Extremely helpful that.
Wednesday 11th December 2013
Today we got into pairs and designed a two page spread of one of the articles. I was in a pair with Megan and we decided to do her article on 'Top Tips' about tips for the students who are joining college and need tips about how to cope with college work and the pressures of the deadlines.
Wednesday 18th December 2013
Seeing as this diary entry is just as helpful as the last one, I'll edit this post and put the second day in here too. Again, I left early for the bus so this will be short and sweet. (Like me)
Today Megan and I chose a topic off the board to design a page for as we were short on people doing pages. The page we chose was 'Presents for Girls'. We asked a few girls what sort of presents they would like to get and asked a few guys what they would give girls as presents. Unfortunately, due to the fact that no article was written for that topic, Megan and I were only able to design a page layout on some paper. I didn't like this page idea to be honest as I felt that presents for girls was a ridiculous idea and was a little 'sexist' especially as the communications team didn't want anything towards a specific gender. I felt it was sexist because there was nothing about boys on this page, only girls and it was very gender biased.
Wednesday 8th January 2014
First lesson back after the Christmas holidays and today at the start of the lesson today we listened to a small presentation which some of the members of the sales team showed us. They spoke about their meeting with the clients and told us that the clients found the designs very female orientated and that we should make the magazine more gender balanced. Megan and I left this for now and worked on our Top Tips guide once more.
We took our initial sketches and the basic layout we had done of the Top Tips article that Megan wrote, in InDesign and 'spruced' it up a wee bit by changing the fonts around for a bit of contrast. We kept the 'Chalkboard' font but only for the Title and the Tips. The small section of writing was changed to 'Myriad Pro' which was then painstakingly moved (each line, I might add! I'm never going to want to look at InDesign again after this!) to look as if it had been written on the lined paper we were using as our background.
One thing that I wasn't overly keen on by the end of the lesson was the layout of our page. To me, it looked very plain and bland next to everyone else's so I decided to go home and produce some new sketches of different ways we could change the design around to make it more appealing to the audience.
Wednesday 15th January 2014
Today, Megan and I set about changing the entire layout and design of our page for Tag Magazine. We decided very early on that the design we had created before just wasn't interesting enough. Nobody would stop and look at that in a magazine because it was white and nothing stood out on the page.
I began by removing everything from the page and moving it to the edges of the screen, so I knew what I had to work with. I then deleted the background of the lined page and replaced it with a plain box which I filled in with the colour black which I then changed the tint of the black to make it a dark grey. I placed the title 'Top Tips' back on the page, keeping the chalkboard font as the new idea was to make the page BE the chalkboard. I then re-wrote the text that I had spent last lesson putting on individual lines and placed two boxes behind them with different shades and tints of blue with one offset at an angle to draw attention to those boxes of text.
Every part of the text became white and I changed the font to Myriad Pro apart from the titles of each 'tip' because this stood out more than having the entire text in the Chalkboard font. Each heading became a different colour of chalk to give the design some colour and to make the headings stand out a bit more. After I had done all this, Megan added three photos from the college folder, which could either stay there or be used as placeholders for other images.
Looking at the new design (below) I feel much happier about it because this one pops out of the page, rather than being plain and boring white.
Wednesday 22nd January 2014
Today we finished working on our college adverts. Megan and I started on a new design for a food diary. Because I felt that I took over the page layout last time, I moved back a bit and let Megan have a free reign on the design and I would input at times. I really like the pixellated theme, although it might fit a gaming page more. The only thing that I don't really like about the page at the moment is the lack of colour, but we did only start this today and therefore it's obviously not complete yet.
Lately, I've been having some personal problems and because of that haven't been myself or focused really and I'm really thankful to Megan for being there for me and not avoiding me, but helping me through this by getting me focused on working on these pages.
Wednesday 29th January 2014
Today Megan and I started to lay the whole magazine out on the board by making page templates of each page, putting them in order and then writing on each page the name of the article going on that page. We also started to arrange the pages so that they go in an interesting order and goes well in the magazine. The adverts needed to be distributed around the magazine so that the readers don't get bored seeing repetitive adverts. This concept can be applied for the different genders too, we need male and female based articles spread evenly. We made two columns on the board, one for unwritten articles and one for un-designed articles. This was helpful for the rest of the design team as they could then work on articles that needed to be designed or finished without confusion.
Wednesday 5th February 2014
I have recently been designing and arranging the order of Tag Mag and what needed to be inside the publication. This involved putting all pages on the board and deciding whether they should be double or single page spreads. Because my advert for college was going to be used as the advert going in the magazine, I had to make a few tweaks to it. I had to change the border for the photographs to a film strip instead of the single black line border. I personally prefer the original design as I feel this new one is too cluttered, but everyone else voted for it to be changed like that and as I was out of the room, I got no say on the matter.
