Different types of fonts

font (from top to bottom):

• Arial
• Cambria
• Baskerville
• Bebas Neue
• Century Gothic
• Constantia

When designing my double page spreads, i had a problem choosing a reasonable font in order to use for the title and the text.

I think when looking at these different types of font, i would choose a serif to be for the main text as it gives it a bit of volume when reading and a sans serif like arial for the title as it is clean and easy to read. Also i think for the main text for the audience to read, i would choose a font that have flexibility and constant has flexibility cause i can change the weights of the text whenever i want.

Serif fonts are mainly easy to read on printed work and that sans serif is much better on the web or onscreen.

As my double page spreads are about the environment and my picture layout is to do with what we all see in our environment that we live in and that as sometimes the stuff we see in our towns and places near where we live with places like pubs and stuff like that, therefore I thought that it would be better to use a serif font as the main text because there can be a lot of old and traditional places in towns and the pictures i took would show it with a sans serif font as the main title to give the spread a more modern feel to it.

Some facts about the environment

Here are some facts about our environment that i did not know about:

• 27,000 trees are cut down each day so we can have Toilet Paper.
• Aluminum can be recycled continuously, as in forever. Recycling 1 aluminum can save enough energy to run our TVs for at least 3 hours. 80 trillion aluminum cans are used by humans every year.
• American companies alone use enough Paper to encircle the Earth 3x! (It’s a good thing that businesses are moving towards going paperless)
• We can save 75,000 trees if we recycled the paper used on the daily run of the New York Times alone.
• When you throw plastic bags and other plastic materials in the ocean, it kills as many as 1 million sea creatures annually.
• A glass bottle made in our time will take more than 4,000 years to decompose.
• Only 1% of our planet’s water supply can be used. 97% is ocean water and 2% is frozen solid in the Arctic, for now.
• Our planet gains inhabitants numbering to 77 million people a year.
• An estimated 50,000 species inhabiting our tropical forests become extinct annually. That’s an average of 137 species a day.
• Rainforests are cut down at a rate of 100 acres per minute.
• The world’s oldest trees are more than 4,600 years old.
• Landfills are composed of 35% packaging materials.

Just knowing about what our environment takes and give everyday to us is just pure unbelievable. So for my main idea i choose an environment that has been made by mankind and what we have so far as part of our environment. Little we know that our environment that we live in used to be nature but instead it was cut down in order for us to live here with shelter over our heads.

i find it devastating that we destroyed something that is full of beauty and life and converted into something that wasn’t our to begin with. We constructed and created buildings/houses in these natural locations full of wildlife instead of saving a beautiful scenery, animal’s lives and many more. The fact that people don’t care for the environment that we live in is just stupid but the thing is people are forgetting what the environment that we live in used to look like and therefore they don’t tend to care or notice what the damage we have caused to this planet.

My main final design idea (Environmental Spread)

Here is what i think is my final design for the environmental spread.

The reason i changed the design a bit from the previous idea is because i believe that the previous design didn’t suit that great as well as it didn’t look clean enough so i re-designed the magazine completely to this layout. Also there are the same amount of columns in this design which is 6 on each page (4 pages) and the grids and gutter measurements are the same.

i got this idea of using this type of layout by looking at modern and simple magazine layouts that i have looked at in the past where there is either a big image covering most or all of the double page spread or where a image only covers one of the two pages with a bit of the image entering the next page to make the design look a bit more modern.

i still didn’t change the text colour scheme as i thought keeping it plain and making it contrast with the white background gives it a effect that it looks elegant and modern as well as it makes the audience focus more of the imagery that is on the page which is to do with the environment around us that we see everyday.

Looking at other double page spreads for research (Environmental Spread)

I was looking at all 3 of these double page spread designs and i happened to notice that they all have a great use of white space and colour co-ordination as well as they all have good and different professional designs and they all have this in order to create a effective piece of work.

All of these double page spreads uses a simple grid layout.

The first one uses 5 columns as the main guideline, the second one uses 3 columns and the last one uses a little simple and confusing grid layout but by looking at it carefully, it looks like it uses around 6 colums due to the placement of the text.

when it comes to my design i think i would rather use a simple grid structure like the first 2 double page spreads so it would be easier for the audience to look at and easier for them to read especially when there are not a lot of writing on the pages because a lot of text that is all clumped together can be very hard to read sometimes.

Also i noticed that the first 2 double page spreads all have text that goes straight to the edge of the text box, instead of the last double page spread where the text is aligned normally and is not aligned so that the text is perfectly neat and doesn’t look too messy. But then that double page spread doesn’t have as much text as the other 2. So i think when it comes to a lot of text for my double page spread, i should align the text so its like a box of text, all neat and professional and when it comes to little text, i should only align it to the left.

I like the whole idea on the 3rd double page spread where the designer put one big image over the entire page with a contrasting text on it and i always think doing this looks professional and suits very well in magazines especially when the big image has effects on it like he has the greyscale effect on it. I also like the idea on the 2nd double page spread where there is a image straight in the middle of the page with text surrounding it and i think this is a cool but weird place to put an image in a spread because you don’t normally see it a lot in a professional magazine as everything is placed neatly and within a grid system.

