My video evalutation of my final designs

Evie evaluating my music magazine (video)

 

I found it very interesting hear Evie mention some of the things I would change about my product, especially on the front cover. She mentioned the fact that there was a lot of blank space which I will mention in my evaluation and the fact that "more imagery" could be added to it. I completely agree with this statement although I think I would change the background colour too, but I would only use a very subtle colour. She also said that she liked the double page spread which I have to say is now my favourite part of my project.

Final design of front cover, contents page and double page spread

Second draft of DPS text - question style

How is the new found fame treating you?

Quite well, I’m really enjoying myself. There are obviously some down sides like the made up stories in the press and the people who don’t like what you’re doing but I haven’t come across many of those.

Have any other celebrities given you advice about how to deal with the media?

Yeah they have actually! Jessie J called me the other day and was just telling me to stay true to myself and to not read the comments in the newspapers and on the social networking sites because she doesn’t want them to upset me like they did her.

We also heard Beyoncé has had some kind words to say, what can you tell us about that?

Yeah I was in New York a few weeks ago recording and to my surprise Beyoncé walked through the door and said she had heard some of the material from my debut album and that she thought I had a great tone to my voice. That was amazing for somebody of her calibre to say something like that to me, the small town girl from Yorkshire.

Would you say Beyoncé is one of your idols?

Oh definitely, she’s amazing! To have even a quatre of her success would be more than enough for me.

Do other artists influence your music?

I suppose, I pride myself on being individual and original but if I like an artist or a song I will think about how they have made the track successful and try to incorporate that into my own work.

That sounds like a good idea! What type of music do you usually listen to?

I love a bit of everything except heavy metal, I can’t understand why people enjoy that sort of thing but I suppose everybody is different. I love old school R&B like Boyz II Men, Alicia Keys, Ne-Yo, R-Kelly and Trey Songz. The relaxing vibe to that kind of music is great especially with the type of schedule I have.

Oh yes I love that too! Speaking of your schedule, what do you miss the most about your old lifestyle?

Seeing my family and friends whenever I want to. It has been very hard to come to terms with that and also just being able to walk to the shop or sit in a cinema screening without being noticed. I miss the “normal” things that you take for granted.

I bet that’s hard!

Yeah it really is. I mean I don’t get recognised all the time, in London it’s a different story but especially back home I can’t go anywhere. It’s a compliment though!

Yeah, a great compliment. What is your favourite part of the job?

I think my favourite bit is getting to travel the world and meeting lots of new people. My fans are amazing! If I’m in a city and they find out, I have people trying to find me to meet me. Touring is something I have always wanted to do and also recording across the world is great!

If you could record or shoot a video anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Definitely Australia or the Caribbean! I love warm weather and when I was a child one of my best friends moved to Oz and I haven’t seen her since so I would love to go there and see her again, whilst working of course!

Great choices, Australia is on my bucket list too. Now finally what would you like to have achieved by this time next year?

I would love to have had a successful tour and debut album, they’re my dreams. By this time in two years I would love to have done an arena tour!

We like this, an ambitious and down to earth girl. Thank you for talking to us Scarlett, see you soon!

My pleasure!

How I created my DPS for the second submission

The first thing I had to do to start my double page spread was choose the images I was going to use. My second double page spread idea consisted of using four different images on one half of the page and adding the text at the other side of the page.

These are the four images I chose to use:

This image was the other big contender to be used as my front cover image

I like this image but I feel it was very posed so it was better to be used on the double page spread

This is a lovely image but the arm took up too much of the image to work on the front cover. Once I'd cut the image out and scaled it on my double page spread, I think it works well.

This is my least favourite image of the four but I think it looks nice on the double page spread once I had changed the brightness and got rid of a lot of the orange/yellow background.

Firstly I opened the first image on PhotoShop. I manipulated the images on separate pages which made it easier to then put them all onto one page at the end and scale them.

The first thing I did to the image was duplicate it so if I didn't like what I had done to the image I still had an original copy. I then used the "quick selection tool" to select all of Evie and I then inverted the selection so I could delete the background of the image.

After cutting Evie out I wasn't happy with her hair. I looked too fake and there were certain bits of the background still left in between thin strands of hair so I used the "paint brush" tool and the "colour picker" tool to lighly paint in bits of her hair and match up the colour. I made sure the paint brust was very soft which meant the new hair didn't look too fake and once zoomed out it blended in nicely.

The next thing I had to do was clear up her skin. I did this by using the "spot healing brush tool" which you click over an imperfection and it makes it the skin colour of the rest of the image like it was never there. I had to do this over a few spots on her chin, moles on her arms and one strand of eye brow which looked out of place. You can't tell any of that was there now I have worked on it.

I then used the "clone stamp tool" which is similar to the "spot healing brush tool" as it gets rid of imperfections. I used this tool on the top she was wearing. As you can see on the image above there was a strand of thread that was clear to see when the image was zoomed out. The top also didn't look straight so I was able to fix that with this tool.

One tool that I found especially useful was the "adjustments" tool which allowed me to change things such a the colour balance, levels, brightness and curves in the image. These tools allowed me to change the images appearance a lot. I tried to make the image look less orange and a more natural colour.

Following all of this extra work I put into the image, I blurred the edges of the whole image so it blended into a background more. This was the final step I took on the photo before I uploaded all four images onto one PhotoShop page.

This is how all of the images looked when I first put them all onto one PhotoShop page. I was then able to manipulate the images again using the "adjustments" tool so that they all looked the same colour or as close to this as possible. The image of Evie with her arm up still looks lighter than the other images but that is something I have to accept because there is less shadow on that image, and nothing I can do about it.





