First Draft Assignment

 This assignment came at a stressful point in the term, as I had a BTEC assessment coming up, so I needed an extension for it. I designed the magazine cover on FireAlpaca, a digital painting (below). I also came up with a working title for the magazine. Although the cover doesn't count as a photographed image, I think it was necessary, since it is an art magazine.

I needed a minimum of 4 photos for my magazine, so I used some images that I had previously taken for drawing reference of my siblings' eyes and faces. Using a Canva template, I added my images to the contents page, and added relevant article titles to it. I also made sure to give the artist credit at the bottom of the page.

I tried to use the blue element from the cover and apply it to the background of the contents page, and used the same font I had used for the cover. I added photo credit in the bottom right-hand corner, as you would usually see in magazines. I tried my best to keep the images aligned, but aesthetically, I think 1 or 2 images would have worked better than 4. Alternatively, I could have picked a different layout for the images, without leaving gaps between them.

The next thing I had to make was the double-page spread, which I had no idea how to format. Canva only lets you design one page at a time, so using one wide image was not an option. I also needed to have an artistic element in the spread, something that would make my magazine stand out as an art magazine. So I had the idea of combining the reference images with the sketches I had used them for, to create a half-and-half effect. I made the pages separately and merged them on a website called PineTools.

A double-page spread needs text, so I wrote a quick article to see how the formatting of the text would work with the image placement. I'm fairly happy with the outcome, and I think I'll be using this half-and-half technique in the next versions of the magazine, but next time I'll try to make the inside images more congruous with the cover, and have some similar elements in both. Over the weekend, I plan to take some themed photos, maybe in an issue about plants, and see if I can keep the green theme throughout the issue's design.