magazine scamps, cover and double page spread

My scamps

The images shown below are all my own original images that i have completed as a first step in completing my final piece of a technology magazine cover and double page spread.

Artist copy, Picture Post March 2nd 1946

In creating this copy of Picture Post magazine I have gained and improved a range of skills, the main image is of course the focus point of the whole magazine cover so I spend a lot of time taking photos and then making sure I choose the right three to overlay in photoshop. To be sure I made the correct three choices I created a contact sheet and made my selections from this. To over lay the images on top on one another with a transparent effect I used the blending mode multiply.  When putting together the final piece I used dafont to find all the correct fonts, for these I then slightly altered to make them perfect to the original design, my newly developed kerning and character tracking skills really helped with this. To create the effect of 'old' text i created a texture overlay out of a tea stained page. I found the original image in the collection 'magazine covers' by David Crowley. 

Contact sheet for second artist copy

For my second artist copy I have had to take photos of one of my friends as a 'spy', I took a lot of photos and have been through this contact sheet I created with the images and highlighted these one that are possible for my final design. Any photo's that I believed were quite good enough to make my final design I have put a cross through and given a reason. In my next post I will have my finished copy including more information on what I have done with the images as far as editing goes to make the images as true to the original magazine cover as possible. 

Graphics Proposal

Graphics proposal

For my final design I have choosen to complete a technolgy magazine, from this I will actually create: the front cover, a double page spread and a contents page. Firstly the fornt cover then, I have decided to focus mainly on having a photograph taken by myself of one of my classmates holding, endorsing, a new technology, at this point I believe that it will be a phone. There will be reference to my double page spread, for this I will have a comparison between IOS 7 and Android Jellybean 4.4 KitKat including user reviews, interviews and if I can get to phones to review personally I will do a hands on comparison with a photo collage of the different feature of hopefully the flagship phones to give the best idea of how each system operates. Interviews will be created by myself, my main idea is to simulate interviews with Sundar Pichai, head of android and Tomothy D. Cook, head of apple. I will do my best to encorperate my own images as far as possible but I am aware how difficult it is to get high quality images of technology. For my contents page I will have a selection of different article, at this time I don't want to specify exactly what I'm going to focus on mainly because it is obvious how fast technolgy advances and I dont want my final design to be outdated wherever possible but general idea for the contents will include one page on very high end technolgy and possibly a page on new 'green' or efficient technologies. The rest of the contents will be filled at a further time. I do like the bright bold colour schemes of magazines such NME so my colour scheme.  

drawings of subject matter

Drawing of subject matter

The images below are all drawing completed by myself depicting some of my subject matter, technology. I have tried to draw a wide range of items with in the expansive range of modern technology.

Conventions of the form

This shows my convention of the form in the world of magazine cover design, it shows all of the relevant similarities as far as graphical design goes and all of the features that simply must be included when making a successful cover.   

Brainstorming

These are my first thoughts as to what my final will be like, I have explored what I originally felt the key aspects of my magazine mean and what I can find within the broad topics of magazine and technology. As you can see I have linked the two sides with the content aspect of my magazine. The key idea's that I have gained from this are the importance of having one strong theme to then further develop to my next pieces.  I then used this information to make some initial scamps.

Artist copy of 'Design' magazine by Ken Garland

This is my first artist copy, I found the original magazine cover in 'Magazine Covers' by David Crowley. My first task when attempting to duplicate the design magazine was to find the correct font, for this I used dafont.com to do this. There was a slight problem though, to create the 'Design' font I had to use a combination of two different fonts and my own kerning skills. The fonts that I used were FetteEgyptienne and Acknowledgement. I did make my own changes to the fonts, such as changing what was a circle above the 'i' to a square, changing the spacing between letters and finally making the letter 'D' slightly wider to fit with the original design. The other font features on the page I also found on dafont.com but I felt they didn't need editing to meet the design. Next I worked on the background which if you look at the 1st design is filled with texture. The textures I found are shown in the gif below, plus a tea stain sheet of paper that I added after I made the gif, the textures I found and manipulated for the background were the; cracked stone, tea stained paper and, torn cardboard. The combination of these three gave me the perfect slightly old and worn look that features clearly in the original. In beginning to put these piece together, the first object that I put onto the background was a simple black box that I then covered with the same tea stain textures the background. Adding the text cam next, quickly followed by the silver/ graphite box that covers the black box, with this I believed that the texture on the original looked like a brushed metal, I eventually choose brushed aluminium. As all the little details put on top of that box looked like they mirrored each other I first completed the left and then copied what I could from that to the left, with the images being flipped to create the mirror look. I also show in the gif how I created the plectrums that feature across the design, firstly the small black and grey, I drew out a basic plectrum using the pen tool on photoshop, in order to achieve the illusion that they are tilted, as it looks on the 'Design' cover, I  did not put the grey directly in the centre of the black plectrum. As I created an illusion not an actually tilted plectrum shape it meant that I could use the same shape again with colour to make the main body of the cover. By simply colouring and making the shape thinner I could create each of the different plectrums. All that was left after that was to set all the textures to multiply so they showed some of colour behind them, thus creating the effect shown on the cover. To get a full idea of what how I put the final piece together please see the gif below.         

Folding/cuttings paper into letters

This task was at face value a very simple, folding and/or cutting small paper tiles into the letters of the alphabet. The task then developed as we realised how inventive and creative you could be with simple pieces of paper. It was important that the letters were not to close to reality as the more inventive and subtle you can be the more imaginative the reader has to be and has to work a little to discover the letters. This all adds to the beautiful nature of the piece.    

Similar artefacts

I have chosen to display my collection of similar artefacts as pin boards as they are a beautiful way of presenting a large number of images. As you can see the collection is mainly made up of magazine cover and in particular technology magazines. I have also included a selection of double page spreads and where possible a series of images showing many pages in a magazine so later in the task I can see how different pages can work in harmony to create one magazine.

My alphabet

my advertisement draft

As a first attempt of an advertisement I feel I learned a great amount about the structure of adverts and mainly the minimalist style that is used a lot. It was of course very important for me to experiment with the concept of car advertisement as I had never completed anything to the same standard of detail and precision I though I would try a minimalist style. One of the aspects of this that I found slightly difficult is maintaining this minimal look while still including all the key information that I feel needs to be present in an advert. At this stage I was planning to focus on cars and automobile advertising but now I feel that I can do better work in the world of magazine design. Also I have learned form this that maybe cars are not the right direct for me as there isn't much room to be inventive so I feel I should move on to a more technological theme. I did enjoy creating my design although I do feel that my final design turned out more as a  fusion of a magazine page article and a true to life advert. As I move forward to future design I think the most important thing to take forward from this present exercise is that to make an advert I need to put further research into the delicate balance of minimalism and content. Also it is now very obvious to me that taking my own images of cars of high quality without specialist lighting is near enough impossible so I believe I should either change my main ideas from car perhaps to technology, or I could change from adverts to possibly a magazine page where multiple 'less professional' can be used to great affect in building a convincing and interesting article.             

Assessment objectives poster