S.W.O.T

Looking back at previous work, I have made many different things throughout last year. However these two pieces of work I am going to talk about now are probably the pieces of work I am the most proud of.

The first is a board game that I had to design from scratch, we had to design ever aspect of the board game so that it was an appealing game and at the same time looked very eye catching so that people would like to buy the product. I think I managed to achieve this in my work. It was made to be very simple so that almost anyone could pick up the game and get playing. The colours that I used all fit together very nicely and this ended up making the board and the box for the board game very appealing and modern. I think one of my weaknesses for this project was that I spent way too long on the design part while not really giving the rules of the game a whole lot of thought. Also my board and the box for my game both had flaws, the design on the box did no align in some places and the spacing for the board was a bit uneven. I could have created my own font for my game and could have used my logo in more places. Without the unique font it made the box look very stock and uninteresting. The logo could have been used on the box so that it could be easily identifiable for new users.

My other piece of work I am very proud of has to be my short film called, 'Cold Fusion' we were given the subject that we had to base our project on, but had to create everything else ourselves. One of my strengths was that my script was written very well and had a story that made you want to find out more. It also had a very nice plot twist at the end that made the film open to potential sequels. I think my weaknesses were quite apparent in the final piece, when recording my film I had forgot to set the resolution to the standard HD, this meant that the film did not show the full range that it could and the quality did not look as good. The audio was also quite bad at times due to loud vehicles or the wind. I think one of the hardest things at the time was getting use to filming, I had only done it a few times before and was quite rusty. However I thought that i didn't do that bad and I thought that some of the shots I had go for the film weren't half bad. If I were to do it again I would have actually gone to a home to get some shots for my film instead of using the tight space in college.

Peer Evaluation

I have now created a brief front cover for my book and have created a few double page spreads. Like I have said before using a normal photo done by a professional is something that I should and will include for my final piece. The text that I have done however will need to be changed to something a lot more solid and straightforward.

I have tried to keep to the boxed in sections type of text through out my different pages, I think that it suits well with the type of magazine I am trying to produce showing that it is a important book that is made to provide the reader with the information they are looking for.

I have tried to add a few interactive element to my work, for example a sound button that people can click on and use so that they can for example, listen to something that the audience had said or a short snippet of something that the artist has song. I also included a QR code into my work but when the whole of the class were brought forward to show everyone their work that whole team decided that a QR code would be pointless and not worth it. Instead I should include hyperlinks. I also added animation into my book to give it a bit more life and to make the article grab the users attention. I would also like to include the odd video here and there, I believe that it would make the user stay using the book for longer because they would not feel as so threatened by the large amount of the text used.

Using images around the pictures is a feature I like using a lot and after looking at other members of the group pieces of work I have really gathered a lot of useful information and have even picked up on a few different ways to layout/ format my work that I will try to add to my work while giving it a unique twist.

1960s Vietnam War

Today we were set the test to create our own two page anti war newsheet. We were given a set of photos that we were allowed to include in our piece and were told that we had to stick with 2 colour only throughout both of the pages.


The task was set to test how quickly we can make something with limited time and to improve our skills with Indesign. I think that for the time that we had I made a pretty good anti war newsheet. It was laid out well, had just the right amount of pictures that portrayed what was being talked about in the article very well.

I also felt like I used the 1 colour very effectively to highlight the most important part in the photo, for example I used the yellow to give a bit more light on the napalm gas that was in the photo. Doing this I feel gives the photo a bit more life that it would just keeping it black and white. I also sketched out the shot of a gun to make the photo look a bit more interesting and to show the audience what happened after the photo was shortly taken. I also divided the picture into three parts so that I could still show the whole photo but taking out all of the parts that were not needed. It also made the page look a bit more stylish, like there were three windows across the page. 

Target audience and accessibility

Due to my piece being interactive and having to use a device like a iPhone, tablet and Android phone I think I will have to focus on the age range that knows how this technology works and can use the full experience that I will give to them when making the interactive piece of media. I think the age range from 20-30 is a good age range I will have to make sure that it is suited to them. 

I might want to try and appeal to the 50s age range as well so that people who use to live in the 60s could experience the interactive piece and enjoy it, they will probably get some help from the younger people in there family and friend groups. Including things like little music buttons that the user can click is a great way to make the user feel way more involved in the book. Some people who might be slightly older might not know how these things work but if used with a younger person in the family they can discover the full potential of the book together. I think when it comes to the interactive part I do not want to make it too complicated so that people that are older don't find it too overwhelming to operate. My main focus is going to be the 20-30 age range so the book will be tweaked around them as a priority.

There are not going to be many people aged 50+ checking the amazon book catalog or iBooks store so when it comes to how I would advertise the interactive book I would have to try and make it look appeal to the younger age range so that I can get their attention. I might have to alter a few things in the book but I will try and keep the 60s look that I am trying to get across. This should not be hard to achieve I will just have to be careful on how I present my book before people actually download it.

