Thumbnails And Design

In terms of the layout of my magazine, I have designed some thumbnail images to experiment with different design set ups to see what works best when I come to hand rendering some larger thumbnails and making design outlines on InDesign. These small thumbnails show layout designs for the front cover, inside spread for my main article and the contents page.

As another step forwards to making my layout designs closer to how the final product may look, I used InDesign to create some blockout thumbnails. Using the small hand drawn thumbnails, I created similar layouts by creating columns of placeholder text and blocks that represent the titles, images and block quotes.

Blue- Titles

Pink- Images

Green- Block quotes

Here are my hand rendered designs for my cover, contents and spreads with notes on how I intend to develop each ones, these are just a guide to help with the layout style.

Recreating A Layout

What I knew?
I knew that print publications like magazines had a bleed because industrial printers that print out large amounts of magazines at a fast pace aren't able to be exactly accurate. The bleed means that the ink printed is slightly larger than the paper itself so that the colour or picture goes right to the edge of the publications. 
I was aware that an affective convention of magazine layout is to put interesting or intriguing information as a large pull quote as the readers eye will naturally be drawn to this part of the document, making them want to keep on reading.

What was the task?
As a task, the challenge was to choose a double page spread from a magazine and copy it as identically as possible using InDesign. I chose a double page spread on The Dark Knight Rises that has a combination of large titles, shapes, columns of text and a large image that is printed between both of the pages.

What do I know now?
To be able to recreate the magazine spread I had to use tools I hadn't previously used in InDesign. Usually when using InDesign I work on a single page document but this time the canvas was different with a line down the middle showing the two sides of the double page spread. 
When setting up the canvas I used the bleed option for the first time so that if the document was to be printed the images would go right to the edge of the page and look just how the original magazine looked. I learnt how to create separate columns for text as I had to create 4 columns, 2 smaller and 2 larger, for the text. I used place holder text to fill the columns and used the red cross button to drag the place holder text so that it was feed through to the next column.
So that everything was placed correctly I made different layers for each part of the document eg. background, title, body text, images. This meant that when I used the polygon tool to create my arrow shapes I was able to put them in a layer behind the text so it would be neat and the same as the original publication.
To make the arrows I had to use the polygon tool as my way of drawing. As the polygon tool only allows you to draw simple, basic shapes I had to draw a triangle and put them together. So InDesign would treat the two seperate shapes as one I learnt the shortcut Cmd+G to group the shapes so any adjustments I made would be made to both of the shapes.

Magazine Layout Textual Analysis

Marie Claire is a popular women's magazine that focuses on fashion, celebrities and lifestyle. I have decided to aim my political multipage document towards young females so by looking at the features of magazines in general that are aimed at females will help me to discover what the female audience are attracted to. 

The headline is written in the trademark Marie Claire font so that regular readers will automatically notice it on a shop shelf and also non regular readers will recognise the repeated style which may intrigue them to purchase and read the magazine. The headline is pink which matches the colour scheme of this months issue of the magazine, the colour scheme will change to compliment the cover image and in this case the pink text used ties in with Pixie Lott's pink toned make-up which is visually pleasing as the text and image compliment each other to look professional and neat. Pink is the stereotypical colour which is used to target a female audience and the use of pink almost automatically suggest that the audience of the document is strictly just female. As my document is primarily going to be aimed at females but most of the information will also be relevant to males I don't want my main colour scheme to be pink but I would consider experimenting with a purple colour scheme.

Buzzwords 'Best' and 'Life Changing' are used on the front cover, they are used to attract your attention to the articles inside the magazine and emphasise the interest and importance of the articles. The reader knows that the story won't be life changing but by seeing the words written down they are likely to want to discover how great the information really is. Buzzwords are very affective because they make the reader question whether what they're about to read really could be the information they've been wanting to know for a long time. The use of buzzwords makes the magazine publishers seem confident about their content so I would like to use buzzwords on the front of my political document as I think that they will be good at adding interest to a topic that is usually considered boring.

The cover line on the front of the magazine is 'Fashion Forecast' followed by a smaller strap line that reads 'Cool spring trends- plan your new look now'. When I read the cover line and it's strap line I noticed that alliteration has been used throughout, alliteration is attention grabbing and also cuts down bulky sentences as what 'Fashion Forecast' really means is 'this is what we will predict will be in fashion'. The strap line underneath also has an alliterative feel with the 'plan your NEW look NOW' continuing with the subtle alliteration keeps the strap line snappy and interesting rather than too informative. A large amount of information is unnecessary on the front cover as the aim of the front cover is to encourage the reader to want to read what is inside the magazine, so if the explanation on the front cover was too in depth then the reader may not open it up. 

The most effective style for a women's magazine is to have a large, attractive image and minimal text that is punchy and intriguing. Marie Claire's cover is appealing to a female audience firstly because of the colour scheme and secondly because of the way they tease the reader into wanting to read more about the segments advertised on the front cover. A casual, gossipy tone is used to sound friendly and inviting and although my political document is on a more serious topic than women's gossip, I think that if I create a chatty and casual tone the audience won't feel as pressured to try and take in lots of serious information.