Sunday 6 May 2012

Magazine Printed

Test Print

The fist copy of my magazine I had decided to get test printed in case there was any problems with printing, or anything that I had go wrong. When I went to the printers, I checked through this copy and realised that I had to make a few changes.
Firstly, I created seperator pages so that the shoots didnt get lost within each other and there was a clear definition of each one. These pages were gradients of colour that related to the colours in the shoot. Unfortunatley, as I had printed on unglossed paper and the colours were quite light for the printers to pick up, the pages came out with printer lines. I had to resave the images darker and more saturated so thtat the printer would be able to pick up the colours.
Secondly, one of the pages I had forgotten to fill in the text boxes with writing which was relevant to that tutorial. Another issue was that for the captions I have chosen size 6 font and on w few of them i chose white for the font colour. This, as some of the backgrounds came out lighter, meant that the text wasn's visible, so I had to change that. I went through every single page in my magazine on InDesign and adjusted everything.

Final Prints

As these small problems took such a long time to change and the issues I was having previously, I was able to get 4 copies printed and bound before the bank holiday weekend, which was perfect as I only need one to submit and a few others just in case anything happens to the others. I had to decrese the amount of copies I wanted too because of financial issues, but this proved to be fine.
15 copies perfect bound for £140
These copies came out fine apart from a few small hiccups.
The pastel shoot; when editing the magazine again for reprinting, I had redited quite a few of the shoots too because of the prointing quality. Some of the images came out over exposed and saturated colours. I am assuming this is due to the type of paper which makes the ink appear more saturated and darker in comparison to on the screen. Even though I redited these images, they still came out over saturated and darker than they looked on screen, which was really disappointing. I had the same problem with the neon, yellow and arabian shoots.
The quality of the printing does not do the images justice. Another reason why I think this has happened because I chose Laser printing instead of Lithoprinting because of the cost. If I were to do this again, I would have chosen lithoprinting and dramatcially cut the quantity of zines to maybe 3 or 4. The thing is that if you order more copies it tends to be cheaper, but this usually applies when you are buying in large bulks.
 The credit lines have mostly been hidden into the spine of the book because of the tight binding. I did allow quite a bit of room for this, but it doesn't seem to have been enough! This was a shame too, however if you make sure you open the pages wide enough you can see it perfectly.
In retrospect, looking through my magazine, I am quite disappointed by the layout of some of the pages and feel that I could have done a lot better. I feel that I could have made it look more like  magazine and played around with different ways of laying out the hunts and tips, however this was the formular for most of the shoots and keeps the magazine consistent and simple. It may not show much variety and I hope that the reader doesnt get bored of the same layout and text. I am most pleased with the nail tutorial pages however, I realised that there are a few spelling errors, even though I did proof read the magazine several times but still missed out a few little details.

Online


With the Nail blog running along side my magazine, I have a QR code that directs the reader directly to this blog. I also wanted to incorporate my own work as a stylist onto the magazine and link this to the actual issue of the Zine. Therefore I put a link to my own styling page onto the Nail Blog. This means the reader can gain a full look into my work with also a link on my styling page that takes them to a version of the first issue of San online. The reason I wanted to do this was just in case the printing wasn't exactly what the magazine looked like on screen, the readers have an opportunity too see the images from the shoots at their best.

Wednesday 2 May 2012

End of April to May 3rd

Ombre & Sports Shoots

The advice I had been given on these two location shoots really put my magazine into perspective. At this point I was so busy doing as many shoots as I could for a lot of content within the magazine, I think I started forgetting who my main target audience was and also what the feel of my magazine was. I was told that it was quite youthful and fun and neither of these shoots really conveyed the ethos of my magazine. I took the executive decision and cut all location shoots from my magazine in order to keep consistency flowing throughout. This provided the best option in the long run, as all the studio shots I have done run well and compliment together.

Printers

The quote that was given to me from Indigo Press turned out to be quite expensive and although I had set apart a budget of £250, I couldn't actually afford to spend that much on small amount of copies. I decided to investigate more printing options and found a reasonably priced printers on London Road called Design and Print. They offer student discount as well as good pricing for creating Zines and also provide a large range of papers and stock.

