Designing the London DPS

I first began to design this feature by planning the DPS with a rough sketch. 

I'm unsure if I like this design. I haven't yet used a full bleed on a DPS yet and I am not sure if it would divert from the theme I have chosen to pursue for this magazine. I also think that laying text over full bleeds is often difficult because it isn't always easy to read and I don't want to article to be illegible. 

I like this design but I think that the amount of text I have will not fit on this limited design. I think that there would be too much white space here as the article is short and I think that the text wouldn't lay as  I want it too. 

This is the favourited design. I think that the images would fit nicely in this order and I think that the text space will fit what the commission required. I think that having three images that link with one another will allow the DPS to flow with the arrangement of the text and I think that by having lots of images I will attract the readers attention to the inner country holiday review. 

To make the London DPS I decided to begin to search for images first. Having googled the word London, these were the first images that stood out to me.

I liked the air of sophistication that this picture connoted and I think that it would be a nice classic image to have on the page. Despite this, I am unsure if this image really conveys the city of London, despite the classiness of the image, I think it says more... New York or Paris than London.

I also like this image because the importance of Big Ben and the famousness of it in connection with the city, it is a main image that I feel portays London with the lights conveying a feeling of speed that many associate with the capital.

I also thought that the St Paul's Cathederal is also an inesteresting picture to have, but I don't know if I really like it is it isn't colourful or particularly aspiring, perhaps this is the grey sky or the dirtiness of the dome. 

Using these images I arranged this page. I am not sure if it looks quite right with the one colourful image and the rest being slightly... dirty. So I may have to experiement a little more to find images that are more suited to the main picture. 

Similarly I am unsure about the arrangement of the title and Stand first. 

I am uncertain on whether or not  to have black gradient on title or to have it blue to add some more colour into image. I think I prefer the blue but may in fact change the font itself as I'm unsure if it goes with the page.

Having decided that the pages needed more colour I then decided to add different images to link with the main Big Ben image in the bottom right corner. To suit the red I decided that an iconic image would be best and found this to suit my purposes.

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I thought that having an image of the natural history museum was important because it is a main topic of the article, I feel that these images are more suitable to the articles content and theme. This image also, as does the one above, connotes the general feel of the city, portraying it's sense of structure, its age and timelessness and the beauty within the ancient architecture.

Similarly, having taken a closer look at the font I decided that I no longer liked the font Helvetica for the purposes of this page and so decided to use the font Poor Richard for the title and Stand first, keeping the title blue but changing the Stand first to black. I think that this provides the feature with a more sophisticated and city feel.

I like this version now that the title has been changed and I do fell that the images now really convey a certain feel that I think about when thinking about London. I think that it shows London a lot more than the first selection of images chosen did. I also think that the images now compliment each other as well with the reds and the yellows and the blues that influenced the colour of the title. I feel though that it is possible that something needs to be done to make it a little more interesting. 

Whist experimenting with this page I made the stand first so align in a more square so that the indentation at the end was no longer there making it look more professional and cleaner. I also added indents to the top and bottoms of each paragraph to allow the reader a chance to take a break every so often while reading. I also bled the images so that they fell over the margins. I think that this makes the pages more colourful and interesting to look at than the previous design. 

I really like this page because I think while it is as clean as previous the other designs featuring in the magazine I think that the images make it look just as interesting to the eye. I feel that the images perfectly portray the city and that they link to the features content. I think like that the authors name features again in the stand first because it gets rid of the messy "words by" that is usually a feature in magazines. I like this page because I think that it is sophisticated and suits the magazines theme. 

Designing the Front Cover

Here are some fonts that I am currently considering for my front cover. I feel that the best fonts are those that are not cursive. This is because mostly they are unclear. However, I am still toying with which to choose as I need it to represent the magazine clearly, yet I still want it to be relatively simple as that is a main theme for my front cover. 

I quite like this idea, but as seen in a previous post I really want to have a white background to keep the page really clean and different to other magazines out there. 

I really like this design as I feel it combines enough images and information to keep the page clean and still have enough to make it not seem empty or boring. I think that by using colourful images it will allow for a contrast with the white and capture my targets audiences attention. 

I like this design but I don't think it would be suitable, despite it's structure and difference I think that it would be too busy for the look that I want to go for. 

Having planned this I then went on to source the images I wanted for this rough idea. 

Originally I wanted to use this image and cut it out to use it in the bottom right corner of my front cover. However, it was not a good enough quality image and though I was disappointed I began to search for another image. This was one in serious consideration: 

As well as a few others, but in the end I decided that I liked this one the most. 

