Development of Double page spread.

I knew that my double page spread would be the task that took the longest, it took the longest planning and a mixture of all different ideas went into it. I knew instantly that i wanted my double page to be heavily dominated by text, so that i could keep the mature and sophisticated feel about the magazine ongoing. I knew the first thing to do was to do some research in other double page spreads from existing music magazines, these are the ones that i looked at.




Initially, i really liked the layouts of both of these double page spreads, they both were heavily dominated by text, but also by a large image. However i did some further research into Q magazine and i could see that these double page spreads did not fit the genre or style of my magazine, and i need to go for a more sophisticated and structured layout. I did lots of planning and this took a couple of lessons, so that i could get the layout of my double page spread exactly right.

When i had my layout, i felt my next job was to write my article, this meant that when my layout had been designed and created on photoshop, i could then just copy and paste my article into the text boxes i had created. Writing my article took many hours, and lots of going over and changes had to be made. Because my double page spread relied hugely on this text, my article had to be extremely good, and had to stay in focus of the original ideas i had. My article was based around a new and up coming artist called Daisy Goes. I kept my article as it was like a interview with her, a question and awnser session. All of the questions i asked where based around music and the industry, so keeping with the basic music magazine features and conventions. Although my article in the end turned out very long, it did fit the theme of the magazine well, and although existing music magazines may not have as long articles, i feel although my magazine broke this convention it fitted very well.

I then had to start creating the layout on photoshop for my double page spread. I decided to create them as 2 separate A4 documents as this would be easier to create and when printing them and posting them on my blog they would just show as 2 separate pages.

For page 1 of my double page spread, i began by just drawing text boxes to work out the size and the fittings of everything together. I drew a box at the top, a long collum to the left, 1 to the right, a space in the middle for my photo and then 2 little boxes underneath the photo.

Next i choose my photo to go in the middle of the page, i had to choose a image that was eye catching and sold the story to the reader. Here is the image that i choose.


I choose the image that was black and white because i felt that it fitted well with the other colours i had chosen for this page, and also because all of the other images i had used so far were in colour.

I then added my title to the page, 'Daisy Goes'. I used a basic Times New Roman font here, but made is all capitals,bold and in red to make it stand out on the page. I then underneath added the headline of the story,again which was in capitals, Times New Roman, bold and black, creating the contrast of colours between the two. I made this centre and symmetrical to the top of the page. I could now start adding my article to the first page. I decided to keep the font Times New Roman, as it was classic, easy to read on the screen and sophisticated keeping it simple. I also decided to use font size 9, as after research into Q magazine there font size for some of their main articles was size 9, so i was keeping the conventions of a real music magazine strong here. The first part of my article to left hand side of the page was all in black. As in interview with Daisy began, the questions i asked her were in red and the awsner she gave in black, keeping it classic and easy for the reader to read, and also keeping contrast with all the colours on the page, as the read matched the red of the heading and title at the top. The left and right columns were level with the top of the picture, keeping it symmetrical and structured without. Underneath the picture, in bold and capitals i added a quote from the interview which really stood out on the page.

Here is how my first page from my double page spread looked.