I told them the budget I had in mind and they were able to work around this amount with the stock I had in mind. I chose to have recycled paper because of the texture it has and because I want my zine to have a homemade and illustrated feel to it, as if they are special and only of a limited amount. They were extremely helpful and would ring up the same day for quotes and I was able to get a few test prints before I chose on paper.

The content of my zine was going to be roughly 80-100 pages and when I had gone to the printers to get a test print, they had mentioned that stapling (saddle stitching) was only available for booklets under 68 pages, otherwise the staples would be too small. This meant i had to look at other ways of getting my zine bound. I had to compromise with this issue, because although a zine is generally a thinner saddle stitched book which is a one off and all hand made, I am creating a guide which is more like a magazine than a zine, and the content is much more important than the way it is bound. So the only option was to get my zine perfect bound. This meant that the price would go up from 40p per book to about £3.00 as the pages are printed and glued individually, which has also meant that in order for me to be able to stick within my budget, I had to cut the quantity of copies dramatically.

My final stock is recycled, matte paper which for the cover is 310gsm and inside pages are 160gsm.
The first estimate for 38 copies D&P gave me was £250.00, but I wasn't able to afford that, so I have negotiated down to 25 copies and they have promised it will be under £200.00. Realistically, I only really need minimum of 5 copies, but normally the more copies you buy the cheaper it is in large quantities. Also, it will be handy to have quite a few as I can take them to interviews, put one in my portfolio and give some to people in industry.


I was given a deadline of 30th of April for when y zine had to be in for, but on the day we had encountered a few problems with the set up of the zine and so we had to postpone until the day after. Then on the Tuesday, I had requested for one fully copy to be printed and checked over by myself, before all 25 copies had been printed, in case of error. Luckily I had asked to do this as when I got this copy back, I had realised that some of te pages I had made were too light for the printer, so therefore you could see ink lines and also i had forgot to change the text on one of the tutorials. The printer then said we were able to change it and give them the PDF on Thursday morning (today) with the revised PDF.

Indesign

I had my document set up with by the Graphic designer I had interviewed for my magazine and she had helped me with the grid lay out and also with page numbering. However i had encountered a problem whilst inputting the content; she had put the page numbers onto the master page but they were appearing on the front and back covers. This is obviously not what I had wanted and as i spoke to my technical tutors about this problem, they advised me to individually put the number in. However, as I was nearing 90 pages and didn't want the possibility of the numbers not lining up, I then found out that you can adjust items on a page by unlocking the master layer. This problem was then averted!
Another problem I had encountered was with the set up of the document that the printers had requested. Because my zine had over 68 pages and needed to be perfect bound, this meant that the pages had to be set up individually, rather than double page spreads. Changing thing had them moved all the items on my pages, so a few times I had to rearrange everything and make sure that everything was lined up, and if I had full bleed images, thy had to be the correct measurement. Luckily, all of my images are in one folder and all my fonts were saved so throughout magazine production there were no errors or images missing.

Editing

As I was researching throughout fashion magazines previously, I had noticed a certain style of editing that most photo retouchers use and after a long time searching I found out that the style is called cross processing. This is the process of making sure all the tones and colours in your images are even and balanced. It also adds a blue tone to the dark areas of the image, which in turn gives it that professional and high end fashion look. Because I found this out quite late and went over all my images using this process, it delayed the completion of my magazine for a few days. Nevertheless I am really pleased with the images i have re-edited and feel that the standard of my work has gone from student to professional, I have learned more skills on Photoshop and also feel as confident in Indesign.

Identity & Layout

Creating an identity for my magazine was quite a struggle at first; I had a picture in my head of exactly how I wanted my zine to look like, but executing it is the next big step. At the start of the InDesign document, I put in all the shoots I had edited and a few boxes of Lorem Ipsum, but found that once I had started to think about the content, where the boxes would go and what works well on the page, I could see the magzine come together. This made it a lot easier to gain an understanding of how I wanted the layout to convey they mood and feel of my magazine. The logo was designed by myself and was inspired by a modern, clean hipster look but mainly is quite subliminal for the number 3. As my magazine is named San, which is three in Japanese, the triangle seemed to be the perfect match for the title. I have also created the Japanese numerals with in the three triangles of my logo, and used these to head each chapter page. My tutor was worried that the meaning of the name wouldn't be recognized because it is in another language, but because everything in the magazine revolves around the number three I think that it will be obvious. However to reiterate it and make sure the reader is not confused, I have added an explanation in my editors note which has the meaning of the word, the ethos of my magazine surrounding the number three and also the logo. I feel that the consistency with this number gives the magazine more of a purpose, substance and something that would set it apart if it were to be contributed into society. As there is a lot of thought and meaning behind the concept, it could stand more of a chance in sustaining popularity. Hopefully the content matches up!