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Having chosen my image, I then cut it our using photoshop so that it looked like this. 

I'm pretty happy with the way this image has turned out and am hoping that it will look really good on the final design. 

For the second image I decided that I wanted to use a blob. For this I wanted to have a stamp image as the main bit and overlay it with text. So I searched for stamps, here are the ones I decided to use. 

Having found this image I then preceded to cut the a few of the clearer ones out. Here were the choices.

I think that the best one for my purpose is the second one as it is a nicer shape and I feel with hold more text and be more pleasing to the eye than the first.
Having placed the first few pieces of furniture on the page I decided to insert a background as the there was a little too much white space.

This was the image I chose for my background and I felt that this looked really nice on the page making it appear less empty than it previously did. However, it does slightly... drown out my logo and I feel that that needs to be rectified. 

I am still unhappy with my designed logo, so I began to look through the fonts on my computer and found one called Eccentric Std. This I felt really went with the travel feel because it reminded me of the font on passport stamps. Using this font I began to experiment with the rest of the page, using the green on the featuring suitcase to link all the elements together. 

I am much more comfortable with this version of the cover and I really like the ideas of simplicity and yet sophistication that I hope will interest my target audience. I think that this font and the colour of it is more suitable to the younger target audience as it is large, bright and not overly elegant.

Unfortunately having printed this out the subtitles and the subheadings were revealed to be too small and difficult to read, this is a big problem because we want the page to be seen and not ignored amongst the other brightly coloured travel magazine.

I was given the idea to add some more red to the front cover as the splash on the suitcase was eye catching and contrasted with the blues and greens of the title and the background image. I wasn't very happy with the out come as I had hoped as I still didn't think that the text was very clear and I couldn't find the right font to go with the bright colour. So I began to experiment. 

I was originally given the suggestion that I should turn some of my font red. I didn't partiularly like the idea in theory as I wanted the front cover to like to the feel of adventure by using greens to connote a countryside feel and I didn't think that red would do this. However, having been really unhappy with the front cover above I decided that I needed to do something drastic so I took the advise on a whim and decided to shorted the longer titles so that they fit with the others, just being place names. I also extracted the red with the eyedropper tool on Indesign from the more shadowed section of the suitcase, so that the red was darker than originally used when the sub-headings were red and the headings green. In order to include more of the Bell MT font (used for the subheadings) I made the "Win a trip to..." text the same, keeping that font the blue from the fourth suitcase. I similarly made the issue no. and price text the same colour and font so that it linked together nicely. I am now a lot happier with my front cover and I am glad I made the decision to use the red. 

Designing the New Zealand Feature

Here you will find the design process of my second and longest feature based around what to do in New Zealand on a budget.

Here are the scetch designs.

Here is the main design for this feature. This is how I want my page to look. I think that the images for this piece are really important so I wanted them to be the focus, as after all travel magazines are aspirational. I want it to be eye catching and exciting with a fair amount of colours.

With this idea in mind, of it being colourful and eye-catching I decided to do a mock up in powerpoint. 

Having done this I decided that the fifth image, did not keep in theme with the colourfulness of the page and decided to change it for this: 

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This is more suited to the page, I feel as it is a cultural reference, and is a part of the country's appeal. It is also something that hasn't been referenced in the image. I thought that this was a focused image and would be a nice addition to the page. Making that second DPS look like this: 

I feel this is an improvement. 

Having planned it as well as I can I then went on to design it on Indesign. 

However, unfortunately, I did not anticipate the fact that there was too much text for the space, because of this I had to rethink and used Country Life magazine's Discover feature to inspire me.

I really liked this design because it is clean and simple, and still provides enough images to interest the reader, which is what I wanted to do with this particular feature. Having decided this I made the decision to add an eighth page and extend the title page to a DPS.

I am please with the appearance of this page. I think that the extension of the first image allows the colour to be a main feature on the page, mirroring slightly the title page of the Country Life feature above. I also think it was a good idea to extend this image because I makes the page look a lot less crowded and cleaner than the previous and original design. Originally I had both the place title and the subheading above the paragraph but was unhappy with this and decided to place the city or place name to sit along side the paragraph. I think that this also add to the professionalism of the page. I change the colour of this title then to a greeny blue colour taken from the Tongariro Crossing Lake image on the fourth page. The font used for the main title, the stand first, the subheading and it's extra heading are all Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, I didn't want them to be heavy so I chose a light font that would allow the images to take precedence. The main body copy font is Bell MT size 10. Here, as you can see on the notes, I also want to move the photograph's author name to the inner margin as I think This will improve the page py de-cluttering that area of the page, I also want to include the body copy's author name into the stand first for the same reason, to make that area of the page cleaner. I also wish to add a slug, so that the feature will become known as the re-occuring "Travel Destination" piece. I also want to change the title as I feel that it does not jump out on the page. I think that the Helvetica font is too thin to work on this page. 

