Making the double page spread

Changing the background

I moved my main image for the double page spread onto a white background and it really didn’t look good. Well I just thought that I couldn’t use it.

The main reasons for this being that when I cut it out, the edges seemed rigid and harsh.

I attempted blending and feathering, but it just was not working out for me.

So with no time like the present I thought I would save wasting time and change the background to black. Which meant it was much more stronger, suitable for my rock genre and it went great with the image.

Adding and changing the image

Adding the image was simple, just a cut out job using the polygonal lasso and then dragging the layer to the black background.

The most important thing I had to do for this image was to make it blend in with the background.

I done this by giving the image an outer glow and then I reduced the sharpness of the glow.

The result of this was that the rough edges were smoothed out and hidden by the dark background.

Texturing the background

Using a smoke style brush, I was able to print smoke patterns in different colours onto a separate layer.

It had to be on a separate layer because I wanted to reduce the opacity of the smoke.

I done this so that the text on top would be clear and readable.

All in all I think that this effect, played a major role into making my magazine’s double page spread a success or a failure.

Adding text

The first piece of text I added was to introduce the interview.

It needed to be short, bold and centred.

This small piece of text give the reader a good starting point, they know what the article is about.

And this is why it needs to be written fairly well, it needs to be short and to the point, to sum up what the person will be reading and therefore if the consumer even wants to read the article.

Adding the main text

The hardest part about getting the main text right I think was writing the damn thing.

After researching questions, asking friends what sorts of questions they would ask if they was in my position and checking online, it became easy to write the article and within an hour I had completed the article.

Things to highlight about this article would be the different colours. The questions had to be easily separated from the answers, for the reader to want to read it. The columns had to be the same size and there had to be a gap for the big first letter, which I picked up from many other magazines.

Styling - L

Again there are a number of ways in which I could have made a giant L. But the way in which I found it easiest was to take a blank page on paint, copy and paste a white block onto the double page spread, use the paint bucket tool to fill in the white L and change it to the same colour as the blue text.

I wanted the text to be the same colour blue as the guy in my main images t-shirt, because it makes the colours on the page all blend together, showing there is a link between the picture and the writing. To do this I used the “eyedropper tool”, now by clicking the guys blue t-shirt, it selected the exact same colour and let me use it for my text, result!

Adding page numbers

Again I simply needed to add the correct sized, coloured, text-styled numbers for the page reference.

The only thing I really had to watch here was that they wouldn’t hug too tightly towards the corners or the text.

…also I needed to make reference to my contents page to make sure I had the article linked, eg, they both said the interview is on page 35 + 36.

Adding text

The page was looking nice, but a little blank.

I remembered from my research one of the double page spreads which had a quote from the text.

I felt that by using this “pull quote”, the reader would really be drawn in, and want to read the article.

I watched how big I made the text but I used a “serif” font to separate the writing from the article description underneath. It gives it a more formal style and brings a level of sophistication to the page.

Styling

I got this idea from an article in Q magazine, it gives the page a little more to it and it’s a nice way to border and separate the writing from the image.

I done this the same way I made the “L”, I copied and pasted white blocks from paint and moved them around until they looked just right.