Major Project Evaluation

Been a while since I have written a blog regarding my work and a lot has changed since my last blog post regarding my lifestyle. I am now working for my degree top-up to my HND qualification now at Farnborough College of Technology in the University Centre in Hampshire and so far am learning a lot and doing a lot of writing which I am finding this hard to adept to, but slowly am learning and getting used to the changes that have come my way.

Anyway I am beginning a new blog evaluating the skills and techniques learnt on my previous course and now using at my new course in Farnborough. And the assignment I want to talk about here is my major project assignment, in which I have chosen to design a magazine based on UK travel and maybe design a website and app prototype for this as well, time allowing. A full detailed proposal regarding this can be viewed below in the form of a video proposal:

Major Project Proposal (YouTube) (Kelly, J.)

This proposal states as to how I am going to go about designing my major project and what I am going to do in order to make this possible. I am still awaiting feedback as to how I really did and where I went right or wrong as of 14:54PM on 09th November 2017. I will update this when feedback is received.

According to my proposal, I was due to begin research around the end of October, but this failed unfortunately, so I am beginning today (09th Nov). I was busy trying to incorporate all assignments assigned to me and I have time to begin here and now and I am going to start looking at some magazine designs both elegant and contemporary.

I want to begin by looking up front covers of magazines, both of contemporary and elegant alike as well as looking up British travel magazine covers as well and design magazine cover mockups using image manipulation skills via Photoshop to get the ball in motion on this project.

One example of a magazine front discovered here during my research was this fashion magazine front here:

Figure 1: Elegant Magazine (Michalik E, ewamichalik.com/)

What works well about this magazine front is that it is contemporary and more modern based which is just about perfect for my design. The typefaces in this design are perfect for my magazine, some that are bold and some that are calligraphic such as the word summer above in the main cover line, I like the calligraphic effect here and this is what I am going to incorporate into my magazine design. An interesting source that I found in this image below here:

Figure 2: Analyzing Front Covers of Music Magazines, Slide 4 (Ottley L, Slideshare.net)

This is an analysis of a front cover magazines stating what every element of the magazines are, from main image, mastheads and so on. I feel that this would be of a great help to me in the designing of the magazine front cover part anyway. I find this very detailed and a good source of research.

WEDNESDAY 15TH NOVEMBER 2017

Upon meeting with my mentor today, it was suggested that I collect more magazine covers, such as online and maybe taking snap shots in supermarkets and so on. I was offered a particular magazine to take along with me. The first thing I need to do is research the demographic as in who they are and their interests etc. Keep type relevant and choose something that is appealing to a huge range of people, if not, narrow the target audience. I am to look at The Garden Magazine.

Research names of magazines by looking at magazines and developing names and getting audience feedback, ask around family and friends etc as well as peers i.e. college.

It might be helpful to narrow down the audience a little bit to make it more interesting. Type in questionnaire and email to mentor before presentation to others. The deadline I set on my schedule for the conclusion of research was stated for 16th November, this is to be extended, based on feedback, I have taken the decision to research further.

Looking at the name of the magazine, it could be shortened and look at the word waves a bit more in terms of concept, style etc.

With my magazine and website is my chance to show that I am a capable graphic designer and showing my chance to shine. Look at a magazine called Little White Lies.

Spend the week looking through magazine covers.

I began the research by scanning this magazine cover that I have at home and here is how I went by scanning it and putting it onto the blog:

Magazine on the bed ready for scanning.

Front cover on scanner ready for scanning.

Scanner closed and it is all systems go.

SD card in printer ready for image scanning.

Scanning option selected on printer and just about ready to go.

Scan to Memory Card option is selected, it is ready to roll.

Scan info shows format, color mode etc.

Scanning in progress. Job nearly done.

Job done! and by looking at the quality of the photograph of the scanned result, it doesn't look to me that this is the quality that I would like the image to be at:

And to use the skills I have as graphic designer to put to practice, I am going to take to Photoshop in order to accomplish this. Here is what I did to make this happen:

These are the images ready for the blog post detailing the scanning of the magazine front.

Just about to open Photoshop now and touch up the image of the magazine front cover in order to both use my Photoshop Skills for good use and touch up the image of the front cover of the magazine a small bit.

The image is all ready for me to open on Photoshop.

The scanned image is now on Photoshop, but it is in need of a good touch-up and deleting the white background behind it. I am going to accomplish this by using the Camera Raw Filter.

I have altered the vibrancy of the magazine to the maximum amount. Looks a bit better, but I might experiment a bit more.

The exposure is now down to minus 40. Looking slightly better, but might experiment a bit more on this by using other filters.

I’ve reduced it’s highlights down by half now. One more filter I think and I am done for this researched magazine cover.

I’ve now reduced it’s contrast and I think that the way it looks now works out fine as it looks the way that it looks in real life. The scanning came out a bit too dark for my liking and it strengthens my Photoshop skills by a long way.

I am now going to get to work at deleting the horrible white looking background, so that the image will only feature the magazine I scanned and nothing else.

I have used the Wand tool to create a selection around the magazine, but in parts it has selected objects around the people on the top right-hand corner of the magazine, so I am going to use the quick mask function to fix this.

I have used the Wand tool to create a selection around the magazine, but in parts it has selected objects around the people on the top right-hand corner of the magazine, so I am going to use the quick mask function to fix this.

I am now using the pencil tool to fix this error up, see the red surrounding magazine, that is the selection that is going to be surrounding magazine, the white around it masks it out. I want to mask out white part of magazine top right.

