looked at and knew
that they al contained more than one image so I picked out some of the images from the
different shoots that weren’t used at the main background photograph for any of the
articles and lined them up with the columns. I also deicded to use a sepia style filter over
the images as I wanted them to be a bit more coherent with the rest of the page in terms of
colour scheme, as I realised that the mixture of colours on the top half didn’t look as good
as I wanted it to.
Next came the columns of text below the images. I had a look at some of the example
magazines in class to try and figure out how the text is normally laid out and after seeing a
pattern I had an idea of what I would be doing. This pattern was a large page number in one
colour, which I decided would be the accent colour from the house style aspects, the title
and description text in one colour, which I chose to be white as I thought that black
wouldn’t be visible enough against the blue background. The article title is also a larger font
size than the description to make it clear that it is not a part of the same text.
16. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
It took some time to figure out how I wanted the layout to look because I had some issues
with the placement of the lines, but i am happy with how the text boxes line up with one
another as well as the images above them. Now the bottom half of the page still didn’t have
any text and I had decided not to include the festival review in the columns as I chose for
that to be the featured article of the entire issue, and wanted to place it separate from the
rest of the articles to make that clear. I added the festival logo next to the main stage in
white to match the colour scheme and used the space above it to give another breif
description of what the article would be about, following the same style that I had above.
The final thing I added to make the page seem
more realistic as a part of a real product was the
date the issue came out as well as the issue
number, wanting to make sure that it looked
more natural and just another issue for this magazine.
17. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
Ironically the last thing I made for this project was the front cover. I
started with the main image and did some slight colour correction as
the image was lit too brightly for what I wanted the page to look like.
When I was happy with how the model looked I turned my attention
to the masthead because that was what i had done my practical
research on in preperation for this front cover, trying to perfect
cutting around the model to be able to place the masthead between
the background of the image and the model so that they are the
main focus of the page, not the magazine company.
The font I used I had been planning on using for the masthead since my pre-production style
sheet so I was happy to be able to use the planning I had done. The effects I used on the
font to make it a bit more unique and fit the style of the magazine were the inner and outer
glows, the inner being the lighter shade of yellow and the outer being black to give it a slight
outline. I also used a drop shadow to give the text some depth.
Something I wanted to use as it fits in with the whole grunge aspect of the genre that the
magazine follows and is also present in similar existing products is a paper tear away, as it
gives the page additional depth, making it seemas though the different parts of the cover
are layerd and also gives me space to add more text against a solid colour.
I made the shape with the line tool in small movements and made it entirely black with a
drop shadow to further empthsis the 3D visual I was trying to make present.
I was able to use the space to add cover lines to the page and fill that area with something
rather than having it be blank. The
next thing was adding the rest of the
cover lines around the model,making
sure they didn’t overlap onto him,
using the same fonts that were
featured in the double page spreads
that I made for the majority of them
and the descriptions of the articles
were done in the same Gravity font
that I had used throughout the entire
magazine to continue the house style
even into the front cover.
18. PRODUCTION DIARY – ALICJA MORAWSKA
I needed to add the main coverline for the front cover which is
referring to the model on the front cover and the exclusive
interview that would be written about him. I tried out a few
different layouts as the first one that I tried didn’t suit the page
very well. The final descion I took was to use the yellow version
as it was neater and linked the colour scheme to the masthead.
Another thing that I know would help make the
magazine more realistic was a barcode and
price as it is something that would be featured on any front cover.
Now the thing that I had known that I was
going to add to the front cover from the
very start was the free poster inclusion, as
I know that it is the reason behind a lot of
the physical copy sales. I took images that
hadn’t been used anywhere else in the magazine for this as it made them more individual to
the issue, and also made sure to include the CD that came with the issue on the cover. I
created an outline on the images using a white stroke and the same font that had been used
throughout the magazine to give the details on this.