Fonts
My main inspiration in layout for my magazine has come from Asos and Company's high street edition. These magazines are fun, clean, simple and playful, which I guess is how i would describe my style. I like to have a simple design layout with straight and neatly lined up edges. Therefore it was quite easy for me to choose fonts. I had decided on the fonts I wanted in my porposal and have stuck to them ever since. Although this is true, upon looking through other magazines, there are at least 4/5 different fonts that is consistent thorughout; whether it be for captions, titles, subtitles, taglines or credits. With my editorials I have downloaded a few fonts from the internet that generally correspond with the theme of the shoot.
The fonts I have chosen are:

Microsoft San Serif: Magazine title, contents and contributors
I was drawn to this instantly because i wanted a font that would look as if it were making a statement. I had planned for there to be a full stop exactly for this purpose and because the font is quite large and harsh it gives that direct bold statement i was after. Firstly i was going to use this for all the titles in my magazine, but one of y friends from an advertising course advised me that it was too harsh for the content and style of the rest of the pages and he showed me a softer font that then complimented the page greatly. Kozuka Pro - R

Kozuka Pro - R- Shoot/editorial titles within magazine
This Japanese font I would never have normally chosen i f i wasn't shown it because it's at the end along with all the other oriental fonts. I just assumed that these fonts were only for oriental characters. Regardless, this font is much softer and curvier than Microsoft San serif and relay compliments the rest of the pages.

Learning Curve- subtitles, pricing explanations and subheadings
Having chosen this when I was doing my proposal, I knew instantly this was the font i wanted for the subtitles. When you think of a zine, you immediately think of hand written and hand drawn sketches and this was precisely the reason i chose this font. It has a nice cursive slant which isn't too elaborate and stands on its own.

Helvetica Regular- main body of text.
I chose helvetica because it was recommended to me by the graphic designer i was working with. She had told me that it was the most popular and easily read fonts used and it was aesthetically pleasing too.

Cailbri (large capitals) - pricings, credits, captions
I was inspired by the fonts used in Asos for this font. Asos magazine uses all capitals for captions and use of bolds which looked pleasing to the eye and was easily readable too.

Presentation of Magazine

I have decided to make a box from thick card stock to hand in my magazine in. I have been looking on the internet for A5 box templates, to get the exact measurements, however am finding it quite hard to find. The printers I have been going to have said they can print my logo and colour onto 330gsm card and this is the thickest weight they are able to print on. The thickness of this is the same quality as to the cover of my magazine, so I am a little worried that it won't be thick or sturdy enough to properly holdy my magazine. I will give it a try nonetheless, and if the card doesn't work I plan on buying a ready made one and putting my logo onto it.

Front Cover

Choosing a front cover has been a bit of a task. I had to choose a shoot that looked professional enough to feature as a front cover, but also styled in such a way that it is relevant to spring summer 2012 street/catwalk trends and also appeal to my target audience. I chose the "Grunge" shoot as after I had cross-processed the images, they turned out to be my favourite, most professional looking images.
The part I found hardest was placing text with the image. The image I had chosen was one with alot of hair movement and a mixture of dark and light tones, which made it very difficult to choose a colour for the title of my magazine. It was a mixture of pink, purple, dark blue hues and my model has red hair and was wearing a light coloured dress. The title seemed to get lost in the shadows of the hair when it was made black but because the colourama was light dusty pink, if turned into white it also got lost! I then visited my tuor who advised me to choose a teal or lime green which stood out immediatly as it is an opposite for red tones. This also proved a good idea as i used the same green from a flowe on the dress and colour matched the rest of the fonts with colours found inthe image. This gives the images a consistent feeling rather than having random colours.