Now I have the right selection made and I hope that I have accomplished this correctly. Only time will tell if I have pulled this off right or not.

I have got rid of the horrible white background surrounding magazine. I am now going to tidy the edges up a little bit to make it look a lot more tidy as sometimes I can leave bits sticking out.

Some parts look a bit untidy…

By hitting the delete key, this has tidied up and it looks to my liking.

Also at the sides there, the sticky points sticking out there. Not good.

Now this looks tidy and to my liking.

And the scanned image is fixed and ready to be saved as a JPEG and to be analyzed.

And here is the finished result:

Figure 3: Image scan of a magazine cover.

This is a magazine cover of Inside Soap, to which I had at home and scanned using my scanner and tidied up slightly using Photoshop and I want to analyse this front cover as to what works and what doesn't, so here it goes:

HOW IT WORKS?

What makes it work well is that it looks exciting enough as this features the main characters in the soap world and their main storylines in the week of soaps on television. Everything in the cover stands out well, type, composition, colors etc.

HOW IT DOESN'T WORK?

For me, what doesn't work is that it has pretty much taken the 'in your face' approach and makes it look like a lot is going on. It looks overpowering and too much imagery used in the front cover as well as text etc.

(Added 24th November 2017) The colors stand out with great power such as the reds. It has too much of the colour red I think as the main title is red as well as the stroke colors and elements such as the shapes in the cover. The main cover line that says "Here Comes Trouble" looks alright, but I think that the drop shadow could be lost as I think it stands out really well without it. The yellow looks bright and cheery though, which makes it look cheerful and happy, but otherwise I stand by my original annotations annotated before.

FRIDAY 24th NOVEMBER 2017

During the week in Farnborough, I took photos of several different magazine covers in the college library. I wish to write about these in greater detail below here:

These magazines to me look like the type of magazine that I want to create for my final project. I like the way that the Creative Review Magazine looks as this, along with the Little White Lies magazine inspires me. (More on Little White Lies later). The Creative Review looks as if it has the title in red and the main cover image along with a paragraph of some kind on the top left hand side of the magazine.

The magazines, looking at them here, look a little of both contemporary and elegant, in terms of typefaces i.e. Vanity Fair looks a bit elegant and old fashioned, compared to the way the Film & Television one looks, which looks more on the contemporary side and a bit modern.

The Therapy Today magazine cover also looks quite nice and minimal. Just one illustration and text, i.e. main cover line and title. The design looks as if it is an illustration that is created using Illustrator, which is one of my biggest strengths in design.

LITTLE WHITE LIES COVER ANALYSIS

HOW IT WORKS?

The fact remaining that it is an illustration and image based magazine which is just what I am aiming for for my magazine. The illustration stands out really well. Front cover looks as if it was designed with Adobe Illustrator for design and transferred to InDesign for layout, both of which are my strengths in design. The minimalism in this cover as opposed to Inside Soap just about does it for me. It looks extremely powerful in terms of colour use and it is attractive to a younger audience i.e. design students.

HOW IT DOESN'T WORK?

There is not much I can think of as I think that it works really well in terms of type, colours and hierarchy. Maybe a bit too powerful and distorting, telling by the woman's face, given the way she stares at the audience as this might be a bit off putting, but otherwise it is OK as it is.

HOW I WOULD LIKE MINE TO LOOK?

I am aiming to make my magazine cover to look vaguely similar as the Little White Lies cover, but the same dimension as the Inside Soap cover. I must research and look into paper techniques before I begin production though.

GETTING THE BALL RUNNING

FIRST THING'S FIRST!!

I aim to begin by taking small steps into production, so I am going to begin by doing a number of tutorials in order to get the hang of things whether these are appropriate or not as I want to do this by getting ahead of the game in terms of positioning and so on. So I am going to start by doing an easy tutorial with this video tutorial on YouTube:

I will add annotated screenshots of the work in progress that will show what I am doing as to what filters I am going to be using and otherwise. I am going to begin by opening Photoshop and doing what is required of me. So here goes:

This is the image I downloaded from YouTube video description of the tutorial that I am going to be working on:

Courtesy of Marty Geller, taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0qif3b3grI

YouTube video tutorial all ready and good to go. (Courtesy of YouTube)

I am going to download a template already provided for me by using the video’s description link that came with this video.

Template downloaded and open and all good to go now.

The arrow button on the template layer is open. This shows all the elements that I am going to be using.

The template layer temporarily disabled, the base layer visible and active.

I am drawing a path within the document, it is narrow at the top and wide at the bottom.

I am going to now make a selection of the path. I am about to set a feather radius of around 0 pixels.

And the selection is now made.

I have created a quick mask of the selection.

I’ve added a Gaussian blur of 50 pixels into the quick mask.

The quick mask is then transformed back into a selection.

And a nice hint of blue is added.

A new fill has been added.

A clouds filter has now been added to make the magazine cover mockup look interesting I presume.

The color dodge blend mode has been added. The clouds have been changed from black to blue.

The clone stamp tool has been selected to edit out the bright area on the bottom right hand corner.

Which has now gone and it is all thanks to the clone stamp tool. It looks so much better.

The text has now gone in to the document. But it needs to look better.

Starting with the leading for instance. It looks so much better now that the words are closer together.

I am making one of the words bigger than all the rest, but it needs to look better in terms of leading than it does now.

In fact I am doing it for two of the words, but the positioning could look a bit better than it does now as they are covering up the other two words as I speak.

