Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Constructing my Contents Page - Part 5


As the development of my contents page was now nearing its end, it became officially vital that I needed to correct any minor flaws in the product and adjust some of the conventions slightly so they perfectly performed on the document. What I mean by this is that I had to tweak existing imperfections (such as positioning of text, size of images) and include some of the suggestions I was given by my peers and college lecturer in the most recent review I conducted. These applications are necessary as essentially it is my peers who are acting as the target audience, therefore if they notice something incorrect or aren't pleased by the presence of a specific element (maybe for example there is not enough features scatter around) then it will be my duty to adhere to their advice to improve the quality of the contents.


With my second peer review now having took place, it had been made blantly obvious to me that it was going to be extremely necessary to increase the size of the main female models photograph, this was due to my lecturers desire to hide the white vacant space above the image as she found this an unsettling aspect to my document, with the notion it appeared too empty and therefore not appealing enough to her as a reader. With this in mind I selected the targeted photo with the cursor tool and by using the directional arrows provided, I stretched it out in a diagonal fashion to avoid incurring any unwanted pixillation defects. It wasn't overly enhanced so that it displayed as vastly large, however it had been improved in the sense that most of that white backdrop had been covered. Now that this action had been completed, I can see where my lecturer was coming from as the page now looks more attractive and informative then what it previously had been stated, there seems to be more going on in the document and it appears more tightly compacted with appealing features then before when it seemed there was a hugely avant area. With one issue now firmly dealt with I began including additional conventions to the page to increase its appeal further, one technique was adding a second red rectangle box besides the page number for the female artists interview that contained her name and a byline to provide details surrounding her story. A red background and white font was employed respetively onto the shape and text to reinforce the contuity displayed between all of the elements as I was determined to make my readers recgonise all correlated effectively together and were uniform to the same product The name of the artist was chosen at random out of a 'fake' list I had composed, most importantly I spaced the individual letters of the byline out via the kerning tool as to the idea most of the red space would have to be occupied, if no it would cause the same empty feeling I have previously described which undermines the intriguing nature of the feature.


My next stage required me to fulfil the final suggestion obtained from my peers in the review that revolved around their desire for an extra article included in the small gap between the feature stories, this was to remove the blank area on display and to cram as much information as possible into a contorted space to create the illusion my product is bursting with information which will visually entrance and excite my audience members. As I had already detailed information about the band "Fleet Foxes' on the cover, to me this was an excellent method of recycling as the readers could make the link between the cover and contents in providing information, this way it wouldn't be disheartening to them for instance if I didn't include this story as this would be advertising false information which could potentially cause the buyers to put the publication back if there was some deceit in the content. As seen in the entire of the features panel, I re-incorporated the same shape and colour scheme to detail the fleet foxes piece with the 'Bebas Nevau' and 'Time New Roman' styles used for the texts to ultimately reinforce the continuity even further in the document.


Referring back to a concept I witnessed in the Q magazine, I noticed in a specific product that on their contents page they had drawn lines via a shape tool out of the sides of their contents title, this was a very unusual, unconventional editorial technique I had not seen in any other publications before. Yet I was immeditelly captivated by it due to that uniqueness, because I haven't had any previous knowledge of it, the use of the lines created a mysterious edge as I wanted to know what they were essentially being used for an why the editors had chosen to place them there. The enigma that personified itself here was something I aimed to replicate in 'Void', I feel if I can create enough provoked appeal and curiosity out of my magazine then hopefully this would be a major selling point for it as it would engage with the primeval knowing nature we all feel as humans. So in context I decided to  include what I saw, by drawing in two lines on each side of the title respecively. I used the duplicate option, provided when I right clicked the shape layer, to make copies of the individual lines, this way I knew they were of the same width and consistency so as not to look out of place if I draw them again as its plausible they would all be varying lengths.



The positioning of the lines besides the contents title were perfected through the use of the ruler tool which I engaged the use of through the view finder on the main tool bar at the top of the Photoshop document. This allowed me ti draw see-through green lines across the page so I could accurately detail where an individual line started and ended, giving me the advantage to place them in equal distance and proportion from one another. I was disheartened with the setting my female artists text was situated at, I felt it lacked emphasis, didn't appear concise with the other headings and most of all didn't sit right - it had an uncanny, disjointed feel in my own personal perception. To combat this I experimented with the layout slightly so the words were moved entirely to the left of the box, hereby doing this it came across to me as if the text was flowing across the shape which illustrated the concept that the artist herself is on the 'edge' with the placement of her feature being quirky in nature, it highlighted this struggle within her personality most efficiently.

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