Tuesday 17 April 2012

Ombre Decay Shoot and Bella Howard Inspired Shoot

At the weekend I decided to collaborate again with Daniel Evans, the photographer who featured and shot a shoot in the magazine previously. As Danny is in charge of the Asos Marketplace, and takes a lot of the images for it, I wanted to create a shoot against a white wall that was bright, young and playful. I was looking through the work of 25 year old photographer Bella Howard who is gaining notority in the fashion world for her fun, playful and hipster style of shooting. Her style is free, young and fresh as she likes to capture nostalgic images, as if you were with a group of friends at a party. Her images make you feel as if you are there with the models. She uses polaroids, retro photography as well as digital images to create this. Therefore i wanted to re-create this style, so I rented a lighting kit and shot a few images inside my house. We set the lighting kit up inside my living room where the walls are mahogony. I also managed to do a few shot for the now DIY section of my Zine. I made ombre tights and socks, a studded collar and dip dye chalk hair and created a DIY tutorial to put within my magazine.


 
Bella Howard- collaboration with Jigsaw and Topshop





 
I was relatively pleased with the shoot, however the images had an orange tint for some reason, but easily edited in Bridge and Photoshop. As there was another shoot going on that day, there was about 8 people in my house and as we were in the living room as well as shooting in there, I think it made my model a bit nervous. I wanted the shoot to be more playful and for her to act more natural in front of the camera. We captured a few images which were in the moment, very similar to Bella Howard's work, but I feel it could have been a lot better. Nevertheless it was a last minute shoot and I am still happy with the images and feel that they will fit into my Zine quite well.
The second shoot which took place on Saturday was a shoot inspired by the Ombre and Orange trend. The images didn't need too much editing, but I took the saturation down of the background and left the colour of the clothing quite vibrant.
Today, however I attended my tutorial and my tutor said that these images and the sports location images weren't as strong as the other shoots I've done. They also didn't flow well with the rest of my magazine so she suggested they should be cut. I do agree, as it is a shame that the shoot wasn't able to take place at the abandoned hospital, although I do really like these images. I hand dyed the tshirt dress, tights and socks and was hoping to include them in the magazine in order to include the tutorials. This would also give an opportunity to see how they can be styled as well as created, so I may still leave this shoot in the magazine. Once everything is put together I can then edit and get second opinion once again. Another suggestion was to make a QR code for smart phones for my nail tutorials which means that the reader can easily visit the blog which runs along side the magazine. It was really easy to make, I just entered the website into the QR code generator and it gave me the code instantly. This was a really nice and professional touch.








Saturday 14 April 2012

Orange Ombre

I had a message back from a model I'd been wanting to use for about 2 years now, Rachel Heather, from model mayhem. She is absolutely stunning and model like. I have 2 shoots left to do for my magazine before I continue on my portfolio work.
I planned this shoot last week and wanted to create an orange/red based shoot, this is because of the survey I conducted I found that a lot of people wanted to know how to wear this trend. Obviously i didnt want to use just orange or red clothes so created an initial mood board to show the main colours of the shoot and then because i wanted to do a location shoot and wanted to contrast the bright colours with something a bit more dark. I then started looking at derelict buildings around Southampton such as warehouses, houses, hospitals and schools. I found The Mount hospital in Eastleigh that had been closed down in 2003 and has been abandoned ever since. I drove there on Friday the day before my shoot today to check what the conditions were like. Unfortunately, the whole hospital was cordoned off with fences and a sign that said it was illegal to trespass. It looked quite dangerous too so i thought it was best not to do the shoot there. I visited a few other places that i had researched but they all had been knocked down or renovated. So after discussing with my makeup artist, photographer and model we decided that the Southampton common cemetery would be a better suited location and therefore i would achieve the contrast of colours and themes I wanted.