The kerning and the leading now look a whole lot better and there was a character mistake in the word tears as originally it was fears when really it is tears.

I am adding a stroke to the text as well as a drop shadow.

Which have now been added in to the document, giving the cover a tiny bit of scope.

I am now adding an angle to the text and I think that it looks pretty cool.

I am now adding a colour to the text to give it a pulp fiction type of look. Looking good so far.

The template layer is once again active and it is given the worn out magazine look.

The author’s name has been added to the cover i.e. my name as I am designing the cover via YouTube.

The tagline added to give the magazine real scope and it is really coming along.

The title looked enormous, so I scaled it down a little bit to make room for the clipart that is to go in.

The canvas is now white and all layers temporarily disabled.

The font name is Horror Dingbats and by selecting the letter E using the Caps Lock key will get me this clipart.

I’ve opened up a new layer and control clicked the text layer and made a selection and added black to the new layer to make a clipart out of the letter E and this is the result.

I am going to add colours to the clipart, beginning with the skin.

See the result? Needs a bit of tweaking though.

All colours are now added to make the woman look more human and alive.

Job almost done. Clipart now added to the front page. It is slowly coming alive.

I am now increasing the percent from 100 to 300.

I am adding a color halftone to the image now in order to give it a pixelated look but in a design fashion.

And this is the amazing result.

And the result is added to the base layer as well and this is the overall result.

The image is to be scaled down to 33 percent. The reason that the percentage was to be increased was to make the result look as good as it does now otherwise,

this would have been the result which would have been terrible. Courtesy of YouTube.

Hooray, job done!!! This is the final result 😊.

And here is the final result of this beginning of a long line of tutorials before official production begins:

I know that this is irrelevant to what I am doing for my major project, but doing these type of tutorials are beneficial to me as these will help me in what I am going to do for my magazine. This is a 1950's Pulp Fiction style magazine cover and what works for me are the fluorescent colours as well as typography, creases and so on.

TWO EXAMPLES OF MAGAZINE COVERS THAT WOULD INSPIRE THIS DESIGN WOULD RANGE FROM THE FOLLOWING:

6870894302_a60ba81a6e_b

Front_cover,_-Wow_Comics-_no._38_(art_by_Jack_Binder)

2c519e567a44c77a7e89037f7ef927d4--sci-fi-comics-horror-comics

Figure 1, Horror Comics-Wikipedia, taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_comics

Figure 2, Fantagraphics Books, Inc, taken from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fantagraphics/6870894302 Figure 3, File:Front cover, "Wow Comics" no. 38 (art by Jack Binder).jpg, taken from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Front_cover,_%22Wow_Comics%22_no._38_(art_by_Jack_Binder).jpg

Figure 4, Pinterest Comic Books, taken from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pintal/horror-comic-covers/?lp=true

FEEDBACK 22nd NOVEMBER 2017

According to feedback from my mentor, scan no more as this has shown my scanning process and just scan what is needed and not unnecessarily. It is good that process is shown, but it is just to reduce workload.

Analyse Little White Lies cover, take snapshot, but opposite of everything that I did with the scanning etc. Do written annotation for cover. Expand on annotation of Inside Soap i.e. type stands out in terms of shadowing, colors and go into depth and do the same with Little White Lies cover.

Write about image of magazine covers taken in college library this morning i.e. which magazine to read and analyse etc.

Write a bit about paperstock i.e. glossy and non glossy, uncoated papaer etc. Research them and analyse these in greater detail.

PUTTING A MOCKUP SPREAD TOGETHER

I think that it is time I began putting bits and bobs together for my product, so I am going to begin by designing a mockup spread together with a mockup movie advertisement and a mockup article to get me in the mood, so here goes.

To begin, I will be creating a Film Noir style poster using this video tutorial on YouTube:

And this PNG image of Britney Spears:

Figure 5, Britney Spears, taken from: http://www.pngmart.com/image/tag/britney-spears

The idea of me creating this advert is that all magazines promote advertising of all sorts in them, ranging from movies, products and so on. So the idea was that I was going to create a mockup spread of a magazine containing this advertisement and an image with dummy text. The screenshots below my progress at this with detailed annotations. So here goes...

A3 Document all ready and good to go.

Frame tools at A4 paper sizes all ready for stuff to be put in them.

The first element of the spread is created. It is the mockup movie poster I created on Photoshop.

In order to accommodate the image and text, I’ve duplicated the A4 frame on the right and halved them up to the equivalent of an A4 size document.

It is coming along slowly but surely. All it needs now is text.

I’ve started by adding in the headline, ‘Why not visit London?’

The spread is almost complete. A dropcap has now been added to the spread. I am happy as it looks for now until I study more into other magazine elements.

The mockup spread is now complete. Everything has been added in, such as dropcap, introduction paragraph and page number.

This is my mockup film noir movie poster designed using Photoshop:

And here is the finished result as a whole.

The quality doesn't look very good, but it is just a mockup at this particular stage. I will now place this on a magazine spread mockup to see how it will look as if it were a real magazine spread.

And here is the final result!!!

My magazine spread is complete and the wooden texture I created myself using the book called 100% Photoshop by Steve Caplin. Obviously this is just the beginning and it could look a whole lot better, but I will reflect this upon the production of the product in question. The St Paul's Image is owned by me.

MAGAZINE MOCKUP IMAGE USED

Figure 6, Photorealistic Magazine MockUp, taken and downloaded from: https://graphicburger.com/photorealistic-magazine-mock-up/

WOOD TEXTURE FOR MAGAZINE MOCKUP USED

Designed by using a book called 100% Photoshop. Caplin, S. Page 24.

