Lesson 3 - Creating A Newspaper Front Cover

Our brief was to create an effective newspaper front cover, but first we had to do some research to find out about the different aspects of a newspapers front cover. After looking at several different newspapers: First News, The Guardian & The Independent, I choose to design my front cover upon how 'The Sun' has arranged there's.

This is the front cover that I have choose to base my front cover around:

Next I planed out my newspapers front page, and how it would be arranged on a A4 piece of paper. I took the idea for my plan from 'The Sun' newspaper so that I could try and replicate the design that they had used, however, the stories that my front page will include will be different because, I want my newspaper to appeal to a different audience. The way I went about designing my front page was by using a pen and paper and divided the page up into 7 rows and 5 columns, the reason for doing this is, when I create my front cover using 'Adobe InDesign CS3' I will insert my rows and columns by going to: Menu > Layout > Create Guides, and by doing this I will know exactly were to place the correct images and stories.

Here is my plan for my front cover that I have scaned into the computer:

The next stage was to produce my plan on 'Adobe InDesign CS3' the way I went about doing this was:

First - Creating a new document and checking that the page setup was correct.

Secondly - Adding my guidelines, columns and rows so they fit my hand drawn plan. I did this by selecting 'Layout' on the tool bar at the top of the screen, scrolling down the drop down menu and chosing 'Create Guides' and 'Margins & Columns,' and created the correct amount of columns and rows that I needed.

Next -  By clicking on the 'Rectangle Frame Tool,' on the left hand side,this allowed me to create boxes and arrange them in the same place as I have done on my hand drawn plan.

These are the two screen captures that I have taken to show my plan that I created by using 'Adobe InDesign CS3.'

After I had created my plans, I was then able to start placing the text and images that I had already gathered and wrote into the correct places. When I was sure I had placed all of my boxes in the correct place, I changed my view, so that I could see what my front page was looking like as it would when it was printed. However, I had to create different layers to help make my front cover look as professional as it possibly could, by the time I have finished my front page I had 4 different layers for: Guides, Images, Texts & Plan Boxes.

Here is my final newspaper front cover:

The main article that I wrote for the newspaper was, to do with the animal face that we created in our first lesson, we took a photo off someone from the class, then we took an image of an animal from the Internet and by using 'Adobe Photoshop CS3,' I was able to create this image.

The first stage of creating this image was by adjusting the colour of the photo that I took of someone from the class, to make the image match the same tones of the animal that I chose, so when I combine the two images it would look surreal.

1. I had to use the 'Clone Tool' to take away the animals eyes and mouth, so that when I added the persons face I didn't just layer the features on top. 

2. I also had to use the 'Lasso Tool' to cut the persons feature out, so that I could drag them onto the image of the animal successfully.

3. Once I had used these tools and dragged the features across, I then used the 'Eraser Tool' to make the edges of the features softer, and to blend in with the animal.

Lesson 2 - Buster Keaton

The second lesson of digital graphics we had a tutorial on how to use Adobe InDesign CS3, with the files we got given we had to make a magazine page all about 'The King of Silence Buster Keaton,' after a three hour lesson this is what I managed to create.

This magazine page may look quite simple to create however, there is a lot of different tools and skills you need to produce a page like this.

First you need to know the different areas of the page, for example: Bleed Area, Trim Line, Margin Area, Gutter & Columns.

Bleed Area: Is a area which will be outlined in red, any text or images that touches the crop mark has to reach the bleed area.

Trim Line: This is the area where the guillotine will trim the page when it goes through the priniting process.

Margin Area: This is the area which is a certain size around the page which everything that you insert e.g. text and images must be inside, to make sure it won't be cropped off.

Gutter: This is the area that seperates the columns and rows.

Columns: These can be inserted to position your content.

Now you know what each of these area do, then you are ready to learn about the tools needed to create a magazine page.

The main tools you are going to have to know how to use are: Selection Tool, Pen Tool & Free Transform Tool.

Selection Tool: This tool allows you to select: a guide, image or piece of text and edit or move the item how you wish.

Pen Tool: This tools allows you to draw onto the document, the most useful thing this tool can help you do is , to draw on top of an image to get the outline,which you can then delete the background image and add text inside or add a heavier boader to make the outline standout.

Free Transform Tool: This tools allows you to select mulitiply items e.g. if you have and outline and you have inserted a image inside, then this tool allows you to select them both and move or edit them how you wish.

Now you have mastered how to use these tools, all you need to do is remember that you are working in layers, and you should be able to produce a magazine page just like this or better.

Here is a screen capture showing my documents in 'Details' view:

As you can see I have many different file formats for different documents, the reason for this being is, different file formats contain different qualities and some are designed to do jobs better then others, for example: I have exported my Buster Keaton magazine as a 'PDF File,' becasue the quality of the file will be higher then if I exported it as a 'JPEG File.

Also by viewing my documents in 'Details view' I am able to see the size of the file which I have created, what file format I have saved it as, as well as the date and time of which it was modified.