What I have Learnt

Since the preliminary task, I have learnt how important colours and typeface can be in attracting a certain type of audience. It is also important where things are placed to get the right level of attention from your audience.


I use a lot of digital photography in my work for my pictures. I used all of my own pictures and made the plasticine figures myself.
I used paint to edit my pictures as I found it easier to use and just as effective as Photoshop. I also use to lay out the pages Microsoft publisher.

As I thought the colour of the text is tricky, the red at the moment seems to stand out more, but I’m going to get feedback to see.

Layout

I have had to think about the layout a bit more to try and fit the interview around the picture. I started off by putting it in boxes, then after I moved some of the words round as they didn’t fit in too well. I also had to consider the fact that it would go over two pages so had to find the middle of the page so the text would not go into the fold.

Interviev

I have here what is going to be written on my double page spread. I invented a fictitious reporter Kezia Day and a musician, Peter Crisp.

"I’ve followed Peter Crisp since she first popped onto the music scene at the end of 99. So when I was asked if I wanted to go along and talk to her about her new tour, I jumped at the chance and nearly bit my editors hand off.
I first saw her when she performed her fist song, lost and beat on new years day. The song was average, the performance was not great, but for some reason I liked it, and it would seem that I was not the only one. Although slated in the newspapers the next day and many more bad reviews the following year, she carried on releasing and selling songs. She wouldn’t see her first number one though until 2002 with the release of call me a nutter. It was an instant hit and flew to number one staying there for almost two months and didn’t fall out of the charts till the following year.
Now with the release of her second album, she is preparing for her first world tour, she is ready to talk about her rise to fame.


K.
Peter, I’ve been a fan from the start, when you first performed and got all those bad reviews, did you think that you would be where you are today?
P.
Well not really. It was a bit disheartening, but I thought as long as some people liked it, I was going to carry on. I was determined to get my music out there for the world to hear.
K.
Didn’t you feel like giving up at any point?
P.
Yes. I went through a long period of depression after many bad reviews and a slip in sales, I contemplated suicide on many occasions, but after nine attempts, I realized I wasn’t very good at that ether so decided to go back to music as I wasn’t half bad at that. It was also the inspiration for my first number one hit, so in a way helped me out a great deal in launching my career.
K.
You started off as a cult, but now people say you have sold out, do you think, this is true?
P.
Are you talking about the action figures and the adventure cartoons?
K.
Yes.
P.
Well I say, what is selling out?
I’m just doing what anyone else is trying to do in this world and that’s pay the bills. If someone
comes to me and makes me an offer, I’d probably do it for the right price. I don’t like all this, your selling out, you’ve lost your way, and it use to be about the music. Its still about the music. I’m not going to suddenly stop making music just because I’m making money in other ways. I’m not conforming to anything, just doing what I want to do, if people don’t like me “selling out” then they don’t have to buy the stuff, no ones forcing them to.
K.
Lets talk about your tour. Its your first world one, are you exited?
P.
Yes, a bit. I like ling journeys.
K.
What made you decide to have a world tour?
P.
Well I’ve topped the charts here and thought why not try everywhere else? There’s no harm in it. I mean, it took a while, and I know people have heard of me in different countries, but I want to make myself more well known.

K.
People have often wondered about your name Peter. Why use a mans name?
P.
Because that’s the name my parents gave to me. They thought I was going to be a boy, and when I wasn't they couldn't be bothered to change my name as they had had a number of items like blankets and such, inscribed with that name."

Pictures For Double Page Spread

For my double page spread I tried to recreate my design and was very pleased with the result. But I varied it a bit and again asked people what they thought was the best one to use. I did 14 different ones of these

Double page designs

I've done a few designs on paper, first before I start taking pictures. I’m fairly happy with the look of it already though, so might leave the layout it at that. I can always make changes if anything comes to me in development.

Double Page Spread

I again looked at other magazines for my double page spread. This one is taken from the film magazine EMPIRE.

As you can see the words go over the main picture so I thought I would do the same thing as I think it creates a good effect. I think getting the colour of the lettering might be the tricky part here.

Sticking together

I had all my stuff for the contents now, so the time came to put it all together and develop it more in the process the picture frame effect I had created for my pain picture became part of the look to my contents.





Last was to put a free poster at the bottom to fill space and for another advertising point, again using my own picture.

EDITOR

The editor is also one of the band members from the front redressed. Again for something differnt and to break conventions with traditional music magazines.

this is what i wrote in the column...

"Reading this weeks double page spread on Peter Crisp and the upcoming tour, I looked back on how far she had come in such a small space of time.

I remember the first time I heard her back in 2000 and thought to myself “what a awful noise”, I like so many wrote her off there and then thinking it would never last, how wrong I was.
Soon she had a cult following and grew and grew. Releasing her first album in 2003 and beginning her first tour the same year which sold out in less than two hours. Now she is bigger than ever and ready to reveal all to Kezia Day on page five of this weeks Chord."

I tried to make it seem like the editor was older and more experienced in the music world so the reader might appreciate their opinion more.

Top picture

once again like my fromt cover, I gave a choice of what picture should go at the top to ee the most populare and used that.








I then manipulated it useing the door frame in it to create a picture frame,

Contents

I looked at some contents pages and made notes on them to see what sort of things they had.


The next stage was to do the contents page. After drafting plans on paper.




I wrote out what I would have in it. like in others I looked at such as WHATS ON TV, I did an editors column where I had him talking about the double page spread.

CD

For a little extra, I made a CD cover for my free CD.






I also altered the front cover to just say FREE CD on it and put the title of the band on the cover of the CD instead. This is made to be separate from the cover itself.

Cover prosses

There were a lot of changes I made during the course of developing my cover...