This is the wood texture that I used for my mockup magazine spread. The spread lies on it.

FEEDBACK WEDNESDAY 06th DECEMBER 2017

It was stated by my mentor that I became very descriptive in my magazine cover analysis. And interpreted the difference between illustrations and typefaces. It is good that I identified the audience and discussed the tutorial I did. It was also fantastic that I became more critical in my analysis.

It was decided that I had made a good enough start on my Pulp Fiction style magazine and was relevant in a way to the style that I was working on. Everything turned out really well in this sense.

However, it was recommended to me that I could focus on haunted houses in the UK and make poster campaigns out of these in the style of Agatha Christie novels. And also make a whole page using the kind of imagery that was linked to my Pulp Fiction magazine cover.

The shocked looking woman on the front cover of the Pulp Fiction cover is a font I downloaded called Horror Dingbats II The Victims and it is the letter E and it is a capital letter and this is it:

Done in Photoshop, control clicked on the layer and created a new layer and filled it in black and this is the result. This can be achieved and done by pressing the letter E and first by downloading the font which is called Horror Dingbats II The Victims and I downloaded it from the following URL: http://goo.gl/5SNUDU

It was stated that the Halftone effect looked great on the graphic of the lady on the front cover of the magazine. It was stated that I could do similar illustrations to the graphic that went onto the front cover of my magazine using the halftone pattern and a brilliant effort all round done here.

I was asked as to what I wanted to write about for my magazine. I was unaware as to what I wanted to write about in the magazine in general. One of the suggestions I came up with was to write about Britain's seaside culture, but this may change as the production goes on. I am also trying to come up with a type of style that I have added so far to my magazine. I will search on with this.

Regarding the spread I did, one of the images used was this image that I took with my phone and added Black and White elements to it:

I also added my film noir effect poster above as well to include mockup advertising as stated above that magazines also have advertising in them and I think that this works well for a mockup spread.

A recommendation was to create new content for the magazine in order for me to develop myself and my skills as a designer as a whole. I think this to be a good idea all round. It is recommended that I stated above that I base a lot of my tutorials and take inspiration from Agatha Christie novel covers as this could be the kind of thing that I feature in my magazine and tie in this style that I am working with at the moment.

Looking into 1930's houses in the UK could be another possibility, although in the short space of time that I have I cannot visit all of them personally, so I will research these and visit those closer to home within the time frame that I have. All tutorial s that I am doing are helping me to develop my skills a whole lot further down the line and deem appropriate for my magazine.

The progress is really coming along in terms of annotation, which has improved greatly as I am dissecting what I am looking at and I am adding examples that reflect the direction that I am taking in this project. I am doing well with the tutorials online, but must take the time to consider as to how I could reflect these into my magazine design. There are so many ways, the question is finding them i.e. haunted houses in the UK and so on.

It was then stated that everytime that I do an online tutorial that I write down as to how these can be applied to in my magazine. For example, if I was to do a film noir inspired tutorial, I could write about all the UK cinemas for instance. I must think of a name for the magazine, I was thinking about Rule Britannia, but I think that this could be too overly patriotic, so I might scrap that idea and name it something more appropriate. I won't worry about that too much at that particular stage.

Whenever I do tutorials, I must think as to how to reflect these into my magazine and do continuous research into this. This will be on going.

WHAT TO DO NEXT?

One idea that was spoken about in the mentoring session that I had with my mentor was creating a 1930's tourism poster and one idea that I have in mind for this is doing another tutorial on an image that I took whilst in Regents Park recently and this is how I am going to go about it:

The advertising campaign will be inspired by 1930's to 1940's style travel poster to be created using Photoshop with this video tutorial:

Even though this was set in America, I am going to use an image taken by me in Great Britain and this is it here:

It is a picture taken in Regents Park in an autumn day in London and I feel this appropriate to consider and I also think that this is going to tie in a bit with my Creative Narrative unit in promoting the Student Art Pass to younger audiences to get them interested in art. If I think that I can do that, if this is the type of audience that this magazine is really aimed at, why not focus a bit on London's parks, like this one. So here goes:

Photoshop open, image selected, all ready to go.

But judging by the look of the image when I give it the cutout filter that parts of it look terrible. I am tweaking this all the time and not a good result. So I am going to scrap the idea of using this photo and choose another image that is better suited to this kind of style.

I am going to use this photograph taken of me in 2014 in Devon that is the home of Agatha Christie and do something that is inspired by the style of designs used for her book covers and this tutorial is inspired greatly by this and here is the image:

My new image is in and is a lot more appropriate now since that I am going to be focussing on Agatha Christie country which is Devon and this photo was taken of me in Paignton, Devon in 2014.

The cutout filter now applied to this photograph and looks a whole lot better, I will use this one. The amount combinations differ to the tutorial as the photo used in the video tutorial did not meet the same standards as mine.

I am going to transform the sky into a smooth gradient blue feel. The sky is selected and it will look better than it is now.

The sky is complete and looks good and the text is also in now. But the kerning could be a bit different.

And it has now improved a whole lot but the colour needs a bit of trying out.

I selected a color already in the picture and changed it to that. Looking good.

I am going to add a stroke to the word Paignton.

To which I did adding a color that was on the picture to give it scope.

I’ve added another word into the design called Devon, which is part of the English Riviera where Christie came from.

Another word has been added to the picture and skewed.

