double page spread

On this page you will be able to view my work on developing my double page spread, including research, photography, and my progressive adaptations of my final double page spread.

Here's the first of my double page analyses

The article is written in quite an informal style despite the absence of slang you would usually expect from such an article. The reason I believe this is because it's quite intelligent yet 'chatty', it fits a comfortable conversational style rather than that of a factual news reading.
It uses a wide vocabulary, for example with the use of words like "elated" in the place of more commonly used language, this gives the impression of an intelligent, well educated article allowing the audience to trust what they are reading because the article gives the impression that they have obtained this information from a reliable source.
The layout of text forms a subtle Q&A, effortlessly linking the interviewee's responses with a following description and explanation.

The colour scheme follows a comfortable contrast of black and white images and text, broken up with orange, boldly highlighted headings and sub-headings, this helps identify the different sections of text making it easier for the reader to follow.

The image is a black and white mid-shot of the two band members who are situated in front of a wall, which provides an open space therefore allowing the text to be placed in front of the image without being obstructed by other focus points in the background.
In the image the background shows a hand print on the wall, this implies a more laid back, informal location for the image and in turn informal implications in the context of the article.



Here's the second double page analysis



This article uses a similar style of question and answer format, with the interviewer asking questions, then giving a detailed analysis of the band's response.
The text is written with an informal, audience relate-able standard, information is presented in a general 'chatty' yet collected and intelligent manner that creates an air of reliability and trust in the validity of the presented information.
The colour scheme follows a set of white, blue and black this sets a calming, but solid tone to the text, allowing it to be both bold and casual, this has been done in order to make the article more accessible and easy to read for its target audience.

The layout is suitable to the article's format, i.e. it's split up into questions and answers which are set out across the page in several, separate easy to read columns.Each column or section is split by its relevant sub-heading that explains the questions asked and the nature of the band's response, this gives the reader every detailed part of the interview with thoughts and feelings which overall help to describe the scenario.

To break up and space out the text there are two images, you may think that a good idea would be to include more images, however this is irrelevant, the primary focus of the article is the band, the pictures present each member of the band, nothing more nothing less.This keeps things simple so that the reader does not become confused or misdirected, keeping things in a simple flowing layout allows for easy, 'no-hassle' reading.
Large images denote importance and high stature giving the band immediate attention and demanding focus from the reader.




Here is the third analysis

This article is quite different from the others, it's a lot more casual and laid back, much more informal than other articles. This is mainly visible in the layout, rather than being basic it includes much more content than you would expect.
For a start it includes two separate articles,if not more, one talking about the main feature the other talks about its relevance to other situations and how similar people work through similar situations.
The article's subject is different as well, rather than being mostly made up of questions and answers, it focuses solely on the band's career their current and past achievements and their plans for the future, because of this varied subject the text is spaced out rather a lot more with text boxes dotted around the page. For example in the bottom left corner is a box featuring 'need to know' information it goes slightly off topic from the main article in order to give a short sum-up of important background information that's relevant to understanding the story. 
This does give an interesting perspective for the target audience, by doing so it introduces more readers to the subject so you don't have to have any prior knowledge of the band because all you need to know is given to you in an easy to follow quick summary.

Features I can include in my own work...

Firstly there's the layout, a lot of articles include a lot of content splayed out across the page, this has its good and bad points, for example it means more reading and more to look at which ultimately results in the reader becoming engrossed in one article for a long period of time, giving their full undivided attention. The down side to this is it can frustrate the reader, too much to choose from and too much to read can just confuse people rather than keeping their interest. You need to keep things short and snappy where possible, fanning things out with too much detail distracts readers from the main focus. This is why having a basic layout makes matters better, keeping it simple allows for a better flow and lets the reader focus on one thing at a time.

The way to do this is to lay out the text in columns, while making sure to break up paragraphs into sections with easily noticeable sub-headings as well as the occasional picture/image, or an alternative to adding pictures separately is to have a main image used as the page background but if you do this you need to make sure the image has blank spots which can later be used as the space to place text and headings during editing.

Dividing parts up, we'll now take a look at colour scheme. The colour scheme needs to be consistent, images need to share similar colours with the text, background, headings and all other page content. To make sure this happens colours either need to be carefully picked before taking the image(s) or can later on be added during the editing phase, but this will need the aid of photo-shop computer software, something to bare in mind when approaching the stages of designing my double page spread.

