11.3: Exercise Files

The third task, which was the biggest Learning Activity this week, was to do the exercise files for the Lynda tutorials Designing A Magazine Layout by Nigel French, and InDesign CS5: Print Production Guidelines by James Wamser. I wasn’t sure what exactly was expected of me to do here, as there are so many similar files in each exercise file folder, but I did my best.

Designing A Magazine Layout

Since Nigel in this tutorial made a magazine, I did the same. I based my layout on the same grid as him, obviously setting up the different elements etc. myself. I changed the pictures and headings, and also changed the main text colour to one I sampled from one of the images.

 

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Destination Sydney Magazine

InDesign CS5: Print Production Guidelines

Document Construction

I felt that this tutorial had more practical exercise files in the beginning of the video, and I did all of those, creating a few different documents etc. I simply took screenshots of these.

11.2: Dummy Magazine

The second task this week was to design a simple dummy 20-page magazine. I had to use a spot varnish on the front page, and use two spot colours. I decided to use these spot colours for text only, and interpreted the assignment to let me use original colours on pictures. For my magazine I chose to focus on night photography, although the actual body copy is placeholder text. All photos are taken my be, though. In creating this I took a lot of inspiration from Designing a Magazine Layout by Nigel French, which we have to watch this week. Just to show a few examples of some of the spreads:

 

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Night Photography Magazine

Since this week is focusing on print preparation, after designing the magazine I had to make use of my printing checklist and prepare the file for print. This also included deciding what paper weight and type I want to use, as well as the type of binding. We were asked to submit the print-ready file packaged from InDesign as well as a print-ready PDF, however not all these files will upload to WordPress. So instead I’m submitting a few screenshots and PDFs.

Print-ready PDF

Instructions

This week has been extremely tiring, as a lot of hours have been put into working on MA04, but it feels good to finally having submitted that. I suppose I will have to spend tomorrow on doing the last of this week’s learning activities; thank god I already finished the exercise files for the first Lynda movie we had to watch.

Until next time, stay creative,
Monika

11.1: Printing Check List

There is so much to do this week, so the Learning Activities have so far not been any priority of mine at all. However, the first task is a rather small one, and all we need to do is to make our own printing check list.

I will now use the rest of the day to make sure my report for MA04 is ready to submit tomorrow, and try spending the rest of the week on the last two Learning Activities.

Until next time, stay creative,
Monika

9-10.5: DESIGN OF LAYOUT IN INDESIGN

The final Learning Activity for week 9 and 10 was the biggest one, and one we were expected to spend about two days on. In this activity we were meant to use InDesign to design a 4-page brochure for a fictitious travel agent. The size should be A5 when folded, and we had to:

• Design the brochure in full colour
• Use fake body copy, but create sensible headings
• Use titles, headings and images of our choice
• Pay attention to choice of type and imagery, and the use of layout and grid

I chose to make my destination Cairns, since I have quite a few pictures from visiting the lovely town last year.

Back Page (Page 4) – Front Page (Page 5)

Page 2 – Page 3

The font I used for the headings is called “Marker Felt” and is one I think is quite fun and exciting, which is the point of this brochure. For the rest of the text I used “Minion Pro,” since I think this is a really nice font and one that fits with the overall design. I have a 3pt stroke around all the pictures to create consistency, and I believe the circled frames look a little exciting. They also contrast the squared pages and images.

Until next time, stay creative,
Monika

9-10.3 & 4: Basic Principles of Layout, Pace and Contrast

Question 3 – Basic Principles of Layout

The third task for week 9/10 was to find a magazine, newspaper or book including both text and image. I found a magazine called digitalfoto, and placed tracing paper over the top of three spreads in this magazine. I then traced the grids on the page layouts, and wrote down the column widths, and margin sizes at the top, bottom, and to the left and right.

This spread is based on a three-column grid on the left side, and one on the right, on which the photograph is placed. The three columns’ widths are all 5,5 cm each. The picture has a width of 18,5 cm.