 

The Mount Hospital


 The Southampton Cemetary
 

Colour palette inspiration

On Friday morning I shopping for my shoot and purchased a long orange dress with a split in the side which was exactly what I had in mind. The dip dye trend and ombre dying is extrememly in at the moment so I wanted to incorporate this into my shoot too and had decided to find a dress, like the one I bought and dip dye it in bleach. However, when it came to the dip dying, this particular fabric didn't have any dye in it, so instead i dip dyed some tights, socks and a t-shirt dress and was really impressed with the results! I'm going to add a tutorial for dip dying as well in the 3rd section of my magazine, which now i am planning on changing into a DIY section rather than beauty and nails. I will include mini tutorials on using chalk for dip dying hair, creating your own embellished collars  and nail tutorials.

Thursday 12 April 2012

Edited Sports




I have returned to Southampton from Easter break which meant i was able to edit the images I created of my sports shoot. On a larger screen, I realised that the images werent actually over exposed and didnt really need much editing. The make up showed up really well on camera too which meant I only enhanced it a little. I have also become more cut throat with my selection of my images, I need to stick to the three outfits that i had originally planned to do on each shoot, as the number 'three' was meant to be the running theme throughout the zine. I now plan on re-editing a few of the shoots I have already done and cutting out outfits to just three.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Printers

Indigo Press

After popping into Indigo Press two weeks ago , they rang me back within a few days to confirm a quote for my magazine, unfortunately, as they are a bespoke printing service, the prices they were offering me were out of my price range;

a5, 48pp and 4pp for cover printed on 170gsm uncoated paper and inside pages on 120gsm, finish; folded, gathered, trimmed, sized and perfectly bound would cost :

25 copies - £294.00
50 copies - £395.00
100 copies- £503.00

My budget was originally £200-250.00 for around 100 copies, so i had to decline their offer and go on the hunt for more printers around the Southampton Area.

I then popped into Design and Print on London Road where they were very helpful and received a quote within that same day.

I could have 50 copies of 60pp+ for £160 and on the chosen paper I wanted, however to ensure the quality is good I am going in next week to give a sample to get printed.

Easter Break



For Easter, I had decided only to go home and relax for one week and work for the rest, however I planned a photo shoot in Eastbourne Park about an hour away from where i live and collaborated with a make u artists who had graduated from Solent and also a fashion photographer who is in her third year at Solent too.
Both of our shoots were based on the sports trend, so I had styled the outfits for the photographers piece. She is also creating a magazine but based on Sports and lifestyle. My shoot was more of a high fashion based style. Luckily on the day it was meant to rain heavily in the afternoon, but we had clear skies and sunshine all day which made it so much easier with the lighting. However we did use a reflector in most of the shots to gain a more dramatic look, but found out the images seemed a little washed out on screen, but could easily be fixed on Photoshop. Unfortunately I couldn't open the RAW files on my laptop, and my trial for the new In Design had run out which meant I couldn't really do any work whilst i was at home. So i decided to sort out my nail blog, I photographed a lot more tutorials for my magazine and blog and also created two pages on the actual blog for nail inspiration and other nail fanatics on the Internet.

http://sannailfreak.blogspot.co.uk/

Edited Yellow Shoot



Logo and illustrations

I really like the galaxy print that has been really popular recently and so i wanted to incorporate that into the design of my logo. These two logos are designed for the front of my magazine as well as the nail blog. I created the galaxy background on Photoshop and used 3 colours that i thought would be eye catching and aesthetically pleasing to the eye and compliment the hipster and trendy approach to the zine.

I have also been drawing the illustrations I'd like to feature as decoration in my magazine and have drawn things that go with each chapter and editorial. Also I have an illustrator that I interviewed and is contributing to my magazine that is drawing on top of one of my editorials. I have given him a final deadline for this week as I need to edit the images and he is adding finishing touches to them. Hopefully I won't have to re shoot this particular one, but its getting quite tight for time! Once that has been given to me I still need a few images of their favourite work, and then add it to the magazine. 
 

I tried to upload these particular images onto my blog for the title but unfortunately on Blogger, you can only have a banner on certain templates and because for my blog I wanted tabs on the side of the page in order for easy browsing access, this template wouldn't let me put the banner on. If I were to change the template of the website, it means that I would have had to change the whole site and start from scratch. Blogger is quite a temperamental website creator if you are not as experienced as some, or pay for more memory. I will see if this design works, but if I feel that it doesnt work I will have to start again.

