5. Production Process

Creating my magazineI went on to develop my contents page, I made the title using the same effects and font as I had to write my masthead, so it would fit in with the composition I stylized with a '//' at the front to suit the kind of ASCII and symbols theme that my chosen genre of music used often.


Getting inspiration from various found images, I decided I’d make my mine a simple and minimal double spread contents page. I split the articles into three sections: 'On the cover', 'Every month' and 'This month' and left a space for a small picture of the cover and message from the editor like I had seen in many similar contents pages. I put my main article at the top with a space for an adjoining photo, on there I would write the page number for it. I also included a border at the bottom of the page.

Final draft of contents layout (click to enlarge)

Next, I used a photo I had taken from a gig last year, of a silouette of a person in the fog. I thought this worked well with my theme and changed the colours a little with a colour overlay and altered the contrast to suit the genre a little bit more. I decided it would be a good picture to use as the read can't tell the picture is of a specific artist, and therefore works well as a general picture for the contents page.

I stretched the image across, and also changed the colours of page number to suit the colour palette of the page.

Final contents page (just need to add a picture of cover and a photo linking to main article)

Not yet having my main photos of the "band", I decided to make a photo of the album cover which I could include in my main article. I took a picture in town of a bird in a tree, as the sky in the background almost looked completely white, I thought it would a easy to edit.

I used PhotoPlus X4 at home to begin altering it, I used the hue to make the sky appear a pink/purple colour and changed the contrast and lightness with the curves to make the bird and branches of the tree to seem darker.

I then added the text, I decied to use a typeset similar to the Old London font I included in my mood boards. I hoped to include this at the bottom of my main article with album release information beneath it.

OKVLTA's "debut EP" album art.

Once I had the raw images I could work on editing them - which I did mainly on PhotoPlus X4 – and add them to my textsand make the final additions. I experimented with a few images, changing the contrast, hue and generally making them suit the genre by colour overlays and glitch-effects:

I selected around my models and deleted the background then put in the previous tree photo behind them, used curves to brighten and add contrast to the photos and blurred around the image to make it appear softer.

For this one I just edited the contrast, put a blue colour overlay and experimented with the curves a a bit.





In this photo I really tried to encoroprate elements of the genre which I had noted whilst making my mood boards. Firstly I created a duplicate layer of the image and dragged it slightly to create a shadow or 3D effect. Then I turned up the contrast to its heighests and made the bacgrond of the photo slightly opaque. I added an extra layer which was just grey and turned the noise up and zoomed in and stretched it to create a TV static appearance.

When taking photos I experimented with many different props, shots and places. I also took individual photos of my models which I would have liked to add to my texts, however there was not enough space for them to have one each.

Now I had my photos I could start making the final drafts of my magazine. For the cover, I decided to stick with my original thought to use the slightly more conventional magazine composition: I added the photo in, changed the flash from the slightly less basic triangle design to a star and added colour to the name of the main artcle to bew sure to draw the most focuss towards it.

I also added a header and a tag line, moved the artivles around a little and put the barcode on its side.

Afterwards I decided that I should makde the blur on the background more subtle and the masthead slightly less garish and bright.

Final cover

Whilst moving and looking at the background, I realised the bird in the photo added a gothic element to the photo that I had no achieved before, I decided to move the models to side slightly to show this. I think doing this also makes the cover more eye-catching and unusual to have an uncentered main image and also evens out how big the main article's title is.

Next, the content page, this did not need too much adjustment to earlier, I simply added the photos into it:

Final contents page.

I added an unedited (other than curves) photo of my brother "the editor" with a printed image of my bands cover.

I then went on to create my double page article, having already written the piece, after sorting out the composition I could just add it in. I arrange the columns and added in my photos, including one of the "band" sat as a table as to be at the cafe where the writer interviewed them. I pulled out a quote in the same colour to the title as to match and added graphical features of the yin yangs to make it look less like a huge block of text.
Feeling unsure about my layout I looked at other magazines double page articles and realised that very rarely do they give their first paragraph in that format, I decided to move the band information to under the title and put it on the other page. I also though the pictures looked to close together so I worked to move them around, still suiting the nearest article:

Final article.

I also fulfilled usual magazine features such as a larger first letter and a circle with magazines ititials to sign off an article.