Both pages on this spread are based on a three-column grid. The width of each column is 5,5 cm.

On this spread they use a three-column grid on the left page, and a four-column grid to the right. The three-columns are again 5,5 cm each, while the four-columns are 4 cm.

The margin sizes are as following:
Top, left and right: 1,5 cm
Bottom: 2 cm

Most pages are based on a three-column grid, but there are variations of this throughout the magazine. The margins always stay the same; even on the page where the photograph covers almost the whole page, there is a frame on the right side of the picture to make the layout consistent.

Question 4 – Pace and Contrast

In this task we were to compare the design (in terms of pace and contrast) of an online magazine, blog or website to that of a printed magazine, book or journal.

Before approaching this Learning Activity, let’s find out what Pace and Contrast are: “Pace and contrast are vital qualities for maintaining a reader’s interest in a design: they provide variety. This is true particularly in magazines and image-heavy books, where it is critical to be able to direct the eye to different pieces of information.” (Graphic Design School, page 48), they continue, “The pace will be dictated by the content and space available. Contrast is closely linked to pace: when you want to inject pace into the design you can create visual emphasis in the form of large type and imagery, or unusual cropping. Alternatively, you can create a quiet interval by having text-only spreads or employing white space liberally.”

With this in mind, I compare the book “Sånn Er Det Bare” to Shopify’s blog. The layout of Sånn Er Det Bare is based on a two-column grid, and there is a lot of white space on the top of each page, which makes for a “lighter” reading experience. There isn’t all that much text on each page, and this makes it easier to read through it. The blog, however, has a lot more elements when you first open it. You see all the different posts straight away (kind of like the content in a magazine), and then go to the one(s) you wish to read.

The ranged-left typography gives consistency, and different sizes of the visual elements such as illustrations create variation and visual interest. This is a layout used in both the book and on the blog. Each page in the book has slight differences from the others, in terms of how much space there is, how large the illustration is, and what colour is used. Quotes help create more visual interest on the spreads as well. The blog is somewhat more restricted, but can create a very interesting and unique look – and thus the readers might expect a mix of pace in the layout and content of each post.

An online blog has countless opportunities in terms of their visual input, they’re not constrained to using text and images only, but can also use audio, video, etc. This can be of great contrast to the text – and since we tend to have a shorter attention span online and less interested in reading long texts, audio or video files may create more interest. Since this isn’t possible to do in a printed version, contrast in the layout might be even more crucial to keep it exciting.

I would say the main differences I find between the kinds of design strategies used in these two formats are; the texts are longer on print than online (hyperlinks also helps with this, as not everything needs to be explained as thoroughly in the actual text), the use of audio and video help create more visual input, and there is usually less “action” on print.

Until next time, stay creative,
Monika

9-10.1 & 2: Form and Space, Symmetry and Asymmetry

Our focus this week and the next is on Layout, and we have a few learning activities we need to get through.

Question 1 – Form and Space

In this first task we had to cut out a series of shapes from black paper, in a variety of sizes. Then, on a squared piece of white paper, we had to place these shapes into the white space, and move them around. The idea was to find the point at which the figure disappeared into the ground.

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Above are 20 different placements and arrangements I tried out. Below are three examples which 1; makes the distinction between figure and ground unclear, 2; white is clearly the ground, and 3; white appears to be the figure.

Generally speaking I found that the figure-ground relationship depends mostly on what colour is most dominant in terms of space. When there was more white on the paper, that’s what appeared to be the background, and opposite. When there was the same amount of white and black, it became unclear.

8.2.2: Practical Assignment

Five pictures every day over five days; this was the third part of this week’s Learning Activity. We were allowed to take pictures of pretty much anything, but had to use the manual settings on the camera. I tried setting a “topic” for every day to make sure I had some variation in terms of what I photographed.

Day 1 – Random inside – I tired out e.g. a longer and slower shutter speed, macro, and depth of field.

