Magazine Review: Making of the Review

To make my poster I used the programme InDesign as this is a programme often used by professionals when creating magazine pages. I also used my mock up design as a base to create my double page spread.

First Draft:
I used the image below as the background for my double page spread. I wanted to use one large, bold image for the article as I wanted it to be eye-catching and I thought this would be the best way to achieve this as opposed to using multiple smaller images. I used the image of the protagonist running in front of a sunset as it reflects the happy, nostalgic tone of the short film.

I adopted a black and white theme for the text on the article as I wanted the background image to be the most colourful segment of the article. I felt this colour scheme looked the most professional. I added black and white boxes to the background of text to make it stand out from the background. I also altered the opacity of the boxes so the background image was slightly visible beneath, this made them less harsh against the background. For my first draft I added elements such as a star rating from cosmopolitan magazine, the article itself, quotes from the directors, awards the film has won, a review, a summary of doubled page spread for example 'an exclusive look at the new Scanhouse production', a review page tag, film release date, page numbers, and a webpage address. These were elements I had learned about whilst researching magazine reviews. I also downloaded fonts from the website 'Da Font' to use for the quote used as the title of the article as I wanted an interesting font to catch the eye of the reader. 

Second Draft:

However upon reflection of my design and after speaking with teachers and a few peers I realised my magazine design had a few flaws and therefore I corrected these whilst creating my second draft. The image below displays my second draft. One change I made for my second draft is I moved the background image to fit the whole page as previously I had placed it to fit within the trim/bleed lines. This means that the image will fit the entire page and not leave a white border around it. I also then extended all the black background boxes to go past the trim/bleed lines, this gave the double page spread a more professional appearance. I also changed the text on the left hand page of the double page spread as this was previously a star rating from the Cosmopolitan magazine, however upon reflection I realised this was not a convention of a magazine review, therefore I changed this to 'Jessica Leigh takes an exclusive look at the new Scanhouse production', this therefore tells the reader what the article is about. I also made it a different don't to make it stand out. I also moved the web address to the bottom of the page and made it smaller. I also moved the star rating to below the title of the article, this implies that the star rating is from the magazine itself instead of it being a quote. I also moved the film release date to the bottom of the white background box. 

Third Draft:

After finishing my second draft of my magazine review both my teacher and I agreed that the double page spread would look more professional if the silhouette of the protagonist running was made slightly darker. This would create a larger contrast between the bright background and her silhouette. Therefore I used the programme Photoshop to do this. 

I then replaced this image with the original background image straight from InDesign and therefore finished my final draft.