This is how the images looked when they were set up on the page properly after I had scaled them down and put them in their own boxes. Overall I like the layout of this double page spread so far but I definitely need to incorporate colour onto the page which could be difficult with this layout. I am going to use the images I have manipulated again to see if I can create a better product. This could also be an odd design because it is for a solo artist, designs like this would usually be used for a band.

This is how I started my next attempt at a double page spread. I just decided to mess around with the paint brush and then actually ended up using this as my final design. The box that is on show in this screen shot is where you choose the size of your brush on PhotoShop. I used the biggest brush that there is and set the hardness so it was very low which meant the colour would be light. 

I decided to use this turquoise colour because I thought it was a neutral colour for both genders. This shows how faint the colour was but I liked it!

Once I had covered the whole page in the turquoise colour I decided it needed more colour. I then used blobs of the same pink I have used on the front cover and contents page for continuity and randomly placed them across the page. The paint brush was also large and soft for this. 

I then decided to use some smaller white circles to finish the background off. I think the white circles made it look slightly Christmassy and it also broke up the colour a little bit, following continuity of the texts boxes I would create later. 

This again shows how I chose the size of the paint brush and and the hardness of it. I then placed the centre line on the page so that I knew where one page would end and the other would begin. This was important to do before I started adding anything else to the page so that none of the images or text were only on half a page. 

I then copied the image of Evie off my other double page spread so that it was already manipulated and I was happy with it already. This saved me a lot of extra time. 

I then scaled my image on the page. I decided to keep her this size because her head went off the page on most double page spreads like this and also because only a small bit of her arm went onto the next page. This isn't that important because it isn't an important feature of her. 

I then created a banner at the top of the page saying that this was an exclusive interview with the artist. I later changed the colour of the word exclusive to red as this is a conventional colour to used in music magazines and it makes it stand out on the page which is important. 

I also decided to change the brightness contrast of Evie too. After looking at the image for a while whilst doing the rest of the work I thought she looked a bit too dark so I changed this level slightly. 

It was then time to create the columns I was going to put my text in. I turned off the other images on the page  so I could just focus on making everything equal. I used the shapes bar to create one rectangle which I sized up and then made a copy of. Once I had lined them up together, I then used the eraser tool on full hardness to cut out a circle in the middle which I would later add a pull quote to. 

I then used the same system as before and copied the rectangular image and then lined it up with the others to make a third text column. 

I then put Evie back on the page to see how she fit with the columns. I didn't have to do anything to change the image and the columns. I liked the fact her arm would mean i had to shape the text. It would give the finished product more edge.

The next thing I did was read the text through again to find a pull quote that I could use. I then used the text tool to type this into the cirlce I had created and then scaled it to the size that I wanted.

I then created an icon or flash containing the words "cover story" indicating that this is what was on the cover. This is a common feature of other pop magazines.

Page numbers were a small matter I had to deal with. I decided to make them white with black writing so that it was continuous with the rest of the page, as I had used white text boxes for the article.

I then created a caption indicating where the image is from

This is how leading paragraphs are presented in pop magazines. I decided to follow the same trend but I made the name of my act stand out by changing the colour of the text to a purple which I would then use for other bits of text on the page. I also didn't use a drop cap and just stuck to capitals as well because drop caps are very rarely features of pop magazines.

I then created the headline of the page which is slightly different in pop magazines, they just use another pull quote and enlarge it which is what I did. This is how I rotated the text once I had created it and changed the colour of the text to purple. 

This is how the page looked when I first imported the finished image into Microsoft Publisher. The text I had created was underneath the image. 

I used the send backwards tools to make the writing appear again section by section and I was then able to adjust the text if I needed to.

This is how the my media text looked at the end of the process as I was changing the colour of the Poparazzi journalists questions to make them stand out from the rest of the text, again using purple so it was continuous. 

Editing Ed Sheeran image

I decided that I wanted to use an image of Ed Sheeran on my front cover that I took when I went to see him at Hull Ice Arena in November 2012. These are the steps I took to get the image onto my front cover.

This is how my page looked when I first uploaded the image onto PhotoShop. Before I did anything with the picture I duplicated the image and then turned off the background image so that I was able to see when I had deleted the top layer. This is because when the background layer is switched off there is a grey squared background.

I then used the rectangular marquee tool to select the part of the image I wanted to. I then went into the "select" option at the top of the screen and selected the "inverse" option. This meant I would be able to delete the bit of the image that I didn't want and I would be left with the part that I did want.

Once I had pressed "delete" on the keyboard I then used the "invert" option again so that my image was the only thing selected. This allowed me to then copy and paste the image that was selected into the PhotShop window that was already open which was my front cover.

This is how the image appeared originally on my PhotoShop front cover. The aim of having this image on my cover is to entice readers but not use it as the main image. This meant the image had to be smaller and in the first third of the magazine cover.

To make the image smaller I went to the top of the screen into "edit", "transform" and then "scale" which allows you to make the image whatever size you want.

Looking at the image I didn't think the colours looked very good so I went into "image" at the top of the screen and the "adjustments" and this allowed me to change the settings in the image.

The levels of the image is one example of something I changed in the image. This made the image look darker in certain areas or the image and it enhanced brighter colours.

Overall I am very happy with the outcome of the Ed Sheeran image. I think I cut it in the right place, the colours look good and even though it is not the best image, the manipulation I have done on it and the size makes it look good.

New images I shot in the green room

These are just a selection of some of the new images I took to improve my media texts. I took 68 new images all together. Some of them I couldn't use because of shadow, some I didn't used because I didn't like them and then it was just a case of trying to choose my favorites.