Production Log (draft)
26/04 Progress Video
Scheduling Issue
I was planning to do the photoshoot and second interview today, but Tasha informed me that she wouldn't be able to make it about an hour before it would've happened. We've decided we'll do the photoshoot and interview on Friday, I told her she could come by 9am-12am. This isn't too much of an issue since we quickly set up another timeslot, but I'm a little worried if the same thing might happen again. Since the studio was already set up, I decided to take my own pictures since I needed to for the editorial notes page anyway
Daily Diary 26/04
Today I got feedback from my previous tutor about my articles, took photos of myself in the studio and worked on my magazine designs
I think so far designing is going okay. I feel a little bit burnt out today so I'm unsure how tomorrow will go. It's not looking how I want it to look but I still have a whole other week to work on it so I don't feel too worried about things yet. I think during the mock ups I made one or two headers a different font and I'm not sure I like the font I chose for the subheadings anymore. I might change it tomorrow
The travel article page has changed, its more in line with what I actually wanted to do with the page. I want to change the image used for it though as I feel like is not high quality enough
I got feedback for my articles and I'm planning to change them during the weekend, mainly so that I can spend as much time designing for the magazine while I'm still in class. In person I was also asked about the length of the articles, I chose to not write too much for them as I wrote more during my previous FMP and found it hard to design the page around all of the text. While writing them I was worried I wrote too little because of this though and I realise now that one of the reasons why it was difficult last year was because of the text size I went with
27/04 Progress Video
Daily Diary 27/04
Today I continued designing for my magazine, I'm also coming in tomorrow to do this as well as the interview & photoshoot with Tasha
I was rereading the feedback given from Paul Scotton and realised I accidentally made my font size was way too big so I had to tone it down (12px which is the same as my previous FMP magazine), meaning I have to go back and change each individual page to fit that now. I thought I changed it already.. It looks very small on my preview now but I know that's how I ended up having my font size so big to begin with. This does give me more space to work with though, especially on the interview pages, so that's good at least. I still haven't worked on some of the pages since I changed the font so some pages look a little wonky now (like the Black owned businesses page), but I'm coming here tomorrow regardless so I should be able to work on those pages before sending it for feedback
The magazine Paul Scotton sent really helped as I was able to compare my current design to a professional magazine while I'm designing it. I usually only do this during my evaluation, I'm not sure why I didn't think about doing this before. I plan on buying a few print magazines during the weekend but I don't know if there are any luxury magazines in town. Regardless I think looking through them should help since most magazines are structured the same once you remove the design elements
I'm most proud of the beauty products page, I really like how its turned out so far but I still feel like it could be better (something about the page bothers me a bit but I don't know what). I'm happy I decided to give it an extra page as I have two extra pages for the magazine now, I feel like double pages on a singular topic are more in line with what you'd see in a luxury magazine. I didn't like how the work/life balance page looked though so I decided to scrap the idea entirely and start again, I plan on thinking of ideas on how to design it during the weekend
Because of the font size being smaller now, I feel like I should make the articles longer. I decided it'd be better to edit the articles during the weekend as I wouldn't be able to design the magazine at home and only had a limited amount of time
Interview with Tasha
wix doesn't allow audio over 50mB
Signed Talent Release
Work in Progress Draft of Magazine (27/04)
Daily Diary 28/04
Today I came in to do the photoshoot & interview with Tasha
The photoshoot & interview went very well. I showed her the questions beforehand so she was able to rehearse what she wanted to say and took multiple photos of her in different poses so I have a variety to choose from. Like all audio interviews, I'll have to shorten what she said so it fits in the magazine
I was planning to continue working on my magazine today but due to something that came up, I wasn't able to stay for very long after the interview. I unfortunately didn't save my work as a PDF at the end of yesterday, but I did save a PDF of it at 1:37pm yesterday so I at least have something to show to the magazine designers. Since we finished college at 2:30 that day, this PDF has majority of the changes I made anyway other than the table of contents being slightly tweaked & the work/life balance page mistakenly being labelled as another ad page
