Looking at an alternative design

20/04/17

Now with what I have got so far with my double page spreads, I’m pleased with most the content on there, but I may need to look at putting more content in. Seeing that I have just done a few photography trips with this project in mind, I will be looking at some new content to fill up the pages if necessary.

First of all i wanted to make the first page look a little tidier design wise. I used a method that I learnt about at work experience using the path finder tool and the create outlines tool for the large W. Here is my process.

I felt that the next page didn’t really need much editing so I have left it for the time being.

Moving onto the next spread I went on to completely redesigning it to make it look more like the style used within Creative Review.

Here you can see that already the layout has changed – the column to the right is space for a photograph and I have looked through some I had taken from Berling Gap. I chose this photo as I wanted the page to relate to it and the other content to flow with it with similar colours.

So now it’s time to look at some more content to fill this page with as that at least one of the spreads should be a little meaty.

I thought this way was the best way to balance out this spread as that three small ones will make up for that one long one. Like I mentioned earlier I wanted the other photos to link in colour with the main photo. I think, with the shots I chose, are smartly contrasted to match the main photo as they’re taken from a different day and location yet keep consistent to the main colours.

I have placed placeholder text underneath each photo and will fill them soon with rich text. I used a faint line to divide the photos from the text. You may have also noticed that I have changed the font to Helvetica as that it is a lot easier to read and works very well with the content because of the fact that it keeps the pages looking clean and tidy.

Though I used tools within inDesign to make the spaces even I just wanted to double check – as you can see I created a rectangle in between two of them and checked to see if it was the same the other end.

I will go into a further post to discuss the changes of the last page and we will explore the new look of the whole file.

Page layouts in Adobe InDesign

09/11/15

Right so, in order to complete this assignment I have to get to grips with a software I’ve never used before known as Adobe InDesign. I’ve heard great things with the app and I’m glad that I am going to be getting a good experience with it. Anyway moving on to testing it out, I managed to create a good-looking page layout for my first ever try, looking like this.

*Simply press W on the keypad to see the preview.*

In order to have gone to this stage I had to use a few techniques and tackle the program to find out what I what. Along the way I did have some help from my lecturer which was a relief. Firstly given all the page dimensions I had to create a new file and input them in, with this one the pages where going to be 410mm to 410mm, this was to get use to around the same size as the Creative Review issues. Although I only started with one page I then had to add two A-master pages from the page panel located on the right hand side of the user interface. All i had to do was drag and drop two of the blank squares to the section bellow.

Next i had to input an image from my gallery from a previous assignment I had done, I had chosen an image that would fit a two page spread but I may want to consider not to in the actual final project but I will experiment on that. The image bellow shows how I did it this step.

Though the image i found looked horrendous quality wise, this is due to the fact that I hadn’t changed this option shown in this screenshot. Usually the application puts it to Typical display by default.

Different to both Photoshop and illustrator, in order to resize the image I had to hold down the cmd button (on Mac) and shift to do so equally, or just the cmd button if I wasn’t going to worry about pixelation. If I wanted to get rid of some of the sky in which I did, I didn’t have to hold down any button, all I had to do was simply drag the side over the bit I didn’t want.

Moving forward I had to input some text which was pretty simple and straight forward, the same as how you do so in many of Adobe’s other applications. I also wanted to change the colour of the font so I decided to use the eyedropper tool to catch a colour from the background image as shown in the picture below.

I then had to place some content within the text boxes that I set up during the page setup process. In many cases in the real world you usually will get left with no text paragraphs to place into your piece, so to see what it looks like with some paragraphs in it you silly have to select the text box and select the option under the Type tab in the image below.

By copying and pasting the content within the text file making it over fill i could then simply click this little box highlighted in red,

I could hold shift and click in just one of the other text boxes thus filling all text boxes that are empty with the over filled content from the one which showed the little icon option.

What I have done here is I’ve got the pen tool and just really quickly sketched a shape over the building in the background, this is because I don’t want the text to collide with the building because it would be hard to read. when the shape is selected, make sure it has no fill and no outline so it’s an invisible shape that won’t be seen in the published form, select this option at the top in the tool bar.

I chose to change the colour of the content and make the first letter of the alphabet big and drop roughly half way down the paragraph. to do so I ran through these simple steps. First select I selected the paragraph then went to this option.

Once prompted it brought up this new window, from here I had to select what is shown below.

From the new menu it gave me after that, I got to choose how many characters I wanted to do it to, how many lines I’d like it to drop and a few other complex options.

And there it is, that is how I created my first page layout! I have yet to experiment with page numbers within the master pages but I will explain how I do this as soon as I learn to! I believe this has been great practice to get to grips with this new application and will benefit me without a doubt when it comes to transferring my ideas in on to software.