I think that this looks better without the words ‘visit Devon’ written in it. This design is inspired by Agatha Christie book cover designs and 1930’s to 1940’s posters in general.

I am going to add a white border to this document. So I have to expand the canvas in order to do this.

The canvas has now been extended in order to accommodate this border add.

And the white border is now added and job done.

Here is the final result:

The white background is not showing very much though as the background colour in this blog post is white. So I will add another color to see if it looks any better or not. Perhaps black for the background would probably work. Let's see.

Yes I do think that looks so much better and matches the style of Agatha Christie book cover designs.

I am contemplating as to what I am going to do with this design. So I am going to begin putting a spread together for the magazine writing an article about Ayr in Scotland, since that this was the place I visited for my holiday last August and loved it, so I am going to write about that in my very own words to begin with. To begin with, I am going to use this mockup spread to create it that I found from Google:

Figure 7, Magazine Spreads – Good and Bad Practices from: http://www.magazinedesigning.com/magazine-spreads-good-bad-practices/

I will need InDesign in order to put this together at the size of an A3 document, so here goes:

InDesign document all ready to go with this spread.

Rectangle the size of a landscape size A3 document all ready for the image of the spread layout to go into.

The image of mockup spread is now in and I am ready to go on this spread.

My image layout is now in the spread, ready for the imagery to go into it in due course.

After some consideration, I have taken the decision to just have one main image to accompany this spread, as for it not to look like the same as shown above and to just use the image as an inspiration rather as a duplicate, so I am going to make the following change here:

There will be only one image in the spread now and the text will go on the left page of it and the right page will contain the main image and nothing else as I think that works better so let me make this change:

The main image to the right and the headline frames are now in. The text will appear in the same page as the headline and the introduction line.

Introduction frame is now in and now to add the columns.

And they are now in and I am now ready to get to work.

Image has now been removed and this is what it is going to look like once it is complete. Right on to work then…

This is an image that I took in Ayr beach that I am going to use as the main image for the spread:

Figure 8, image owned by Joseph Kelly.

I could not use all the image as the image was to be set to a portrait size. So I only used half of the image and it has been manipulated to look more vibrant courtesy of Photoshop. This image looked far more interesting and it works well as part of a magazine spread.

The main image is now in and I am giving the left page a black plain coloured background as this is heavily inspired by most of the Graphic Design magazines such as Little White Lies. So far I think that it is really coming along. Now for the text.

I have separated the top rectangles to give more room and they look a lot better now they did as they won’t be so crowded. I will now begin by writing.

The main story headline is now in and the font I am using for it is Lobster 1.4 which doesn’t look too bad actually, I think that works really well. It should actually have the words “welcome to” above it as if to say that it is welcoming someone to Ayr. So I will now do this.

In order to do this, I added a new rectangle frame above the word Ayr.

It is really coming along now. I altered the baseline shift and the tracking with the words “Welcome to” to make them look good and give them a bit of scope and looking at it so far, it is really coming along now.

The introduction I am taking from the Lonely Planet website and this is what it is going to say: “Parts of the centre have a neglected air, though there are many fine Georgian and Victorian buildings, and it makes a convenient base for exploring this section of coast.” Scotland Ayr, Lonely Planet.

This is what it really says, but had to alter parts of the introduction as not to put people off from going to Ayr:

“Ayr's long sandy beach has made it a popular family seaside resort since Victorian times, but it has struggled in the recent economic climate. Parts of the centre have a neglected air, though there are many fine Georgian and Victorian buildings, and it makes a convenient base for exploring this section of coast. The huge drawcard is Alloway, 3 miles south, with its Robert Burns heritage. Most things to see in Ayr are also Robert Burns–related.” Scotland Ayr, Lonely Planet

I feared putting in the economic situation as this could put people off from going there altogether, so painted it in a good light. But Ayr is a place worth visiting.

If the rectangle frames were taken out of the production, this is what it would look like so far:

Obviously, now it needs an article, so I began writing the columns in my own words below:

Like every magazine article, it needs a drop cap to begin the story. I have added this in and it is looking good so far.

Like every magazine article, it needs a drop cap to begin the story. I have added this in and it is looking good so far.

Here is the finished result as an image:

This is the first of a few of many spreads that will enter my magazine. This is the mag now in a mockup:

This is going to be how the magazine is going to look once it goes to print. I think that it is really coming along and my magazine writing skills have improved greatly since I was given my first magazine project nearly 3 years ago now. This is going to be the first of a few many spreads and I am going to adapt to this particular style for my magazine.

Mockup used for this spread design:

Figure 9, Free A4 PSD Magazine Mockup Isometric View. Taken from: https://creativebooster.net/products/free-a4-psd-magazine-mockup-isometric-view

PRODUCTION OF MAGAZINE BEGINS

The research will be ongoing, but I think that the time has to come now to start putting things together once and for all. I am going to begin by putting together a mockup magazine together stating what goes where. Meanwhile here is recorded imagery of me doing this:

I have all my pieces of paper in A3 size. Folding these will turn this into A4 paper size.

The mockup magazine is now folded up and ready to be briefly annotated by using a pen.

The annotation is in progress as shown above here.

Annotation completed.

Next, I am going to do a magazine spread order list on Word that shows what goes where in a table as shown in the screenshots below of it's progress.

On Microsoft Word, I began by drawing out a table and then looking at my mockup magazine and typing in what goes exactly where. This is me beginning it.

The spread list is in progress as shown here. Apologies for the screenshot pasted in this document. I forgot to delete this before putting in this screenshot.