For people who are a bit younger, 20-30 having the book be interactive will be a massive benefit to them, this is because it allows them to learn a bit more about music magazines back then through the use of hyperlinks, buttons and videos.

Back in the 60s the 'Rave' magazine was meant to appeal to the younger adult to older adult age range so there really shouldn't be anything child related in the book because it would be unnecessary and pointless to include, that is if I am trying to stick with how it was done back then.  

Trial Design on InDesign

From my last blog I talked about the layout of text and how images were used in magazines back in the 60s and how it is different to how it is nowadays. I quickly made a outline on what one of my pages could looks like. It uses a few of the features a 60s magazines used. 

I made the whole page black and white so that it would fit with the theme most magazine pages back then would use. I also put the title to the pages in the middle of the text next to the image instead of at the top when you would usually see the heading of a article. I thought that this looked very interesting and I really like how it isn't at the top of the page. I also put the text around the title and around the main image like they use to do in the 60s magazines, I like this effect, it makes it seem as if the person in the image is within the text and it makes everything look more involved.

I believe that I can still add a lot more in the future and I am only touching the base when it comes to creating my own interactive book. Before creating my book I will look at other interactive books and see the ways in which they use the interactive features to their and the customers benefit.

Typography and photography

Rave magazines were weird in that some issues would include the a different font for the 'Rave' logo. They would only do this if they were releasing a exclusive edition or if they had someone very special on the font cover. I found this to be quite odd, and in my eyes did not really make a whole lot of sense. I really like how they gave the text a bit of depth and would sometimes put parts of the text behind the main person on the cover. I will be doing this for my own magazine. The cover of most of the magazines did not include a lot of pugs, I do not know why, this ended up making the cover quite bare and boring. It also does not provide the user with a lot of information on what they should expect to find inside. Some of the 'rave' magazines also included a '!' in their logo, I think that it did look better with the '!' however I think they could have just made the text upper case allowing it to be a bit more explosive and eye catching.

Looking at the double page spread below you can see that the text is laid out quite well and makes for an easy read. I feel like the text is left out and that the image is the main focus for the article even tho it may not be their original goal. If I want to create the authentic feel that we are meant to achieve then I will have to make sure that I do this when creating my double page spreads. Colour was also very expensive back then and this is the reason why these images do not include colour. Once again I will have to incorporate this into my work. 'Tremultous' is drawn to look very wavy and bubbly because that was a cool thing to do back then that appealed to people. I like the way how the text flows around the people and how it is used as a title to the main article.

In many magazines there were errors in the way the text was laid out. This sometimes resorted in bits of text looking a bit odd and different to one another. This might have been due to technology and the cost of getting it all printed again being too large. I might want to do this when creating my pages so that I can get a better authentic feel.  

Photographs used in magazines back then were very professional looking. The people in the photos however always looked very different to how you would see people in magazines now a days. Their clothes were very extravagant and eye catching to fit with the style back then. Using product in mens hair back then was very out of the ordinary so most mens hair would be very bushy and untidy. Not all photos were cropped and altered the same way, as you can see in the image below for the big image they cut around the singers and did not use the background when taking the photo. While the other includes a background, this may have been used to add a bit more to the bland black and white that people were probably use to seeing on magazines back then. When creating my pages I will have to do some of this myself. 

Almost every photo looked like it was from a photo shoot people in the photos were not trying to give off a vibe like they were just doing their own natural thing. Quite a lot of images were drawn back then as well to cut back on the amount of money it would cost to print a picture and shoot it. This also meant that drawings could be used to make the page look a little more interesting than just plain text.

Research (Moodboard and Sketchbook work)

Today we were given the brief for our new project and were told a little bit more information on what we could do for our projects. I decided to choose music for my project because I find 60s music to be very interesting and I believe that it had a very big impact on the culture back then. When we went to London and looked at the 60s expedition the other day, I felt like I learned quite a lot on how everything was presented back then and I think that I can do something good with this.

So I decided to look at some of the magazines that were music focused back then. One of the most well known music magazines was the magazine 'Rave'. It was quite costly for their times however it included about 60 A4 pages with quite a lot of the pages coloured. This was out of the ordinary back then due to magazine run costly a fair amount of money, especially A4. The front covers to the 'Rave' magazines really do show how high quality they are, the photos all look very professional with almost all covers trying out new techniques in design. I also like how the pictures used are not psychedelic, It looks like the magazine is trying to prove a point and not follow society, once again this shows how high quality this magazine really is.

I think when I create my magazine I will definitely follow the same sort of design that is used in 'Rave' because it works well and  can do a whole lot more that what a psychedelic drawing could ever really do, for example allowing the audience to be able to connect with the singer by using a picture of the singer looking at the camera.