A2 Advanced Portfolio: January 2012

Friday 20 January 2012

Double page spread

Today we looked at how a double page spread is laid out. We found out the best place to place an eye catching image is on the edge of the right hand page because it is the first part of a page a person sees when they are flicking through a magazine.

We started by looking at examples of double page spreads, the one below was found in an issue of Empire magazine, and shows the stars of the 'Lord of the Rings' franchise as they are reunited, to celebrate the prequel film, 'The Hobbit', being close to release.

My Double Page Spread

To make my double page spread match my channel I wanted the colour schemes to be as similar as possible. I used the red font on a black background so that is stood out and matched my logo which is used in the upper right side. I placed a picture of Jack Bates in the bottom of the right page because when a reader is skimming through the magazine the first part of a page they see is the bottom right corner. This is why I also put the channel launch information in the same corner. the big picture in the middle was the hardest thing to position because of the amount I had to move around to try and find a place for it, so in the end the middle of the spread seemed to be the best idea so that everything else I needed could be positioned around it.

The way the hat covers part of the logo was inspired by one of the covers from Doctor Who Magazine part of the Doctor's hair covered part of the logo on the cover.

I used a ripple effect on some of the writing to strengthen the connection between the paranormal world and the channel itself. this was done by the same process of adding the cloudy background to my logo. By selecting which layer I wanted to distort, I clicked the filter tab, scrolled down to the distort selection and clicked the 'ripple' effect.

This was used on, 'Enter the world of' and 'With Jack Bates'.

I used this in order to help a reader understand what the double page spread contained and the use of the word 'exclusive' could help the channel get more viewers if this was in a real magazine.

This 'Programming' block was used in order to show what kinds of programming there was on 'Unexplained' the mixture of red and black keeps up the trend of the colour scheme being creepy/mysterious.

I used page numbers at the bottom to add as much realism as possible to the two pages, so on the left page I put the number '30' in the bottom left corner and in the bottom right, I put the number '31'.

For some of the pictures I had to get rid of what was around the character of Jack. To do this I used the 'selection brush tool' on Photoshop. This allowed me to select sections of the picture and delete them as I needed.

Friday 13 January 2012

Advert for Newspaper

Above is my advert for my T.V channel, I chose the black background because of the edges of the logo itself, further implying the idea that a torch is being pointed into the darkness, that I spoke about before, and the word 'Unexplained' being illuminated and standing out. I used the red text because it stood out against the black background and because of the colour pallet of the logo. Aside from the recreated Area 51 sign, so far all the pictures have been used on my website and that is why I decided to use them again. When it came to looking at which artist interpretations to use, I chose Mothman and the Bunyip. This is because Mothman matched the logo's colour scheme and so I thought it would look good in one of the corners and the Bunyip was, in my opinion, the best one that I had drawn and even though it was mainly white I still wanted to use it because of the attention to detail I had worked hard on.

I decided to use an actual photo on the advert. So I used one that I had taken from my laptop when I was at Ogmore Castle recording parts of the 'Identify the Unknown' opening. This is because I still had the coat and hat on at the time and took the photo has the character, just for fun.

I have received feedback from my teacher and this has influenced the way I designed my advert and the new design is below.

this was now based more on an advert for Top Gear Live I had seen in a newspaper when i was researching adverts codes and conventions. This influenced the main look with the pictures going down the side and having the logo in the middle.

I had to include details that showed it was a promotional advert and so added channel numbers, but after checking them with my double page spread realised that they were different numbers and so had to change them quickly otherwise there would have been a very noticeable continuity error throughout the work I had done.

Friday 6 January 2012

Finding Information On The Creatures And Occurrences