Friday 30 March 2012

Yellow Fever






Yellow is one of those colours that is really tricky to wear. It can make some people looked washed out and others need to find the right tone of yellow to compliment hair and skin tone. This is why, when I conducted my survey, this trend was one of the most popular that people wanted style advice on. I put a lot of thought into this shoot from accessories to hair style in order to get the best out of the trend. I was thinking of doing a shoot for blond model and a brunette model so that the differences between different hues of yellow can be challenged with two colours of hair. However, with the already broad range of content for my magazine, I think that it would be a little too much, but I may still consider this.

I had arranged for a great make up artist student to collaborate with too so the shoot went smoothly and i didn't have to do too many things on the day.

My model I had chosen is professional and also a ballet dancer and i had to pay her for her services. She was really natural in front of the camera. The images were in RAW format from the camera, but for some reason the files recognised on my laptop so I will have to change them on the library computers before I go home for Easter to TIFF files. I think this is an issue with the camera that my fashion photographer was using.

Wednesday 28 March 2012

Up and Coming Shoots

I have 3 shoots planned, one on Friday 30th March in studio and the other two I will do at home in East Grinstead. I am collaborating with a Fashion Photographer who coincidentally lives near me and a few models from around the area.

The first shoot will be based in the studio and styled around the colour yellow. Its big this season and as its quite a daring colour that some people are afraid of i want to show my target audience that they can wear this vibrant colour and look good in it!

The second shoot we wanted to do is going to be at a sports centre in Eastbourne. The photographer is doing a health and fitness magazine and as the sports luxe trend is big the season I wanted to create that look to go into my magazine.

The third shoot is going to take place at the Alexander House Hotel, where I work, I have permission to shoot there, but have to ring up and confirm tomorrow the date and times we can shoot. Its really exciting as the location is beautiful and the facilities are stunning too. For this shoot I was planning a grandeur, luxe feel with extravagant make up and a floating material. I have yet to plan it fully but will do that nearer the weekend.


Indesign Layout

During the shoot with Francesca Hughes in Farnham, i was with my Graphic Designer and she had taught me a few things on Indesign and helped me set up my magazine. The layout seemed quite easy to get the hang on, but for me i found it quite difficult and daunting to actually starting putting images and copy to the page. So today i finally came over my fear, had finished most of my editing and started to accumulate pages. With just shoots alone, and having a few more left to put in, I have already filled up less than 40 pages. This was the estimate (40-50) I had given to the printers and this could cause a problem. I either have to edit down the shoots I have, or ask for more pages and less copies of my zine in order to keep costs down.


Printers

I visited Indigo Printers in Southampton a week ago and went through the types of paper I will have and am going back tomorrow to get full quotes for my amounts I need. I was told that in order to keep in my budget of £200-£250 I would have to cut down my original amount of copies (100) to half. Hopefully more pages wont increase the price even more and i may have to make some cut backs somewhere.
The first quote i have received stated that i should most likely choose Digital printing over Litho as Litho printing is far more expensive for my budget, 50 copies of A5 would roughly be about £160 only 36pages or 100 copies would be £240. Therefore I am returning for another appointment tomorrow in order to rejig my order and see if i can get a lower price for lower amount of copies. Also i will organise a deadline date, which ideally will be 2/3 weeks before hand in.

Copy

Most of the Zine will be full of mini tips and short caption on the content, however for the talent section of my zine, I have created a short interview and added a fun word association game to go along side it in order for the audience to find out a little bit more about the artist. I have sent this interview out and am waiting on 2 of my contributors to send it back, but am confident they will send it in time!

Layout and Style Research

I have been analysing magazines such as Company High street Edit and Asos Magazine in order to formulate a template and layout for my magazine. I feel that these types of magazines are similar to my publication and harbour a certain feel and style I am going for. I have been looking at simple circles and square designs for image boxes, echoing a magnifying glass shape; I feel that this would suit the context of the Zine because of focus on detailing and styling. I have also drawn a few sketch up pages of each page to try to work out how many pages exactly I will have to have in my Zine in order to gain a proper quote from the printers. I don't want to feel restricted on the content, as I feel this is way more important than the quantity I can get printed.