Spread list completed, This is just a simple Word document, so I am not going to overly concern myself with appearance and making it look in any particular way. Here is the finished outcome.

I created this spread list using Microsoft Word and saved it as a PDF and exported it into an image as this was the only way i had to do this. In addition to this, I am creating a checklist, so that I can be ticking off things as I go along to show that I have done this as shown below here:

This however, will be ongoing, so I will not add this until all chores stated on the production schedule are all done. To make a word document look more interesting, I've added 2 Mr Men characters into the document. Mr. Happy means job done and Mr. Rude means job not done. The key to character appearance is shown in screenshot below:

As you can see, this is what these animated characters role are in my checklist.

Mr. Happy and Mr Rude are shown here below are elements used as part of the production process downloaded from Google.

Mr Happy

Mr Rude

Figure 10, Happy Hour. Taken from: http://www.zero-zero.co.uk/happyhour/

Figure 11. Mr. Rude. Taken from: http://mrmen.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Rude

I am now creating a magazine overview to accompany the questionnaire that I am going to be hopefully handing out to my class on Wednesday. This is in progress as shown above.

The overview is now complete and I must think of questions to ask. I will keep all this information in the same document in order to make life easy for myself when I go to print this info.

The questionnaire is now in progress. I am splitting this in 2 parts. The first is demographics of the person answering the questionnaire and the second will be the design one in general.

The design questionnaire is now in progress.

The questionnaire is now complete and will be emailed to my mentor for feedback. I will await this feedback from my mentor regarding this project and in the meantime, here is the finished piece.

MAJOR PROJECT MAGAZINE OVERVIEW

MAJOR PROJECT MAGAZINE OVERVIEW2

MAJOR PROJECT MAGAZINE OVERVIEW3

MAJOR PROJECT MAGAZINE OVERVIEW4

Looking at this questionnaire, I've decided that it could look a whole lot better as this one looks a bit abruptly drawn out. So here is what I did:

I’ve decided to do a Word documented questionnaire to pass around to my class and to look at this one, it looks a whole lot better than the InDesign one that I did so far.

And it is now complete and this is the finished result. I think that it looks a whole lot better than the last one did and a lot neater in it’s appearance. And this is the finished result:

Questionnaire Major Project_Page_1

Questionnaire Major Project_Page_2

Questionnaire Major Project_Page_3

I began handing these out to people in my class, but I did not get the maximum number of results that I wanted, so I will refrain from writing any further about this until I get more results. I will give it a fortnight (Fri 23rd Feb closedown) and then begin working with the findings of my research.

Meanwhile, for the purposes of social media, I will also design an electronic questionnaire to share with people using Google Docs. Here is how I went by doing that:

I am going to carry on with my primary research by doing an online questionnaire in order to get as much results as possible in order to help me with my magazine project.

The questionnaire is now in progress. It is coming along quite nicely I think.

The magazine online survey is in progress and going well. I feel as if it is coming along now.

The questionnaire is now complete. I will begin on sending this to various people to complete for me and put it onto my social media as well for people to do as well.

The E-questionnaire is now complete and now ready to distribute to my social media. So far, I've only has as of Friday 09th February 4 responses to this and I am not the person that likes to push people into doing this kind of thing, so I will allow a few days to see if anyone else wants to participate.

My deadline for this will be the one that is stated above (23rd Feb). In by this time, I hope to have gathered more results.

In the meantime, I began on my logo design for my logo design for my magazine and these are images of the drafts that I have recorded onto paper taken with my mobile phone.

These images are of me recording my logo ideas onto paper to see how these will come out once designed digitally. I am now ready to design my logo having decided to go with the third logo as I feel that is most consistent with my magazine. Here is how I went by doing it.

I am now going to begin the logo design for my magazine. And to do that I am going to do this using Adobe Illustrator.

Canvas set up on Illustrator and am all ready to go on this. It is going to be based on the Union Jack in a sun.

The story behind the logo: My magazine is based on British travel and I want to inject British pride into this logo and to incorporate the sun in this to show our happy personality and that Britain is a great country to visit and to show our sunny nature.

The circle is appearing now on the canvas, all ready to think as to what I am going to do with the Union Jack and I have an idea.

My yellow is chosen for the overall sunny background of the sun in the logo. So far it is coming along nicely.

I was thinking about turning these diagonals into sun rays to make the logo look more and more realistic like the Union Jack is forming sun rays in order to give it a feel of British pride and to incorporate happiness to it.

I might make up a concept by doing it like this, but by adding rays to the outside of the sun.

Which I have now done and the logo is complete. The logo is here below in all it's infernal glory.

The logo for my magazine. It is a sun with the Union Jack in the form of an elipse. I think that it looks really good and the colors especially. I could do Red, White and Blue for it's rays, but that would make it look too patriotic for such a magazine as mine.

Color pallette used for the logo and it's codes:

To increase my primary research a lot further, I am going to now spread the word on my Instagram by designing a graphic in order to attract people. I began by starting a document at the size of an A5 document, which adhere to the dimensions which are Instagram friendly.

The canvas is blank at present. I carried on by adding the following content:

I used this image of the Union Jack flag as a border to say that I am desigining a magazine based on British travel. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Jack)

The Union flag is now in my canvas and scaled to fit the canvas in it’s entirety. Coming along good here, I am not concerning myself with quality or appearance.

I’ve added a golden sunny gradient texture in the form of a rectangle in order to create a warm and sunny feel in order to attract people’s attention. Looking good.

