The Final Week

Coming into the final week and i have completed the 3 pages that we need to complete, the contents, front cover and double page spread.  All that needs to be done is to do the final touches to the pages and then print them onto colour A4 and A3 paper.

Also i need to make sure that the following items are completed and printed out;

• Deconstructed Brief
• Research Dossier (market research)
• Skills Profile
• Response to the Brief (Minutes, Blog, Design (sketches/moodboard)
• Production schedule
• Both the reports
• Graphics portfolio
• Hard copies of the final designs
• Evaluation (800 - 1,200 words)

By the time 11.00am came on Thursday 7th April all the pages had been completed and printed in colour.  All that was left for me to do now was the evaluation and organise the final folder.  Everything else listed above has already been completed.

I will spend the rest of the day completing the evaluation and getting that 'perfect'.

Double Page Spread

For the double page spread i choose to do a beans on toast alternative, this is the stage i am up to as of 12.07pm on Thursday 31st March

After 6 long hours and an hour of that was doing the alphabetti spaghetti the double page spread was now complete (well other than putting my own images on there and changing the font back after not having the font at home).

below is what the finished spread would look like.

After feedback it was decided that i would make some colour changes to the final layout, below is the final final design...

The Contents Page

After feedback i have added a textured background to give the extra dynamic.

The Front Page

After consulting the client it was discussed that there were some changes that needed to be made to the cover, the image on the right is the final completed front cover.

The Pitch

I pitched my idea to Andy on Thursday 24th March, i wasnt overly happy with doing it then because i only had 2-3 days to get everything in the pitch as i was away for so long and wasnt given what was actually needed in the pitch.

However having said that i felt that my ppitch had everything in it that needed to be, for example i had;

• Legal and ethical considerations,
• Health and safety,
• Fonts and colours
• Existing products (annotated)
• Target audience (figures included)
• Market research (magazine sales figures included)

Although i had everything in there i felt that having a little more time would have enabled me to get everything i wanted to across.  Because of the short notice i didnt really put much effort into the actual delivery of the presentation, this was evident in the fact that i had to keep looking at the screen to see what was actually on the slide.

First Day Back

On my first day back, i was continuing with what i was doing while in Australia.  Gathering all the material needed for my pitch that i will be doing this week.  I hadnt completed a moodboad, so the task was to complete this.

I used a Nuts magazine that i had brought before my travels and a Zoo magazine that i brought at Brisbane airport on my return.  I choose these magazines because this was the design that i was going to go down for my magazine.

However i would not be having necessarily the same content as a typical lads magazine as this was aimed at both sexes and for 16 - 21 year olds, on creating my moodboard i gave emphasis on the colours that were used for fonts, these were reds and whites for the cover and mainly either black on white or white on black with the content being of the same black on white or visa versa.

Font Creation in Photoshop

1. To Start
1. International paper
2. A4
3. 100 Resolution
4. CMYK
5. White Background
6. Font Exercise
7. Portrait
8. Text Writer (Source)
9. Highlight it
10. Change the font to what you want
11. Bold it if you want
12. Change size (next to box drag it)
13. Selectcolour
2. Folders
1. Duplicate the source layer
2. Switch off the orginal layer text
3. Back to image
1. click on text
2. Write sourch on top
3. Adjust to fit
4. Masking Text Tool
1. Seelct image
2. right click on top of text tool
3. HORIZONTAL TYPE MASK TOOL
4. Make text smaller
5. Pick it up and add it to oringal image
6. Place the new font on the top
5. Deleting parts of the text or adding shapes
1. Right click and rastorise it (make it to an image)
2. Select the tool
3. Cut bits out of it by highlighting and deleting
4. Can use tools and (magic eraser tool) brushes to give the effect you want
6. Adding or ammending images
1. Dupliocate it one more time, turn the eye on
2. Adding symbols
3. Click custom shape tools
4. go to symbol at the top and then lay it on top of the text
5. Add more shapes if you wish
6. Append new shapes (such as music)
7. Add it to text
8. Add all these layers to a group (CRTL-G / CMD-G)
7. Style (3D style text font)
1. Source and duplicate it
2. Turn eye on
3. Highlight it with the text tool
4. Double click on colour (choose light neon colours)
5. Click ok
6. Duplicate it again
7. Select text double click and change colour again
8. Duplicate again and change colour
9. Place into folders
10. Each one has a blending option of darken
11. Offset them next to each other
8. Chequared / Pokerdot
1. Source and duplicate
2. Turn eye on
3. Change colour to red/purple
4. Filter
5. Pixelate (colour haldtone) 6, 45, 45, 45, 45

Problems

I have encountered a few problems over the past few weeks, the main problem was the fact that i was in Australia for 4 weeks.  I managed to get all the worksheets and that from Chi Online but i found that e-mail communication was difficult.

