Design Process

Today I have first started on the design element of our front covers properly, after the previous attempt of designing a magazine title a few days ago. I kept the magazine Masthead exactly how it was due to the simplicity yet effectiveness of the Masthead. The first thing I noticed about the simialarities between magazines was that they all had the Masthead slightly below the top with a Slogan. I also noticed that it trended that the image was displayed above the Masthead to impose a feeling of three dimensions, I wanted to replicate this design style on my own work. From this point I gradually created a flash at the top left image and re-arranged the page to make sure my central image would fit. I changed the masthead as it looked too simplistic and because of this I altered it with some lighting effects and put two lines through it to connote a feeling of opression to match the themes of insecurity and paranoia in my film. I personally thought it suited it better and decided to change it to this style format.

 

I moved on to my second project and aimed for a more Art Deco style to bring out the abstract from the film similar to the stylings of "A Clockwork Orange". I started with my Masthead, as this to me is the most important feature on a magazine cover and at the same time sets the colour scheme. With this I wanted a toned down Red, Monochrome style. From this point I realised that the Masthead looked too plain for my liking so I edited it so that it was on a slant and slightly off skew. This was it created an eye catching double Masthead with both the title of the magazine and the title of the Central Image. After this I designed the articles to fit with the same sort of style by designing them off skew and at the bottom design a banner that matched the same design scheme as usual Empire magazine. This design appealed to me the most at the time but because of my 3rd and final design idea I am swaying more towards the strip looking Masthead.








This was my final design and probably my most intuitive Masthead up to yet. I began to use the same Empire title by highlighting it with the magic wand tool but when it began to painting it a colour I decided that just colouring a straight colour was a mistake and when I began to paint it I loved the look of just painting some of it and leaving the other sections blank to create a shattered like shape and to follow the design theme of my film. I still replicated the same design as Empire itself so that it didnt look unprofessional at the same time. After a look at this Empire cover I noticed two problems, the first being the featured article looked quite small and plain. This problem was solved on my second version. I changed the article so that it was across the full page and much longer in width. Instantly that small tweak made it look much more exciting and professional.The biggest problem that I realised and had to add to all of my magazine articles was the coulour palette tester at the top left and right of the gutter so that I could identify if it was printing correctly. I also realised I had been missing out on a serial code on all of my covers which was at a 90 degree angle on all empire magazines so later I had to replicate this design element to make it look professional.

This was my first attempt at a movie Poster and possibly my favourite piece of work up to yet. I wanted to design it so that it had the simplicity of the trainspotting poster and at the same time retained its artsy style much like "A clockwork Oranges" infamous poster. This made it quite tricky as it had a mesh of two design styles but after some tweaking and an (at first) unprofessional looking poster with the title at the bottom of the page. I rectified this by replicating the same effect I used with my 2nd Balance magazine. This was to create a banner of a block contrasting colour and put it at the very top of the page. I did however change this design method slightly by making it at an exact horizontal angle. On top of this I used a colour splashed effect to the main image so that the scales popped from the image and created a contrasting effect. I wanted to use the colour red to match the same ongoing theme of "Sin-City" because I loved the way it looked. I liked the block look that the white line created, this made it look much more effective and less plain. I liked this effect with the image.

After I had finished my movie magazine I realised that my image suited the magazine cover better instead of the movie poster so I decided that I would use it on that and because of that change my inital movie poster Central image. For this I decided to take on of the images from the range of shots I took whilst filming and decided to stick with the theme of monchrome with a colour splash of red to connote a feeling of violence, panic, and anger so that the films themes would be visible from just the poster, I also decided to add a tagline like the bottom of "No country for old men". I decided to call it "Life and death, is only a decision away".




















This was my final design of the front cover and the one that I think I can say I like the most is the red highlights on the scales, it adds an eyecatching effect to the rest of the magazine and makes the scales "pop" from the monotony of the sepia toned image. I quite liked this image as it reflected the feel of the short film I made. I like the art deco style of the words as it felt a lot more artsy than the usual masthead of an Empire magazine and I quite like the way it challeneged industry standards. I followed the industry development standards such as the printing colour palette at the top of the image along with the gutter margins on every side so it doesnt create problems with the printers when creating my magazine. I also included the bar code at the bottom left and remained with the same issue number and price at the top left. When I first edited my image

When I was designing my films logo I took a few design decisions into account. I made sure that the image was able to be used with a 3d Bump Map. This meant that I wanted to keep it a minimalistic black back ground with text in white. I realised that when I put this as a logo, although it rendered well, it looked too minimalistic as a general logo. Because of this I decided that the text didnt look good conjoined top to bottom.









I decided to edit this slightly so it had a line through the Centre. It create a central horizontal devision to split the image into thirds. I liked this effect as it made the image look tidier. I also liked the way that the image was trimmed on the left and right of the image so the shape became much more tight

This was my final design and although I have used the lens flare effect quite a bit in my media work I think that in this logo it is the most appropriate of all as the light connotes fame and movie stardom and it relates to the title of the company. I liked the way that the background was the only effected layer that had the lens flair effect. I did this intentionally as when I applied a lens flare to a white background it became too bright.

This was my shooting schedule to keep me on task and avoid the problem of continuity errors. My main problem was mantaining the weather.