Day 2 – With my camera on a tripod, I only changed my lenses on all these photographs. From left to right; 12-24 mm, 18-105 mm, Holga HPL-N Pinhole Lens, 50 mm, 70-300 mm. Each lens (with a zoom) was zoomed out as much it possibly could be, and it’s quite interesting to see how much this affects each photograph. The one in the middle, taken with the Holga Pinhole lens is the most unique one since the aperture can’t be changed and the opening is very, very small. So for this image I had my shutter speed on 30 seconds – on the other photos I had a shutter of about 1/125.

Day 3 – Random outside – My focus here was depth of field. I also tried out a few with a little longer shutter speed, trying to photograph the road with cars etc. But since I didn’t bring a tripod with me I didn’t want to use a very slow shutter since that would make the image blurry.

8.2.1: Practical Assignment

This week we had to watch the Lynda.com tutorial Digital Photography Principles by Ben Long. After this, we had to do the exercise files from Chapter 1 and 2 in the book From Snapshots to Great Shots. There are quite a few exercise files, so I’ve chosen to focus more on some of them in this post, but obviously doing all of them.

Chapter 1 Assignments

Basic Camera Setup – Charge battery to 100 %. Address the Image Quality and Auto ISO. Done; I select RAW for higher quality pictures, and turn off the Auto ISO Setting.

Selecting the proper White Balance – For this exercise file we had to bring our camera with us outside and shoot pictures in each of the different White Balance settings. We then had to do the same inside, in both a tungsten environment and with a fluorescent light source.

Auto – Incandescent – Fluorescent – Direct Sunlight – Flash – Cloudy – Shade

Focusing with a single point and AF-S – Change your camera setting so that you are focusing using the single-point focus mode. Then set your focus mode to AF-S and practice focusing on a subject and then recomposing before actually taking the picture. I played around with this for a while.

8.1: Observation and Analysis

We continue with photography this week, and for the first learning activity we have to get to know our own cameras a little better. By reading in From Snapshots to Great Shots: Nikon D7000 (which is the camera I have) we should be given a pretty good understanding of our cameras. First out we needed to name all the functions and buttons on both the front and back of our cameras, and then explain how we change the ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.

How I would set the correct ISO – I set the ISO by holding the Thumbnail/Playback/Zoom-out Button and adjusting the Main Command Dial at the same time. The correct ISO is the lowest setting possible – or the highest possible without the picture getting grainy. I normally set it to a low number under good light conditions (or where I want a long shutter, which lets in more light), and higher under darker conditions where the aperture and shutter speed can’t be adjusted more.

How I change the Aperture – For this I use the Sub-Command Dial on the front of the camera. What f-stop I set this to will vary in relation to what I am taking photos of and the light conditions around.

How I change the Shutter Speed – I use the Main Command Dial on the back of the camera. I adjust the shutter depending on what I am taking photos of, my light sources and what kind of artistic effect I might want. A good rule of thumb however is to use a shutter speed that is as fast as the focal length in use to avoid blurriness – this of course can also be avoided by simply using a tripod instead.

Until next time, stay creative,
Monika

7: History of Photography

This week we’re learning about the History of Photography, and in the Learning Activities we need to explore this topic a little closer.

Question 1 – Research and Analysis

Several events in photography’s history were explained in this week’s lesson, and we had to choose three of these events to have a closer look at and research some more.

The Pinhole Camera

A pinhole camera is a camera without a lens, but with a single small aperture, and a pinhole; ultimately it is a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. The first pinhole camera was invented around 1000 AD by Alhazen, an authority on optics in the Middle Ages. Aristotle later revisited the pinhole camera in about 330 BC, and studied the laws making it possible for the device to take pictures.

The way a pinhole camera works is that light passes through the single point in the camera, “and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box.” A normal exposure can last from as short as five seconds, to several hours. In one of the sides of the box is a small hole, and this is what creates an image – of the outside space on the opposite side of the box.