After the interview I asked Tasha if she knew anyone who'd be interested in giving me feedback for the magazine and she said she did. I also talked a bit more with Gabrielle, one of the people interviewed for the magazine, and she said she'd be happy to send the magazine over to people she's networked with. I'm glad I was able to semi-confirm audience feedback so early, but I still plan on trying to get feedback from professional magazine designers myself. I haven't contacted any others yet since this is the first week of production but I realise that I should start doing so soon
During the weekend I'll be adding adjustments to my articles from the feedback I was given on 26/04 and making plans for how I want the rest of my pages to look like (specifically the work/life balance & Black owned businesses articles, since those are the weakest ones in my opinion). If I can I'll try to buy some (hopefully luxury) print magazines from town
I did an audio "diary" after the interview, its more personal and really isn't required to listen to but I felt like I should put it here anyway
27/04 Feedback
During the weekend I received feedback from one of the magazine designers I've contacted. Joan linked a Pinterest board that they took inspiration from while making D'oro magazine
Instead of more general tips, Joan gave me more direct advice about a few pages. I was a bit worried the text overlapping the image would be a bit hard to read which is why I added the stroke, but if it takes away from the luxurious look then I'll have to switch over to something else. I'll try adding a white box around the text as its something I've seen a lot of magazines do
I was worried about the same thing on page 11 but didn't have much time and wasn't sure what to do about it. I think trying to do a different arrangement would work better as I'm unsure what design assets I could add to make it more visible
I didn't notice the paragraphs much throughout designing and have mainly focused on the actual design, which isn't good. I'm planning to change page 14 entirely anyway but I'll look out for "widows" in the text while I'm designing
Articles (in draft)
02/05 Progress Pictures
Old Design
New Design (in progress)
Daily Diary 02/05
Today I continued designing my magazine, but I wasn't able to do much because I'm only here from 9-12:15 today
I wasn't able to do as much today so I just took pictures of the pages I was designing instead (the table of contents was already changed by the end of 27/04 but I'm putting this change here for visibility). I was planning to finish my adverts by today but wasn't able to finish all of them and the pages in time
I used Joan's Pinterest board while designing my magazine and I like how experimental it is, its quite different from the magazine Paul sent me. I'm glad I was able to get both of these examples for inspiration. I used it while redesigning the Black owned businesses page and I think it looks much better now even if I'm not done with it yet. I don't think I'll be able to include the pictures of the business owners though which is a shame. I'm planning on adding the header for this page in the middle if I can since its hard to know what this page is for and it can be easily seen as a standard advertisement
I changed the text on page 4 so that the text wraps around images instead of overlays on top of them. I tried adding a white box behind them with shading and fill, but I didn't like how it looked. For page 11 I lowered the opacity and moved the text so that it was more visible. I realised while editing the page that I didn't put a "call to action" on it (from last unit, when advertising something its important to direct the audience on what they have to do to attend the event/book a stay/etc.) so I added the website and the company's logo on the page too, which also filled in some of the dead space in the page. For page 14 I'm changing the layout entirely like I planned to. The pages are in the wrong order because I decided to add a new page to edit on, but its temporary and I'm going to delete the old page when I'm done
I emailed Tasha about when I'll be sending the final magazine to her and when I wanted feedback, she agreed so thats sorted. I chose to give Tasha as much time as possible to send the magazine to other people and get feedback, by Friday I should be done with most of my evaluation regardless. I still need to email this to Gabrielle though
I bought a magazine to look at some pages, I wasn't able to find any luxury magazines so I settled for one about travel since its one of the articles I'm doing. Most of the pages were adverts and many of the pages had the same layout as the London double spread, but I took pictures of the pages that interested me for inspiration
03/05 Progress Video
Daily Diary 03/05
Today I designed my magazine and the adverts for it. For homework I'll be going through the checklist Natalie gave me (adding rental costs for exact equipment used to Budget Breakdown & show experiments with Colour Swatches in either font justification or mock ups)
I mainly focused on pages that weren't done such as the work/life balance page, table of contents and adverts. I've finished two out of three adverts, mainly finished the table of contents and work/life balance pages. I was planning to do the front and back cover today but ran out of time
I like how the adverts look, especially the one for Dior. I feel like the coloured squares make the bags stand out a bit more and the colours are colour dropped from the original images, I switched the coloured squares diagonally so that the black & grey bags wouldn't have such dull colours. I think the one for Louis Vuitton also looks nice too but its not as good as the other one, my favourite part about it is the picture and the 'you' text looking more dynamic because I coloured the top half of that word with a darker colour
