This was my first magazine that was going to be my final submission. I later decided it wasn’t good enough to submit as it didn’t relate to my chosen magazine not target audience. The result was rushed and this was obvious from looking at the magazine outcome. After doing more research and spending time planning the layout I started again.
This shows pages 3 and 4 which I kept the same. This layout allows 4 images to be seen at a large scale and offer a story about the chosen subject without the distraction of text. The idea was to keep it clean and simple, which I feel worked well.
Referring to my inspiration article I planned out where I wanted the image and text. I also re-did the text to make it flow more as before it didn’t work very well. I also added lines to the left of the spread to seperate titles, sub titles and text, like the inspiration article. I like the effect of it and feel it offers a formal and structured feel to the magazine, something that was previously lacking.
Next I looked at changing the fonts. I found that National Geographic use a personalised text format that I can’t gain access to so used substitute fonts of a similar style. I feel like the fonts work well in being formal and eyecatching, as well as easily readable, an important feature for my older target audience.
I next added my images before fitting them correctly. I made sure the size worked well and that the chosen image still worked within the new style, which I think it did.
I next made sure that the text wasn’t hyphenated, especially in the titles and large text areas.
Upon saving the spread, I became aware of the odd positioning of the text below the image. Initially I didn’t realise that it didn’t work, so I decided to go back into indesign and experiment with the positioning.
I moved the text to be semmetrical and also changed the format to be more boxed, which improved the positioning.
Jodie Tovey PJD blog 