Finished production reflection for print

1. Production Reflection
Your Name

2. Process
Starting with the front cover, the first thing I did was get the general
layout that I wanted and planned in my pre-production. At the time
that I started I didn’t have my main image yet so I worked around
that issue as best as I could. From my planning I knew that I wanted
a tear-away at the bottom of the page as it’s something commonly
found in this style of magazine, the colour choice was based off
what I wanted the main image to be, but this was changed later as
the green didn’t fit anymore as alterations had to be made.
The banner at the top is there to give me a solid colour to write over
without having to worry about if there image was going to interrupt
the writing.
Something that gets looked over a lot is advertising, and as I wanted
to make this cover seem as close to a realistic product as I could i
thought about what kind of offer/deal/competition would appeal to
the audience and created a blob to go in the corner offering a
chance to win tickets to a music festival.

3. Process
In my own experience and from some of the research I did into the
audience for these kinds of products, a big part of why people buy
the physical copies of this genre of magazine is due to the posters
that come inside (the kind that teenagers plaster their walls in). It
was included in my experiment but that was made using real
posters for bands found on google. Seeing as for this project we
were asked to use our own images I tried different looks for the
small poster that was going to feature on the cover. I used the
stroke and inner glow effect on the image to frame it as well as
make it look similar to a neon glow around the outside, as the
cover is based around the fake band “Code Zero” and I wanted the
featured poster to look more realistic than just a plain photograph.
There is definitely more detail that I could add to it but as a simple
image that doesn’t take up a lot of space on the page, it works well
and fits the finished product.

4. Process
I knew what I wanted to do with the
masthead from my experiments, having it
over the background but behind the subject
of the main image, allowing it to still stand
out but make sure that the focus of the cover
is the image. the effects on the text are a
gradient overlay to make it look less cut and
paste, and a drop shadow that gives it some
additional depth.
For the bottom of the page, the yellow banner give a solid space for the text that tells the audience what other artists
are featured in this issue so they know what else they can expect inside. An image of a bar code from google to make
it look a bit more realistic.
There are two rectangular boxes with a lower opacity that give the cover a bit of depth as well as an easy way of using
white text without the differences in the background interrupting and making it harder to read. The box on the left is a
part of the promotional poster advertisement, displaying the image above it. The tear away that I wanted to use was
changed from the dark green to the same shade of red as the blob at the top of the page to give the image a stronger
color scheme, although I tried a grey as well but after some feedback from the tutor I thought it best to have a color
that stands out more against the text boxes.

5. Process
The main image was originally going to only be a poster
in the top right corner but works well as a cover and was
easy to write around due to the darker background. The
editing I did to it was really only a few filter adjustments
to make the contrast stronger, and the cyan colour to
come forward more. The cover lines are done in the font
‘Rockwell’, other than the names of the ”bigger” bands
that are featured, which are done in the fonts that the
bands would use for their logos. Some positive feedback
that I got from my experiments is the depth created by
using drop shadows and playing around with the order of
the layers. Overall I am quite happy with how it came out
even if it was a slow start as I couldn’t get the images
that I needed. The colour scheme and layout isn’t far off
what I planned in my pre-production but naturally
alterations have to be made sometimes as production
moves forward.

6. Process I finished my front cover behind schedule and had to move
ahead quickly to starting my double page spread, however
once again I was missing my main image for the work. For
the first day of creating my double page spread I started
work on the layout of my DPS that came from the pre-
production part of the project. I knew the general colour
scheme that I wanted to go with and could start
production without letting the lack of main image holding
me back. After positive feedback regarding my use of
depth, shadows and layers I wanted to make sure that this
was somehow involved with my double page spread.
During research I’d found a few examples that used a
banner around the page that allowed the page to be
framed nicely as well as being able to cover parts of it with
aspects such as promotional material and additional
images. There were some alterations I had to make from
the original plan and the finished piece however I tried to
keep as closely to it as I could.
The blue line in the left of the top image is actually a guide
line as this was my first time working with A3 and I was
very unsure of the dimensions, and wanted to make sure
what I was putting on the page wasn’t out of proportion on
the page. It took some playing around in the view tab to
work out how to put a line straight down the middle of the
page but it really helped me with the placement of
everything on the page.

