Mock Ups and Mock Up Analysis

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MOCK UPS AND ANALYSIS

Transcript of Mock Ups and Mock Up Analysis

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MOCK UPS AND ANALYSIS

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MOCK UP COVER PAGE ANALYSIS

I started off by finding a photo on www.tumblr.com that I thought would be suitable for my front cover. I will aim to imitate this photo when taking photographs for my real front cover. I chose this one because it was aesthetically pleasing to me, it had a fairly low number of colours (fitting with the conventions of my chosen genre), and had a large amount of empty space at the top of the image that would be suitable for placing the masthead.

Despite being nearly exactly what I wanted in style, the background colour of the image did not fit with the chosen colour scheme for this issue of my magazine. I removed the background colour by using the Magic Wand tool in Adobe Fireworks CS6 to select and delete the majority of the background, then zooming in to 800% on the image and recolouring individual pixels to my chosen background colour using the Replace Colour tool in Adobe Fireworks CS6 around the more detailed areas of the image (such as the hair) that the Magic Wand tool could not select.

Once I had removed and recoloured the background, I could replace it with my chosen colour. I chose to use blue, as it will feature in the colour scheme throughout this issue of the magazine. It also compliments a lot of colours, which allowed me to experiment with different colours for the masthead and other text on the front cover.

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MOCK UP COVER PAGE ANALYSIS

I experimented with a variety of colours for my masthead before settling with white. Firstly I tried red, however I found it uneasy on the eye and that it created an almost strobe-like effect. This led me to explore pastel colours, with the hope of avoiding this effect with other colours. Firstly I tried pastel pink, as it is close to blue on the colour wheel and therefore likely to compliment it. While I liked this colour for the masthead, I didn’t like it for the lower text strip as it blended in with the colours on the model’s t-shirt and made it difficult to distinguish. Following this, I decided to go the opposite direction on the colour wheel and try a contrasting pastel yellow. While I also quite liked these colours next to each other, I was concerned that it didn’t quite stand out and contrast enough to be suitable for a masthead. This led me to try block shades, and I first tried black. While this obviously did stand out against the blue, pink and green it was placed against, I felt that a colour on the opposite end of the spectrum may be bettersuited for my cover. When I tried white I found it was my favourite of all the colours I tried, and it really stood out against all the colours it was placedagainst and made them pop. The colour appeared to tie the cover togetheras a whole, and hence why I chose it for the final version of my mock up.

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All the other features (or lack thereof) were inspired by what I discovered in my market research, and adhered to my own aesthetic preferences as I discovered in my audience research that these artistic preferences were favoured by a vast majority of my target audience. When creating this cover I was inspired heavily by the artistic style of my personal favourite music magazine, BEAT (example covers pictured below). This magazine also features a large, singular word masthead (that also has one syllable, like many other magazines in my chosen genre), very little text on the front cover (if any) and a basic colour palette, often featuring one person against a plain (or fairly plain) background.

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MOCK UP CONTENTS PAGE ANALYSIS

For my contents page I chose to use a very simplistic two-colour colour scheme, made up of sky blue (#5bb8e6) and black. I chose this shade of blue to match the colour on the cover, to show a continuation of house style throughout the magazine. My decision have a majority of black text highlighted by a single colour was inspired by the contents page of Loud and Quiet magazine pictured below. This style was very aesthetically pleasing, and looked even better in the physical copy which led me to draw influence from its artistic style. However, I did not particularly like the lack of images on the Loud and Quiet contents page and decided to add a selection of images to add artistic variation and to keep the reader interested. I chose to place my largest, main image in the top right hand corner of the page, so that anyone flicking through would notice the image immediately and their eye would be drawn to it. My decision to compress the rest of the images into one block allows my contents page to adhere to the minimalistic style of the rest of the magazine, and to correspond visually to the text boxes, which are arranged into two columns in opposite corners of the page. It creates a very easy to follow flow of text around the images, and draws the reader’s eye deliberately in a quite linear fashion.

Loud and Quiet cover

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MOCK UP CONTENTS PAGE ANALYSIS

This was the first and most basic stage of my contents page design. I knew that I wanted to have at least two images on the cover, and at least two columns of text, both in opposing corners. I also knew that I wanted to have my ‘Contents’ title in the top left corner rather than central on the page or filling the entire top strip, to create white space fitting in with the minimalist style of the magazine.

After looking at the previous design stage, I decided that I wanted too include more white space on the page. I achieved this by moving the top right image away from the text boxes and further into the corner. This created a more prominent divide between the features of the page, and made the page appear more minimalistic.