The Louis Vuitton design was inspired by one of the adverts in the magazine Paul sent me. I liked how the picture didn't completely cover the page so I did something similar. I feel like the ad could still use a little more work on the text placement and possibly font choices, but for now its fine since I want to focus on pages that are barely finished
I finished the Black-owned businesses page and I like the general look of it a lot (its obvious where the main inspiration for it came from), but I don't know how I feel about the actual title of the page. It does work but it feels sort of bland, even if I'm unsure what I would even change it to
04/05 Progress Video
Rough Draft of Magazine (04/05)
Daily Diary 04/05
Today I continued designing my magazine, mainly focusing on the last pages that were unfinished (front & back cover, one advert). I'm not coming in tomorrow since I'm done with my rough draft, the PDF version above includes the bleed which is why its a little wonky to view online
While designing this magazine I look back on the previous one I did for FMP often and I realise I didn't edit any of the pictures in it. This is mainly since it was an art magazine so the only photo I could've edited would've been the editorial notes, but it was something I noticed while editing images for this magazine
I was planning to add small details like authors names for each article and details for all the photos, but I looked at it and realised I didn’t like how it looked. Most luxury magazines also don’t feature who wrote the articles regardless. I also wanted to add details about the photography which I’ll try to do if I can find them (who photographed the image, where they were, etc.)
I tweaked the travel layout and I like it a lot more now even if it wasn't what I was originally planning for it (I wanted a picture as a background and text to go over it like in the 26/04 progress video). I like the line I put in the middle of the header as well as I feel like it makes it stand out more and is consistent with the lines I put in the rest of the general layout. I might change how the hairstyles page looks since I don't like it as much as the travel page that its right next to, but I don't know what I'd change it to still
Natalie looked at my magazine and gave some feedback, saying that some of the pages remind her more of Cosmopolitan rather than a high end magazine. The pages she pointed out specifically was the double page spread of the products. I like how the pages look but achieving a high end look is more important to me. I'll consider buying any luxury magazines if I can since (other than the one Paul gave me) I haven't been looking at any full luxury magazines. I'd rather get them printed since I'm also doing a printed magazine, but I realise that I don't have as much time left to work on this and I'm unsure if they sell any in town. She also said that the front cover needs work still which I agree with, I only edited it with about 30 or so minutes left of the day last time I worked on it so I wasn't able to do much with it
I also got a response from Akua who said she'd be able to give feedback and find other people to do the same, which is great for me. This means I'll have a lot of responses from my audience which is exactly what I want, the only thing I have to consider now is feedback from other industry professionals
04/05 Feedback
Paul sent me feedback about each page which is very helpful for me since it means I can instantly recognise what he's talking about when he's asking me to make changes on my work
There's a bit of feedback about the cover. He said the main title should be bigger and that it'll be better in capitals. I didn't realise I made the title too small so I'll enlargen it. I'll try how the title capitalised will look since I wasn't planning on it and I'm not sure if I'll like it more than how its capitalised now. The subheadings should be ranged left and right depending on their positions, I had arranged them to all be centered. He also said to enlarge certain keyphrases to make them more 'pleasing on the eye'
In general he mentions to justify the text so it looks neater and give more paragraph breaks. I think when he says this he's mainly talking about the Oscars article, but I'll change it for all of the pages. I turned off hyphenation for all paragraphs before anyway
Afterwards he gives feedback on specific pages (page 3's headers & social media icons being too big, overlap the images in the interview pages, page 10's text being too close to the image, page 14's bottom half needing to be tidied and page 18 needing an image and being more creative with the header). He also said to change the title in the Oscars article to be similar to the feedback he gave for the cover subheadings. He said page 4 and 5 seem to be the wrong way round and they're technically not but I realise it'd make much more sense if those two pages were swapped. I'm still not sure how I want the work-life balance page to look yet, but I plan on making all of these changes next week
Bibliography
Edinburgh Copyshop. (2022) What is bleed and how to add it to your files. Available at: https://www.edinburghcopyshop.co.uk/help-topics/print-bleed-explained/. Accessed at: 02.05.23