7. From my research and pre-production I knew that
I wanted to include a big cover line that made it
obvious to the audience what the page was
about, and chose to make it about one of the fake
bands that was featured on my cover and about
their comeback album. It was this that made me
want to look for guidelines for the page as I
wasn’t sure how big I was making it and if it was
spilling onto the other half of the document. The
color came from the front cover as I wanted to
create some brand identity for the two pieces.
Using the effects I added a gradient using the
global light that affecting all gradients and
shadows that were used on the page. The font of
the cover line is ErasITC Demi, the same as was
used for the band name on the front cover.
I wanted to use additional photography
around the outside of the page as to make
use of the yellow border that I had created
to add depth to the page. This image was
from the same photoshoot as the main
image but as it was taken horizontally it
wasn’t an option for the background. I didn't
want them to be included without some kind
of annotation so that they didn’t look out of
place, which is what the slightly opaque box
is for, so that when it came to adding the
text in InDesign it was easily visible without
having to worry about the mix of colours
interrupting the reader.

8. The article written for the double page spread was about a
fake band that I had created for this project. The interview is
with the front man of the band that has just come back into
the music scene after a two year break. The questions are
relating to how they feel about being back in the spotlight,
the idea behind the album, how the band got back together
and the new tour they’d announced. The sound/feel of it
was based solely on how I thought an interview like this
would go from articles I had read myself in the past. I tried
to make it casual and friendly but still informative to the
readers who are interested about what was happening with
the album.
An issue I’ve come to find is that there was a 700 word
count that was not stated in any of the briefs. On the
document shown on this slide the word count only reaches
564. I’ve discussed this problem with a number of tutors and
they agree that the article should be kept the same due to
the layout already being put in place and the tutors opinion
that the finished product shouldn’t be altered because of
this. However if the issue does get brought up as something
that is holding the project back, the option of doing a
separate additional creative writing piece for the interview
that does meet the word count has been brought up, for the
purpose of showing that I am capable of writing an article
that fits the theme that does meet the word count.

9. Once I got hold of the main image that I had
envisioned for this piece it was just a matter of
putting everything together, adjusting the placement
and proportions. The right side of the of page was
were the article was going to be placed but I wanted
to avoid having an entire A4 page filled with a block
of writing so I added some additional images
featuring the same subject of photography.
The appearance of the pull quote was something I
had looked at in my experiments, with the quotation
marks being on a separate layer in a font size 300,
with slightly faded opacity as to not be too bold and
take attention away from neither the text or the
main image.
The main image was actually quite a bit longer than
the width of the page which allowed me to be able
to slide it in either direction and work out exactly
where I wanted the subject to stand, using the
guidelines to make sure that he was entirely on one
side. This was so that should I print the work into a
physical copy and had a crease with staples put down
the middle, the photography wasn’t interrupted.
In the bottom left corner just as a last suggestion from a
tutor was to give the page numbers, something that I
wasn’t able to do on both sides as it would interrupt the
photography. I really wanted to work on making sure that
the magazine looked real and didn’t want to ignore any of
the aspects so there is a description of the main image as
well as the initials of a fake photographer, as one would
see in any magazine giving credit to where the images
where sourced from and who by.

10. The final part of production was going into InDesign and adding the text from the word document onto the image,
which had been exported out of Photoshop from a PSD file to a JPG. I knew how the layout was going to look from
pre-production and was able to follow the planning along so that everything went smoothly. The images on the
right hand side worked well to break up the big block of text that would have been there otherwise. The questions
are done in the bolder version of the font Rockwell which is what was used for the majority of the page as well as
the answers. Originally the questions were in white as well but after playing around with different ideas I chose to
add another aspect to the color scheme and went with the same yellow that is on the cover line. Seeing as this was
only my second time working in InDesign I had a little trouble working out how to access additional text colors and
found that the only way to do so was to type in the CMYK values directly into a color palate. This meant going back
into Photoshop and finding the exact shade I wanted and copying over the percentages each time I changed the
question color.
However I found a small issue with the question in the far right at the top of the page where the background is
quite a lot lighter than it is in other areas of the page and the text wasn’t as easy to read there. The solution to that
was when applying the CMYK values to that question I changed the value of black to be lighter so that it became
more visible without changing the shade.