Grid layout for final piece (Environmental Spread)

For my main and final double page spreads i used 6 columns. The reason i used 6 columns is because i wanted a decent amount of columns where its not too packed and not too plain and so with 6 columns i can do a variety of different types of lay outing and designing within the spread. I used a 2mm gutter in between each column so that i can have a gap between the objects that i will put in these columns. I wasn’t going to use a large gutter measurement because the objects i would have put in the double page spreads would be small and frankly it would have looked a bit unusual nor did i use a small measurement as i needed enough space between each column to make the pages easier to read for the audience.

I used a nice big background image for both of my double pages and there is a 12.5mm white space between the top and bottom edges of the paper and the main background image and the reason i did this is to give both the double page spreads an elegant effect. Also allowing there to be white space in the design is good because it can improve readability and that although it creates a professional, sophisticated and elegant effect, it can also give emphasis and allows the reader to focus on the object more.

For my final piece i rounded everything to the nearest 0.5mm and i did this in order to not have confusion in calculating how big certain objects not the design would be. But on Indesign I put a ruler guide every 10mm and a small 2mm gutter where possibly i would like an object to be. From doing this i wanted a bigger image onto of all of the other images so i put space for a 55mm x 175mm image then a 2mm gutter and after that i wanted a 35mm space for where i can put several images on and before that space i put another 2mm gutter and 35mm space for additional images to be placed. After doing all the measurements, i felt it was best to centre all of the spaces so that i have the equal amount of leftover space above and below where the images/text will be placed and that left me with around 20-21.5mm room left on both vertical sides.

I decided it was also better to stretch the background image all the way to the page’s edge but only on the horizontal edge as i thought it looks a bit weird with white space on all sides.

I also considered the possibility of not having a background image and instead have white space but as it was about the environment i figured it would be more sensible with putting more images than text in both the double page spreads.

Editorial first idea (Environmental Spread)

Here are my final double page spreads.

An Old idea i had (Environment Spread)

An old idea i initially had before i wanted to take pictures of the environment while on a moving vehicle, was to take pictures from my bedroom window and see what magnificent photographs i could get of the environment that is just sitting right outside my house, as we all open our curtains during the day to see what the weather is like and what is happening on your street road. I wanted to do this initially as people don’t see the environment around them but i wanted to show the audience what magnificence you can get just from looking out of your window in the morning, afternoon, evening or night as you will always see different things happening on each day in the environment that is right in front of your face and that you live in.

Laws on taking photos of houses (Environment Spread)

You can take photograph of houses that is from a public place. But In the UK, a person does not have rights in the image of his property and a photograph of a building does not infringe any copyright in the building (Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988).

So, if the image is taken from a public place, or from a place where you have permission to take photographs, it’s legal to take photographs of buildings and to sell them. You could, however, be liable for trespass if you took the photograph from a place that you did not have the right to enter, or where the owner prohibited photography.

If a photograph of a distinctive house is used in advertising, this may infringe the CAP Code (The British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing), which urges marketeers to obtain written permission before portraying people or their identifiable possessions.

Theoretically, i am aloud to take and use the photos that i have and will take for my work as long as it is from a public place which all of my images are from.

Our Environment (Environment Spread)

Normally when people say ‘Environment’, they mainly think of climate change or the natural world as you see it, and they are not wrong, the environment is all around us.

But when I think of the environment I normally think of what we all see everyday when we do our activities or when we do something out in the environment and that is everywhere we go we see houses and homes and i think that using this as a scenario for my environmental spread would be the perfect idea to work on along side the shopping centre that helps us live within the houses that people have bought. To have a life with ease.

So what i did is i got in a friend’s car and i started taking pictures of bunch of houses with the motion blur effect on to create a nice effect focusing on what matters and i took a picture of the shopping centre closest to where i live to show the importance of what we have around us. To make a living with the people we trust and love. Food, water, shelter and even jobs. Its all Life. Its Our Environment that puts a massive impact on all of us especially that we live in. Certain aspects of different types of environments and although each environment is different, they all hold a key point, they all hold life and beauty.

Anyone can help the environment and by doing so, all anyone has to do is do their role of living a healthy and beautiful life and thats where im getting the idea of the pictures of the homes and house as it holds the key beauty of safety, entertainment, love and an adventure.

The Medway Towns is full of exciting scenery including the vast development on the environment around the area. Medway is full of different sorts of wildlife including a large amounts of woodland in all of the towns as well as Medway is full of different sorts of houses and homes that is provided, from semi-detached houses to Bungalows. Although you can get around the towns easily, there are surprisingly a lot of nature around to look at including a large amount of farms planted in the country side of medway. Also there are a lot of entertainment throughout medway including the classic structure of pubs along the main high streets. Their classic building structure gives the town a more traditional look and feel.

Motion Blur Effect (Environment Spread)

Here are some image i looked at on-line of where the photographer either edited the image in Photoshop with the motion blur plugin or take a picture while moving.

The Main reason for why i am looking at the motion blur effect is that initially all of my pictures will be taken when on public transport and that i will be taking pictures while travelling in the vehicle and when i do this, there will be some sort of motion blur on parts of the scenery in the image.

I think motion blur is a great tool especially that you can make the image focus on a specific object in the image and around that object would have a blur around it so that the audience focuses on what’s important.

Although i could potentially just edit the image to look like im on some sort of moving object. but i will be editing the pictures so that the the motion blur will block out the stuff that i do not want to concentrate on and has the main object that i want to focus on, it will have a great amount of detail compared to around the image and this is a great effect that i would love to use in my photography and work.