With internet and time differences making it hard to communicate, e-mail communications were few and far between.  Finding out what was needed to the pitch was impossible, even now i have no idea what needs to be included in the pitch and i was meant to be pitching this week (but due to an epic marathon journey home i haven't been able to pitch yet).

Fingers crossed that what i have done for the pitch is enough to pass the module.

The Pitch

As part of the module we have needed to complete a pitch, while i was in Australia i completed research on markte research for example reader numbers, specific sales for magazines (for example Nuts, Zoo, Heat, OK etc etc).  Also as the magazine is aimed at Students aged between 16 and 21 i needed to get some accurate information from UCAS to get the student numbers for 2009, this worked out to being 462,376 under the age of 20.

I tried to get figures for College numbers but i have not been able to get these figures but in Chichester alone there are 15,000 full and part time, but the exact number for 16 - 21 is unknown.

Also in the pitch i have included;

• Fonts & colours
• Example content
• Example front covers and contents
• Market research (what students want in the magazine)

I will be pitching this to the client over the next few days.  In the mean time i will putting together some sketches for the client to look at to see which ones they prefer, i will also be giving them some ideas of what i would include as the double spread (the idea that i am thinking is the student scene, so include local eating and drinking holes).

The Brief and Research

I have been waiting to get this unit started and underway and here we go, the brief is to produce the following;

• A full mock up colour front cover including title, splashes, etc.
• A contents page describing what content would be typically in a monthly publication.
• A full colour double page containing content or a story aimed at your primary target audience.

The target audience is college and university students aged 16 - 21, having done some resarch on this there are approximately 450,000 students under the age of 20 in the UK, this however is just figures for university students, and with the introduction of the EMA the number of 6th Form / College students is likely to be much higher. 

Also having done some reasearch on magazine sales for the last half of 2010 it has been quite clear that sales have dropped, some magazines have faired worse than others.  For example lads magazines Nuts have seen a drop in sales by 22% per week, and Zoo 27.9%.  FHM have come off slightly better but still lost 18.1% of there readership.  Although sales of lads magazines have seen a sharp decline the sale of womens magazines such as Heat and Closer have also dropped but only by 6.9% and 1% respectively, other magazines for example New! has seen sales increase tenfold b 47.5% aswell as good housekeeping increase by 3.1%.

These figures show to me that we are no longer in a magazine buying market, this could be due the economic downturn and peoples discposable cash not being as high as it was, or the content in the magazines is already readily available on the internet.

Since reading week i have started doing as much reasearch as possible, because i am in Australia its bee neasier to gather this information but getting the right information has been a struggle because i've not been able to get help from tutors in class time.  However i feel that i am on track to be able to pitch my proposal on the Friday i get back (18th March).

The Initial Idea

The initial idea i had was to produce a magazine with both lads elements (sport, gadgets, women) and womens elements (fashion, real life stories) but after doing my market reasearch i came to the conclusion that this woudlnt be a great idea, because lads mags sales have dropped by a quarter in the last 6 months of 2010 alone.  So i thought why not make the magazine specifica for students in the way that all the content is submitted by students, for example;

• Beans on toast alternatives
• Real life stories
• Great nights out
• Shoe strong holidays
• Help and advice

I have spoken to a few people that are already at univery and asked them what they would expect to see in a magazine aimed just at students, and that would be information about the area, including places to drink and eat, cheap drink offers in supermarkets, quickand cheap meals, real life stories (from students), university or college information, sports team results, fixtures and tables, SU information (nights out and drinks offers). 

I have thought about this and will incorperate these ideas into my final design.