Midterm Final Product!

My article is finally done! I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I was initially having an issue with figuring out how to get my article body text to stand out from the background, but I think putting an opaque box behind and text and editing the background photo slightly was a good solution. I also bumped up some of the red and yellow levels on the background photo to make it a little more eye-catching. Then all that was left to do was find just the right font, and I think the one I chose works well with the piece. Overall, I think this looks very much like a typical article one might see in a travel magazine, or Midwest Living magazine, which is what I was trying to emulate. 

More Midterm Progress!

Back when our class had our first in-process critique of our midterm projects, a very good suggestion was made to me. Why not pretend that these two pages are actually just the first two pages of a larger three or four page spread? I thought this was a very good suggestion because it would give me the opportunity to focus a little more on creating a visually appealing spread that catches someone's eye and makes them want to read the article, rather than having to focus so much on the actual writing of the article itself. So, I decided to tailor my project in this way, and so far I am happy with how it is looking!

I'm going to have to do some messing around with the fonts and font colors, as well as a way to make the text that will go on the right side of the page stand out from the background. I may also take the main background picture into Photoshop to tone down the brightness of the sky if possible.

Midterm Update

Milwaukee is an incredibly difficult city to photograph this time of year. The number of cloudy and days definitely outnumber the sunny ones, and so I had to put off my photoshoot of the Third Ward and work on my article instead. But finally a while back, there was a perfectly sunny day and I was able to take tons of pictures. At the end of the day, I had about 30 pictures that both work for the article and turned out very nicely. After editing those photos in Photoshop I waddled that number down to 15 - still too many to fit into a two page article. But, as the article takes shape I'll be able to reject more pictures and narrow my choices down to 4 or 5. Next step - Laying this out in InDesign!

Midterm Project Proposal

For my midterm project, my goal is to create a two page magazine spread featuring an article on Milwaukee's Third Ward using Adobe InDesign. I've gotten to know the Third Ward very well over the past few years and I think it would make an excellent subject for a magazine article. The neighborhood has a very rich history, and it has become quite an attraction for both locals and people from out of state. The written content of the article would focus on the history of the area and how it has changed to become what it is today. I would devote about a third of the article to discussing the building of the Third Ward, the people who built up the area, and key events that took place there. The rest of the article would focus on promoting popular places to eat, shop or visit. I would describe a couple of restaurants or coffee houses, the Public Market, and a few other popular stores. I'm trying to emulate a feature story one would see in Midwest Living magazine. Every month, Midwest Living sends a writer out for a weekend trip to a town in the Midwest and they write an article about their stay. Usually the articles include a brief history of the town and information on the best places to visit if the reader travels there, along with plenty of pictures. I also have several issues of the magazine to refer to for design layout and content ideas. 

As far as article layout and design goes, I would like to use an establishing shot of the Third Ward to go under the title of the article, which would likely be placed across the top of the entire first page. Other photos of the area would be placed throughout the article. If possible I'd like to use one of the pictures I take as the background of the entire second page - perhaps a vertical shot I take of one of the streets. Here, I would have to adjust the opacity or possibly experiment with font color to avoid issues with readability. At this point I think I would like to use white text in the article, but that may change according to what kind of pictures I take, and the layout of the text. Pictures I take for this project will be edited in Photoshop if necessary.

Here are a couple examples of the type of article I will be trying to emulate from other travel magazines.

First Article in InDesign!

For the past couple of weeks, our class has been working with InDesign, which is a publishing program that lets you create brochures, flyers, newspaper and magazine articles and more. Our first project required us to create an article using the program. It didn't matter what the article was about since the purpose was to get us familiar and comfortable using the program and its features. I chose to do a satyrical article on one of my favorite horse breeds - the American Quarter Horse.

Since this article was meant to be funny, I knew right away that I had to use this incredibly stereotypical  Old Western font. It's over-the-top cheesiness added a lot to the article's overall look. Also, InDesign allows you to put picture over an entire article, move it behind text, and change its transparency so that it becomes an interesting background. Without using a background picture I think this article would have looked very bland. After getting those two things down, I started on the body of my article

After typing out a few paragraphs of text and adding a couple of pictures, I decided I wanted to add a fake quote from a cowboy who rode a Quarter Horse back in his day. I wanted people to see the man the quote came from, so I found a random picture of a man on a horse and used it in an ellipse frame. Beneath that I added the cowboy's quote and made its background grey so that it would stand out among the rest of the text. After that, all that was left was to make some slight adjustments. I put a black border around all of the pictures, shifted a couple pictures and text slightly, and added a solid black line to separate the two columns.

Considering this was my first time working with InDesign, I think I was able to create a fairly professional-looking article (despite it's completely sarcastic content). InDesign is very similar to Illustrator in many ways, and since I've used that program a decent amount, I think that helped me a great deal. I enjoyed this project and getting to work with InDesign, and I hope to be ably to become even more comfortable with the program so that in the future I can use it to create professional works. 

Welcome!

Hey there everyone!

Welcome to the blog I will be keeping for my Digital Applications class at Cardinal Stritch University. According to my syllabus, "This course focuses on the theory and practice of page layout for multi-platform publications. Emphasis is equally placed on gaining fundamental knowledge of current software used in the art/design profession and design methods and considerations particular to each of the various types of publications and their platforms". I'm not entirely sure what that means yet, but I'm looking forward to learning all about it. And you'll be able to see what I'm learning right here, so enjoy!