Wednesday 12th February 2014
Today Megan and I had to turn our Top Tips page from a double page spread into a single page. To do this, we had to cut down on some of the tips we had given and only keep the most important ones. We then took out some pictures we didn't need, giving us more space. We did, however, manage to keep the design the same.
Wednesday 19th February 2014
Today, we asked for feedback on our article which we designed last lesson. The feedback we received was that the chalkboard effect didn't look very good and the design looked similar to an article that was in last years Tag Mag. We also found out we couldn't use any of the images we had included because other articles were using them. We searched around and I finally thought that we could make the design a pin board instead, so that it looked like someone was pinning their revision notes onto this pin board but these revision notes would actually be the tips.
Wednesday 26th February 2014
Today we carried on with the redesign of the Top Tips article and coloured a few of the notes differently, adding shadows where we thought they were needed.
Wednesday 5th March 2014
First of all, tomorrow is my 20th Birthday - woohooo!!! that's out my system! ;D
Today I changed the entire layout of the Top Tips design once more to a more 'college feel'. This design choice was to get the people reading the magazine page to relate to the subject.
First of all, I moved everything off the page and placed a background of a cork board there instead of the old background. I removed one of the images used and replaced it with an image of the college at the top next to the new design of 'Top Tips'. I then placed 5 post it notes on the page at different angles and put the different tips in 4 of them and the introduction and conclusion in the biggest one. Once I had put pins in all of the notes and pictures, I set about moving some of the post it notes forward and backwards so it looked as if they were layered on each other, taking care not to cover up the writing on there. I then placed a 6th note underneath the largest one at an angle as the top part of the 'board' looked blank.
Wednesday 12th March 2014
Today Ellie and I got tasked with making the TV programme page for Tag Mag. The only thing we weren't particularly happy with was the choice of TV programmes on there as the page had claimed it was a 'childhood' and '90's' television show article when in fact, none of the shows were from the 90's and nobody we spoke to would classify the shows as childhood shows. We spoke to the person who wrote the article and she said she had meant shows we watched as teenagers so we adapted the design to match this. The shows involved are 'Drake and Josh', 'That's So Raven', 'The Suite Life of Zack and Cody' and 'Hannah Montana'.
Wednesday 19th March 2014
I had the doctors at 9:30am and found out that I have a suspected carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand (writing hand). I came in and found Ellie working on the TV article page. I gathered a few more images for her and converted them into CMYK and placed them in the shared folder full of our images for that particular page. I then got asked to help Martin stick the images for the front cover design up on the wall so that everybody could vote but unfortunately, by the time I went back in with the second round of images to stick up, the wall had been taken control of and pictures were coming down faster than I could put them up. Saffron sat down with us and looked over the articles to discuss the mistakes and general direction of it. The title now reads 'College Survival Guide', as it stands out more and is more creative.
Wednesday 2nd April 2014
Today is our last lesson on Tag Mag '14. This lesson was carrying on with work from last week and making last minute changes to the article. I made sure that all the images were in the correct colour mode (CMYK), the page bleed was the right size, the resolution was 300ppi and Tag Mag was added at the top of the page and credits at the bottom.
During the first lesson today, I sourced images for the YouTube page that Jamie designed. I did this by going onto the YouTube website and searching for different YouTubers that had been included in the article, but not put on the page. The images I sourced were from Gangnam Style, Zoella and Tanya Burr and 'How animals eat their food'. I sourced several different images of each video in order to give a wider range of images to choose from as some may be blurry or not quite good enough to depict the video.
This is one of the ones I picked from the Gangnam style video by Psy. The reason I chose this image is because it's clear and the article mentions Gangnam style.
I chose this image because it's off of a funny video called 'How animals eat their food' which is really creative and therefore shows off the creative side of YouTube which wasn't really shown in the video choices chosen on there already such as PewDiePie.
This image is of Zoella and Tanya Burr who are fashion and beauty video makers and bloggers. The reason I put an image of them on the YouTube page was because they were mentioned and I also thought it was a good idea to add some female YouTube icons into the mix as the whole page seemed a bit male dominated.
Wednesday 23rd April 2014
Today we came back from half term and we have received the final printed Tag Mag 2014. Now that the magazine has been produced we need to make sure that people read the magazine, and in order to do this we need to display it in public places and the copies have to be free. We need to keep in mind that our target audience is 14-19 year olds and the place with the most people from this age range is schools and colleges. There was a list of schools that agreed to have the magazine and since nobody wanted to hand them out around the college, Sam and I took 5 boxes and placed them all around the canteen in Evoc, Park and the hairdressers salon. We took the rest to Student Services, the main reception desk in Park College and the main office for any visitors to the college to browse through whilst waiting. Whilst placing them in Evoc canteen, several people from the student services commented on the magazines and asked us questions about them before asking if they could have 10 to take.
This is the final 'College survival guide' page
