Friday, 2 May 2014

Constructing my Double Page Spread - Part 3

Here I present the very final stages I undertook into successfully developing my music magazine double page spread article, in these steps I carefully perfected small underlying issues within more minor conventions such as the grammar and text location, whilst constantly referring back to my two lecturers to ensure I was following the correct path to completing this piece, essentially this would free my time constraints to focus my attention upon the tasks that needed the majority of my skills towards (the cover for example)


Whilst me and my student lecturer were browsing through past issues of Q magazine and NME that I was using as templates as they suited the genre I am focusing upon, we discovered that I had missed one of the most vital conventions that is included on the majority of main stream music magazines - the name or names of the photographers who captured the images for the spreads. These are normally present to give credibility to the individuals who helped to create the production for their intended readers to appreciate, the audience can then think highly of them through the effort they have put into making the magazine attractive. Essentially though these are present for copyright reasons, in the circumstance that someone may try and steal these photographs, with the camera mans name on view this prevents this from happening. I chose to keep the font style identical to what had been used for the main article (Times New Roman) as this aided me to keep thoroughly with the continuity within the spread with it matching the font already present in the centre body and improve its authenticness to the readers themselves as it is of superior quality.  I situated the name besides the left hand image on the edge of the document, it was out of the way enough and reduced in size so as not to confront and compete with the remaining conventions, yet still could be distinguished as being a specific element amongst all the other aspects, which would be accessible to the publics line of sight.


Although I was now under the impression that my double page spread was finally completed after all the necessary changes I was recommended to conduct were finalised, my lecturer brought to attention that the method I had chosen to position the drop cap was incorrect - it should have been substantially increased in size and aligned directly with the text it was connected to so the audience could clearly illustrate that this convention was the beginning of the first sentence to the feature itself. Without this change in placement, the letter appeared to be free floating which is not what I desired as this may confuse the reader to its actual purpose, ultimately they needed to fully understand it flowed on into the main text body. As this error could potentially affect my overall mark, I began correcting it in an instant fashion, I began by increasing the sizing to 36pt on the page so it dramatically stood out as you can witness, on the spread. This unfortunately caused my main columns of text to become disjointed so it became necessary now to re-position them so they were in reference with the drop cap again, otherwise it would make the feature appear 'crooked', the discontinuity could them potentially off put my target audience from reading it as it can b visually uncomfortable to look upon.



For this stage the vast majority of my text was moved around so I could correctly position it on the page now that the drop cap had been increased proportionally in size to what it had displayed previously. To do this efficiently I had to draw a separate text box tool from the tool bar on the left hand side of the document besides the drop cap where I could cop and paste in the first four lines of my feature. Once these were in position I drew yet another text box, which extended down to the bottom of the page besides the models shoes, where I added in the remainder of the article. Unfortunately a few lines were cut off due to the increased occupancy the drop cap now obtained, to overcome this issue it was fairly straightforward as I wrote up these sentences on the adjacent page. To conduct this successfully I had to move down slightly the text here and the accompanying celebrity features section, this however did not cause any major difficulties as there was a significant amount of empty space at the bottom of the spread to include these extra bits of wording in, without me having to reduce the sizing of the main body from the 9pt it was currently occupying. With the way this edit has commenced, I'm actually thoroughly pleased my lecturer pointed this error out as it had allowed me to improve the appearance of both of the pages - they feel more occupied then what they had previously, full of information and therefore appealing to the audiences wandering eye so they are more then likely to be engaged by this.


With me having corrected all the flaws that had been stated, it appeared for now that my double page spread was complete in comparison to what it had before. For this step I worked on 'tweaking' slight mistakes that would have otherwise been un noticeable before, but I felt this process had to be done in order for my product to be as professional as what I could possible achieve. It began by me correcting spelling and grammatical errors that I identified through the use of my student lecturer and printing the document out via the printing network at the college, this way I had a first hand visual perspective of the publication up close which would make it more easy to identify these inconsistencies. Another fault ammended was that of the celebrity interviews, as they had been altered in where they were situated due to me having to include the sections of the article that could not be squeezed onto the left hand page with the drop cap having been extended in proportion. This area was quickly dropped a few spaces down the page, not as much so that it would conflict with the byline at the near bottom, but enough so it wasn't in overlap with the feature piece which I desired it to be differentiated from. With this done, my double page spread was virtually complete, the only task remaining to do was to gain my lecturers last views and comments upon it before submission then I can safely say the spread is ready to be transferred to a JPEG image for my blog.

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