Blog Write Up 18/03/14

Over the past few days I have had my photo shoot and developed my front cover with the addition of various sell lines, masthead etc. My photo shoot was somewhat successful although the pictures didn't come out exactly how I wanted them for a couple of reasons. A contact sheet of the photographs taken is shown below:

The lighting equipment didn't not function correctly therefore the pictures weren't exactly how I pictured them (the background was darker than I would've liked) although I should be able to fix this when I move onto editing these photographs. The white balance was incorrect and a few of the photographs were slightly out of focus. The photograph I had planned on using for my front cover is "IMG_0157.JPG" found top left and the other photographs if appropriate would have been used throughout my DPS. Due to the problems with the photographs, I plan on having another photo shoot in order to correct these mistakes and give myself better photographs to work with and hopefully improve my final product drastically.

I began creating and inserting more advanced sell lines, including button sells and other designs. I made sure the colour scheme was consistent, using red, black and white as the 3 main colours and using an alternating font colour (black and white) in my sell lines so that the individual sell lines are clearly separate from one another. I also placed very light drop shadows onto the sell lines so that to make them 'pop' out of the page and make it look less flat. A problem I did encounter is in producing the masthead, I began with the full "Your Times Your Life" but that proved hard to make stand out without controlling too much of the page and overall looked too longwinded to be a masthead. Instead I opted for the abbreviated "YTYL" and a tall font on the top left side of the page, so that it looks bold but remains quick and easy to read and recognise. Although I plan on making a few more adjustments, especially when the images have been inserted into the page.

Another technique I used on my front cover was the use of borders on each of the four sides in order to draw the audience's eyes towards the centre of the page and pay attention to the image (once it is placed) and the information placed around it. The top and bottom borders were built with rectangle tools, coloured red to match the colour scheme and with small 1/2 word sell lines that give a small description of what to expect inside the product. The side borders were produced differently, rather than having a solid shape create the border, the text was all aligned down each side, from the sell lines in the top and bottom border, to the sell lines in the middle and even the masthead and barcode.