Following the previous design stage, I decided to include even more white space into the design of my contents page. I achieved this by decreasing the size of the bottom column of text, then moving it closer into the image to create an area of white space in the bottom right hand corner to balance out the large image in the top right corner. I also filled the text boxes with lorem ipsum text so simulate how the boxes would look with text inside them.

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MOCK UP CONTENTS PAGE ANALYSIS

I then added my chosen image (lifted from blog.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/ as a simulation of what my real image will look like). I added a small caption box underneath this image, as well as adding the page number in a small text box in the bottom right hand corner of the page. This does not compromise the effectiveness of the area of white space I created, it instead highlights and punctuates it.

Rather than having one large image, I chose to use many images (all condensed into one block, lifted from blog.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/ as simulations of what my images would hopefully look like). I chose to do this as it fairly artistically unconventional, and would allow me to experiment largely with different settings, models and compositions in my photos, and demonstrate to the examiner that I was capable of taking a wide variety of types of photograph. It would also allow me to exceed the bare minimum number of photos stated in the design criteria.

This was the end product for my contents page analysis. I chose to use variations of the same font (basic Arial) to create an aesthetically pleasing, minimalistic page that ties together well and follows a clear house style.

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MOCK UP DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD ANALYSISFor my double page spread, I covered the whole left hand page with a large image and chose to place all my text on the right hand page. I split the text conventionally into 4 columns, creating an easy to follow flow of text. However, this amount of text can look blocky and intimidating to the casual reader so would ideally be split into definite paragraphs. I chose to include a smaller image on the bottom right hand side of the right hand page, to split up the large amount of text and to grab the reader’s eye as the are flicking through. I included another smaller image of the band’s most recently released album, which adds visual variation to the page and breaks up the text in the bottom left hand corner. Unconventionally, I placed the page number in he top right corner of the right hand page. This was to allow the space towards the bottom of the page to be used to maximum efficiency. I have only used one font across he entirety of my double page spread, to add to the minimalistic design style of the pages. Below and on the following slides I will show the development of my double page spread design from the earliest stages:

This was the first, most basic stage of design. Right from the outset I knew that I wanted to have the left hand page full occupied by an image. I knew that I wanted to have the headline in its own space at he top of the page, aligned to the left. I was undecided between three and four columns of text, but decided on four initially to allow for more flexibility of where the text can go. This worked heavily in my advantage when I decided to add the images to the bottom of the page at a later stage.

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MOCK UP DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD ANALYSIS

At this stage in design I had chosen which image I wanted to use. Although this image is very aesthetically pleasing, it was slightly the wrong shape to fill the space and thus has become slightly distorted. When taking my own photographs, I will have to take care with the composition to ensure that this can be avoided in the future. Another design change I made at this stage was adding an underlined introduction below the headline, that would be in the same font but smaller in size, non-bold and underlined. These differences, teamed with the proximity of the introduction to the headline, would show a relationship between the two page features and work in conjunction to effectively introduce the article to the reader, but be different enough so that the introduction does not just look like an extension of the headline. At this point I had begun considering adding an image to the right hand page, to add visual variation and break up the large blocks of text.

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MOCK UP DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD ANALYSIS

At this stage I had decided that there was definitely too much block text on he right hand page, and it would be hard to gain and keep a casual reader’s interest with such a solid amount of text on one page. I then decided to add a small picture to the bottom right hand corner to break up the last column of text, and to catch the eye of any readers who may just be flicking through the magazine.

However, I decided that the text still looked too blocky, and there wasn’t as much white space as I wanted on the page. This led to me resizing the text columns so they were shorter, and adding another smaller image into the bottom left hand corner. This created more white space and definitely got rid of a lot of the block text, which could intimidate a reader (as well as being visually displeasing).

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MOCK UP DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD ANALYSIS

After reaching the previous stage of design, I was happy with the general layout of the pages and began padding it out with more images and an appropriate headline and introduction. I did not write an article as it was only a mock up and felt my time would be better spent on other tasks, instead filling the text box with lorem ipsum text. I imitated he headline and introduction when captioning the images, as it would tie the page together and show a continuation of the house style. These are the same reasons I chose to have the body copy in the same font as the headline and introduction, and also in italics which is relatively unconventional. Due to the bottom of the page I had to place the page number at the top of the page, which is also fairly unconventional. However, it allowed me to maximise the efficiency of the space on the page and does no compromise the effectiveness of the white space at the top of the page.