Thursday, 9 January 2014

Developing my Double Page Spread - Part 1

Now that my documentary poster was completed it was essential for me to start constructing the final design for my double page spread. All of the production was to be created on the InDesign software which I had experimented previously with to understand the tools and get a feel of the programme itself.


As my first starting point I selected and copied the article for my magazine spread which I had printed out onto a word document, pasting it directly into the InDesign programme which saved me valuable time as I would have otherwise had to type it all out by hand which wouldn't be beneficial to me as I would have wasted time resources I culdn't afford to throw away. Under the first paragraph I left a fairly large gap remaining as I was currently undecided as to whether it would make my product more appealing by inserting a pull quote there to occupy the space. I discovered almost immeditelly that my completed draft article was too large for a single page, so I agreed with my lectuter Kaye to continue it on over another page as there was no specific points I could identify to remove from the production itself as I would lose the flow and edge within the content.


This is the third page which contains the remainder of the article. I spread what was left over two distinct sections of the page. I felt it would be too mediocre and boring to have all the text as a single large colomn down the left hand side, so by equally distributing it across the production I believed it made my article appear more eye-catching and unusual to the audiences perspective. This was important as the text itself was too large to have down one colomn, if I continued with this the words would not fit on the page and would flow off it. I was debating as to whether I could insert another image in the right hand corner and possibly a writer review box underneath the left hand colomn to provoke more interest from my target audience.


Again I conducted some slight experimentation with the positioning of the main text body, I adjusted it slightly so the text was equally spread out on two sections of the page with the paragraphs being almost identically equal in length. Under the colomn located on the left I added another pull quote box to get the feel as to how it could make my spread appear more distinct. I feel as if there will be too much empty space, it would be unconventional to have a hugely enhanced quote and personally I think it would redicule my work so I will take this into consideration before I start working on the final double page product.


After seeking some advice from my lecturer, as feedback she suggested I decreased the size of the text in an attempt to fit as much of it as possible onto each page, in doing so I would probablies reduce the size of the continuation of the article on the third page which may allow more flexibility as to where I would be allocated to position other elements (such as images, pull quotes etc). From here I lowered the font to a 10 size gradient, I was able to get most of the article on the second page in doing this with only a small minority flowing over onto the third page.


This is a screenshot of the original third page before the size decrease was put into practise.


Once the alteration had been completed I noticed how much more space I had to work with, all of the text had been confined to a specific point on the left hand side of the page with the pull quote equally spacing the different bodies away from each other. I was really pleased with the final result, it looked professional as what would be conventional in a mainstream magazine such as the radio times and moreover it may be possible to add another image onto the space located to the right.

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