Text in the graphic now and the ad is now completed and ready to post on Instagram in order to increase the audience for my questionnaire. Hopefully the results will begin increasing.

I am saving this graphic to maximum quality in order to make it more high in terms of quality and resolution once posted to Instagram.

And here is the finished result:

I am going to put this image onto my Instagram now in the hope of attracting more results for my primary research.

I am copying the image to my Dropbox as I find this an easy way to save stuff to Instagram this way.

Now on my iPad, I am getting the graphic ready for show on my Instagram in the hope of attracting more results. This file is being transferred to my photos app on my iPad.

I am now transporting the image to my photos app on my iPad in order to load it to Instagram.

The image is exporting now to write it into the app.

On Instagram and all readynow to save the file and write a caption about it in order to get the message out.

Caption written and the image is ready to be posted.

Getting ready to share on my social media.

The image is now on my Instagram profile and hopefully, people can begin doing my questionnaire.

I of course must share the link in which people can access my questionnaire at.

So far, one person has done it. Thanks very much Orla_B.

And one like. Hopefully they can start rolling in now.

My deadline for this primary research will be 2 weeks today (24th Feb). If the process is a slow one, I will jog memories by designing new graphics and posting those on.

So far, only one person on Instagram has responded to my post as stated above as the previous 6 were there already. Hopefully before the set deadline, I will have achieved more results. Only time will tell as to how this accomplished. Some people have filled this questionnaire out in paper, so, so far in total, I got up to 16 results.

Within the weeks since before Christmas, I am doing lots of primary research such as taking pictures of magazine designs, interviews, questionnaires and so on. Today (12th Feb), I've been taking more images of magazines in shops (discreetly of course) and I am going to present these now with a brief annotation about them.

There are so many magazine styles out there today, some elegant and some contemporary. I tend to like the contemporary style more for it's stylish more modern bold minimalistic design. One example of this is the Star Wars magazine above, just a few words and an image. This to me sounds like a good enough style for a magazine.

I even like the looks of these magazines, but most of these, tell a story with a lot going on, which I find overwhelming. The one that does it for me is the one in the middle where Liam Gallagher is worded. One image and a few pieces of text. That is how I am going to go about doing my magazine. This is how I feel inspired, if others can do it in this style, why cannot I?

Other magazines I've taken images of over the last few weeks I've taken below here:

These magazine covers look cool I think. I like these looks and I am feeling inspired evermore. I am not particularly on the Vogue or Vanity Fair magazine covers though, they are too obvious and I would not find that much of a challenge in doing them as it would mean typing in text and using images. I find the more contemporary one s far more challenging with experimentation of colors, images and so on.

The Computer Arts magazine I like for it's more typography use rather than imagery and for it's more colour blocking techniques.

A whole array of magazines, both elegant and contemporary to inspire me in making my choice of magazine style.

There is far too much going on in this magazine cover for my liking for me to feel inspired by this particular photography magazine. Too many spoiers and images, for me this ruins it and the overall outlook of the actual mag in question.

This magazine cover I like for it's illustration and minimal use of imagery. Artwork looks to have been done in Photoshop. But I do like it and it is giving me a good incentive to do a similar design for my magazine.

I like the use of yellow in this magazine cover. It makes it look like a cheerful and happy magazine to read. I like the fact that there is minimal use of text on the front cover of this magazine.

Taken in my college, some student must have designed this front cover as a simple illustration. Good use of typography all round and good purple use all round. I am unsure if I could ever be able to do this type of design though. I am not even going to attempt this.

Today (12th Feb) I conducted more research into magazine covers and spreads. I looked at about 5 different designs, which I feel is enough in order to keep research minimal. These have been annotated, referenced and done using PowerPoint and all slides exported onto images. Here are the outcomes:

In addition to all this primary research, I created 3 moodboards in order to assist me with my inspiration of colors, text and various other magazine designs out there already within the same style I aim to design my magazine. Here are the moodboards along with brief annotations as to why these are created.

The first moodboard is based on colours. This is there to help me out with my colour theory for my magazine.

The second is the magazine designs out there already. This is inspiration for my designs.

The third is text. The fonts I plan to use are Lobster, Fugue and Gill Sans. I might even use a few serif fonts as suggested via primary research.

Now that the mood boards are out of the way with, now I must think of ideas for a front cover for this magazine of mine. A very good source of inspiration is that of this magazine cover in which I scanned with my home printer and I am putting this up on my blog now to show that I am heavily inspired by this cover:

I am inspired by this free Time Out magazine travel magazine as this is somewhat similar to the kind of style that I am going to base my design on. I am going to design my front cover somewhat similar to this above design. However I am going to put my own take into this design, so that my design differs as to the one that is above.

To help me decide, I have designed another moodboard based on British travel magazine covers already out there and have came up with a few here in the following moodboard:

I designed this moodboard of British travel mags combining the two styles and there are some really good ones out there to work with. Now it is a question of me putting together a good enough cover for my magazine, so I must design some mockup copies now for this magazine cover.

I began this process by drawing out 8 different mockup ideas of how I am going to design this magazine cover on it's front. Here are some images of me drawing these out with brief annotations of how I am doing and what I think:

I am going to draw 8 different mockup designs for each spread. Obviously, I am only going to do 1 spread out of the 8. I think that it is nice that I have a few good designs to choose from showing that I am experimenting as to how I would like the finished outcome to look.

The drawings are in progress. Obviously, the background image will take up all the entire page of the magazine, so I am not at all fussed as to how this is going to look here.