The articles content is of great importance, it needs to feature relevant information with interesting and compelling details that keep the readers entertained throughout, it can't at any point stray from focus, if the story requires some background knowledge that perhaps readers haven't heard of, I will need to apply a small, sharp, quick explanation or summary of important details, and then swiftly return to the main subject matter, this will mean readers won't become confused and all the while keeping their attention.

Creating my own double page spread

To start making the double page article I had to first come up with a Q&A transcript and here it is as you can see below.

Below you can see my main article for the double page spread which I shaped around my Q&A, unfortunately because of the double page size limit I had to shorten the amount of questions I put in the final article.

I began with a small introductory section, talking about the 'band' and their previous accomplishments such as last album, latest releases, recent appearances/actions etc.

the main bulk of the article then is the interview about similar subjects but asking opinions of the  band members on their thoughts and feelings.

Each section of the article is broken up into separate pieces by sub-headings, this cuts it into small easy to read parts, something  I thought was worth transferring from what I had found in my research. I will adjust and tweak the article while adding it to the real double page spread, in order to make it look more consistent with the layout, style and colour scheme.

Then I began to think about colour scheme, which colours worked well together what would look good in an article and how it would stack up to the images, what would I have to change etc. 



From these mocked up options, I created, I decided the best colour pallet to go with was no.1 the first set in the list. This is because these colours are quite vivid in comparison to the others, a deep impact style colour ,as opposed to the more dull colours, it makes more of an impact on the audience it's a lot more eye catching to have a set of colours with such a deep and varied contrast value, making it in my opinion the best choice by far.

Thirdly, on the agenda for designing, the layout needed to be picked, so again similarly to the process of picking the colour I chose  to mock up some design ideas for the layout.

When doing this I thought it may be a good idea to ask the opinions of my focus group as well, just to see what they thought was the best and why, here are some of their thoughts.

A few liked the first design idea however they thought that it might not work to its desired effect, they explained that this is because the heading sits in-front of the image and their concern was that certain parts of the image may obstruct the text maybe distorting it, making it harder to read, maybe a little confusing for most readers.

This layout seemed a little better to them, they thought that it was laid out a lot more neatly making it considerably easier to read, kept the text flowing, easy to follow. However another concern raised was that there are not many images and they are far too spaced out, it doesn't have a natural effect, it looks too forced. They suggested that maybe a few more photos or images might make a lot of difference.

So as per their request I went away and took the best bits and suggestions and created this third design, which my focus group decided was the perfect one, it combines a neat yet basic design that gives a more professional effect.

However when putting together the real thing I found that the text didn't quite fit to this specific layout, and so I began to change the design and positioning of certain content in order to make room for others, and the result is the following.

This new layout design now accommodates for more images, as suggested by the focus group. The heading will be given a background colour so that the image that sits behind it doesn't obstruct the text, images down the side of the page give explanation when relating to text, this will help the audience visualise certain scenarios. The main article follows on at the top of the second page making for a more even flow.

Now that I have some of the main features worked out I began to put them together and so I have managed to create a  template of this final double page spread, as you can see below.

double page spread draft

You can see the new layout I implemented with the text clustered to specific areas of the pages, with extra information highlighted in text boxes at the base of the second page. The main image  is laid out behind the title and other smaller ones dotted around both pages. heading at the top left of the first page easily the first thing that the reader will notice it's bold, highlighted with a separate background colour.

Now that the preview version was finished it allowed me to relate things like colour scheme and size ratios to my photography in collecting the images for my double page spread.

Images

After taking several images I narrowed it down to the best in terms of quality and lighting etc. and began to edit them making them more suitable for later use on the real thing.

picking the best looking images still left me with more than I needed however and so this editing stages would have to be the clincher for selecting the right pictures.

All have been edited to make them look sharper and more clearer, some not all have had their colours changed this is to give a more predominant colour scheme making some images seem more important, this makes them stand out from the others.

Some images were also retouched for example:

In this picture I re-touched several things to make it look more natural just to generally make it look a little more appealing, just so that there's not anything distracting in the image giving it an overall better effect and appearance.

Final Double Page Spread

Here is the finalised version of my double page spread, again with small changes to the layout which were made to make it neater more tidy and well organised, this keeps it looking much more professional.
The colour scheme is consistent throughout using solid bright tones in text, background and headings while maintaining a more calm, faded tone in the images.