I similarly did the same with the subtitles of this DPS. I wanted there to be a consistency with fonts, colours and columns. For this particular DPS I was concerned about putting the titles in the margins but decided that this was the best place for them, as I didn't want to decrease the size of the image and so kept them to the right of the text. So that though they would, unlike the other titles be close to the edge of the page, they would not be infringing on the beauty of the images. Again, following the theme of the page above I want to decrease the size of the captions to make them stick out less and appear less like the body copy text. I also, again, want to place the image sources in the inner margins so that it is clear who took them and where the images were taken. Also, having done this print out I can see that the page number on the right page is really difficult to see and I think that I will try it in black next time to see if it comes out any clearer then. I also want to make the page so that both the widows in the text (stand alone words) are no longer singular, I think this would make the text look nicer because it wouldn't be so gappy. 

I really like this page because of the sidebar-like image of the Maori carving. I knew that it was really important to get a cultural image in the article and I'm pleased that I chose this one as it sits, I think really nicely on the page. I also think that the length of the image allows for the page to be clean and still interesting, I think that this carving's detail allows it to be just as interesting as the other images even though it is not as colourful. This is possibly my favourite image of the piece. Similarly I think that the whale tail is very powerful as it portrays the magnitude and beauty of not only the creatures, but the country too. The changes on this page are minimal. I want to again move the image sources to the inner margins to suit the above pages. I need to make the subheading "South Island" bolder using Helvetica light rather than ultralight so that it mirrors the first "North Island" heading and I want to tilt the Maori carving caption so that it lays on its side. I feel that this would be an improvement because it is too long a caption and by tilting it I can make the box wider so that the text will fit within it more comfortably. 

I knew that it would be important for me to include a picture of the famous Milford sound so I used that as the main image for this page, going out of the margins to make it the main feature. I also like the dynamics of the skydiving image and that the captions fill the large amount of space in the corner as there was not enough space for that of the final image on the DPS. Having said that, however, I feel that as well as decreasing the font size of the captions I also wish to space them further apart so that they look less like part of the body copy and more like captions. Similarly need to move the sources to the inner margin and make sure the final paragraph title lines up with the text using the base line grid method. 

Here are the final designs of my New Zealand Travel Destination feature. 

As you can see I added the slug and used the same font as the magazine title to really integrate the feature into the magazine. I also, after much thought, decided to tilt the place name of the Travel Destination on to its side. This way it is mirroring the other place name titles, being on the side and it allows the title to be bold and really jump out at the reader. I am really happy with this page and having moved the caption to the far left of the image I new feel that the text is given it's own space and it's encroached on by other pieces of text. I also bolded the writer's name so that the article makes it clear who has written the piece without having to have a "words by..." section. 

As you can see here, I decreased the size of the captions and moved the sources to the inner margin. I feel that this works better because it no longer takes the attention from the body copy or images by making the reader think they are part of the feature's content. I also moved the titles on the first of the double page spread because I thought that by moving them closer together I was removing the uneven spaces that separated them and made them look slightly out of place. I am really happy with the final design of this page because I feel that it captures the readers attention with the images, that complement each other nicely and give the page a really natural feel, I think that the cleanness of the page really emphasises the images.

I really like the simplicity of this page. I think that the detail of the first image really captures the reader and it makes the page look really detailed and still having the detail of the previous pages. I also like the way that the caption sits on its side because it makes the difference between the other pages while still making it professional and clean. Again the image sources were moved to the side margin and one of the titles were moved so that they alined with their paragraphs. 

Similarly here image sources were moved to the side, the caption's font size was decreased and the titles were realigned with their paragraphs. The Milford sound captions was moved off the image so that it didn't detract the attention from the view and the second two captions were spaced apart so that they looked more like the captions they are than like the body copy they aren't. I think that this DPS is a lot busier than the previous ones, perhaps that is because it has the most images but I think that it still suits the feature and doesn't have too much going on to detract from the features content. 

I am really pleased with the aesthetics of this feature. I think it works really well staying simple and yet providing the reader with lots of interesting images to look at. I tried to keep the word count down for this reason as I wanted it to be a very visual piece, and there is ten images for the twenty ideas. I think this is a good ratio because it allows the reader to become interested in the places enough to do some research and inspire them to visit the places themselves.