Things are really coming along quite nicely, every spread is drawn differently than the other, which I am spoilt for choice as to which one I am going to choose.

As seen, I am drawing out designs that make the logo move around from different areas of the magazine to make it look a lot more interesting.

All the mockups are now drawn out and here is the scanned copy of my drawings that can be seen in clearly more detail.

This is the image of the mockup diagrams of about 8 different spreads. I am going to have to choose one though. But I have good ones to choose from and whichever one I will choose, I am sure that it will be a good choice to make. I will then create a mockup of this choice on Illustrator using shapes, diagonals etc.

I am now going to experiment with typography for my magazine name. I’ve thought of a few names so far for my magazine as I wrote with using a biro. This is the scanned document for the names I came up with for my magazine.

I am now in the process for experimenting with ideas for names of my magazine. I’ve jotted down a few names so far as you can see above. This is me experimenting with typography for my magazine.

The typography experimentation is really coming along nicely. So far, I have 3 very good fonts used so far. I will experiment with other additional fonts for the name of the magazine in the logo.

The 6 fonts for the magazine name are chosen and I’ve done the first name idea so far. Now I must do this with all the other name ideas that I came up with.

I’ve come up with other ideas and names as well as hierarchy and compositions for minimal name ideas such as this Cool UK on the above left graphic in the canvas. Quite a nice ring to it I think.

The name Cool Britain might not make a lot of sense, it is just an idea that I came up with. I could say Cool Britannia, but there is a shop in London by that name and it would be a breach of copyright of brand name, so this is how it would have to be if I was to name it this. Otherwise, so far, so good.

The positioning and the text being smaller and higher than the other is taking shape now and coming along nicely.

The typography name experimentation is almost at an end. I’ve got one more name idea to do and I am done. So far, so good.

Job done and all name ideas are now in logo and the typography experimentation for the name of the magazine is now complete. The inspiration behind this comes from The Little White Lies magazine. I will have the name situated in the ellipse part of the logo.

Here are the images of the typography experimentation, all 6 name ideas for my magazine name:

I will put this magazine name on ice for a bit in order to accommodate an assignment deadline coming up in a week. In the meantime, I am going to see about getting more responses for my questionnaire that I have done in order to carry out primary research for my FMP. To make it as nice as possible, I am going to create a video reminder using this YouTube tutorial below:

I will add annotated screenshots of the work in progress. Here goes:

I am going to use this glitter texture as provided on the video description in the YouTube page:

My canvas is created below here:

It is the same size as the overall image and the glitter image is going to go in there now:

The glitter image is now in and I am ready to begin work on this graphic.

I am adding a gradient to the background layer now.

And the gradient has been added to the canvas.

The text has been added into the canvas ready for working on. It is looking good.

By ctrl clicking on the text layer and layer masking it, the text layer fill changes to 0 percent and this is the result!!! Looking good so far.

The text has been given a glass effect and is really coming along nicely now.

Duplicated text layer once again increases the glass effect of the text. It looks to be really coming along now. This is accomplished by making tweaks on the bevel and emboss filter in Photoshop.

The text layer is once again duplicated and it looks really nice and the glass effect is really beginning to show well.

The text could be brighter though, so I am going to open up levels and brighten the text up by doing that.

I’ve taken the input whites until activity on the histogram shows and the text has become much brighter now. It looks a whole lot better than it did.

I’ve added a reflection to the text by duplicating the composite snapshot of the layer, using the blur tool and eventually using the black transparent gradient. Coming along and looking real.

With the composite snapshots now in different colours, I am going to make a video animation to put on my social media such as Facebook and Instagram.

The video is rendered and ready for export to MP4 file.

And the video is now complete and is saved in my Major Project folder ready to go on to my social media in the hopes of getting more responses that I have got so far.

This is my overall finished result:

Hopefully upon watching this video, this might encourage people to do the questionnaire for my final major project. I've got about 17 responses so far, but I wouldn't mind having a few more to give me something to work on.

The moment has come for me to let people on my social media know that they have only one week left to fill out my online survey for my final major project. This is what I am going to say in my Facebook and Instagram walls respectively.

"Hi everyone

It has been nearly two weeks ago that I put an online survey in the form of an electronic questionnaire up on my Facebook account carrying out research for my final major project. I aim to delete this questionnaire entirely in one week from today, so if anyone that hasn’t taken part in filling in this questionnaire that wants to, please click on the link in the comment area underneath the video that I am putting on the wall. The more research I collect for my project the better.

Thank you to those of you that have done this for me so far either using the paper or electronic versions. It would only take up to about 5 to 10 mins of your time as stated. The overview is in the questionnaire, explaining as to what I am doing. No pressure guys, much love and please remember:"

(post in video below)

Am getting ready to post the video onto Facebook. I must now put the video into the page for people to see.

Video posted and all ready to roll.

The video is being processed to make it visible for people to watch.

Video now up on wall as well as post.

Link all ready for people to click on and hopefully complete questionnaire.

I've taken the decision to only stick with doing this on Facebook rather than Instagram and stick with only people that I know.

STATEMENT TUESDAY 08 MAY 2018

For the attention of who this may concern, as I find doing it as a PowerPoint presentation simpler and easier to do it this way as the blog can get really slow in performance due to the content that goes into it. Other work can be seen on the PowerPoint portfolio both as a digital and physical copy. This blog shows and demonstrates some of my research skills and design skills and the rest can be seen in the portfolio.

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