The document discusses the research and design process for creating documentary posters and a double-page magazine spread as ancillary tasks to a main documentary project. It describes searching online for examples of documentary posters and magazine layouts, analyzing typical design elements, and experimenting with compositions and visual elements in Photoshop mockups. Photographs were taken of barbed wire to incorporate in the designs. Feedback was gathered from classmates to improve the designs.

1. ANCILLARY
1:

2.  I also decided to look at the documentaries on Netflix to see the posters that came
up for them.
 I filtered through the different documentaries and looked through just political
documentaries as well as social & cultural because my documentary was going to
be in one of these categories.
RESEARCH – ANCILLARY 1

3.  I began my research for my
documentary advertisement
poster by ‘documentary
posters’ and ‘documentary
advertisements’ in Google
images in order to look at a
variety of posters and
understand the typical codes
and conventions they have as
well as to look at some design
ideas that I could use.
 My second search came up
with E4 documentary
advertisements which I took
particular interest in as that
would be the sort of channel
my documentary would be
shown on.
RESEARCH – ANCILLARY 1

4.  I decided to look at the E4 website to see what kinds of documentaries it shows, by
clicking on browse all, and then ‘factual’.
 I found that E4 shows a wide range of documentaries of all kinds of genres. Below
is just a few examples:
RESEARCH – ANCILLARY 1

5.  I looked at lots of different documentary posters simply by searching ‘documentary
posters’ and noted down the typical codes and conventions that they feature, and
then found examples of each one.
 I also searched ‘codes and conventions of documentary posters’ on Google and
found more examples that I hadn’t thought of before, such as a topic indicator.
RESEARCH – ANCILLARY 1

6.  To get a bit of inspiration for my documentary poster, I carried out multiple
searches on Google to find examples of other adverts, such as ‘refugee poster’ and
‘syrian children refugee poster’
PLANNING – ANCILLARY 1

7.  For my first initial idea, I found the following pictures from my Google searches
which I then analysed.
 I thought the use of the children as the focal image was really powerful, and I
thought about doing something similar myself at first.
PLANNING – ANCILLARY 1

8.  My second idea was to incorporate barbed wire
within my poster. So again I searched ‘barbed
wire’ it on Google and found many results,
although they were mostly all basic barbed wire
with nothing else in the image.
PLANNING – ANCILLARY 1
 So instead, I searched ‘barbed wire
with sky’ and found more interesting
results’.

9.  I created the very first mock ups of the documentary poster in Microsoft Word, by
going on insert > shape > rectangle and adding a text box for the labels of what
each part represents.
PLANNING – ANCILLARY 1

10.  I went out into the countryside on the edge of a farm to take my photos, as I knew
there would be barbed wire around the fences there.
 The hardware that I used is my Canon 1200D DSLR camera and a tripod.
 I changed the settings to 1/100 for the shutter speed and F3.5 for the aperture.
 I then looked through my photos and took note of the possible ones I could use,
which I would then edit in Photoshop to create mock up posters.
 I ensured that I took lots of different photos to use for both my documentary
advertisement poster and my double page spread.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY
1&2

11.  I used a blank PowerPoint slide and tested out possible fonts that I could use on
New slides.
 I looked at the following fonts and analysed what I liked best about each one.
Arial Black
Bradley Hand
Hobo std
Engravers MT
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 1

12.  I made four mock ups using four
different photographs.
 I opened each one on a different
tab in Photoshop to experiment on
each.
 I began by making adjustments to
the picture on the background layer,
using the different options below.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 1
 As I was only making a mock
up of each poster, I only
added the title to each one.
 To do this I selected the text
icon on the left hand side of
the screen and created a text
box on the photo.
 I chose the font Engravers MT
which is what I decided
looked the best previously,
and chose an off white colour
to match the colour of the
text used in my main task.

13. CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 1
 Below is the first mock up I made, as well as the brightness/contrast and saturation
settings that I used on the image in Photoshop.

14.  Below is my second mock up and the brightness/contrast and saturation settings I
used on Photoshop.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 1

15.  My third mock up, again with the brightness/contrast and saturation settings used.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 1

16.  And finally, my fourth mock up and the brightness/contrast and saturation settings
used.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 1

17.  I then began to develop my first mock up further.
 Firstly, I searched channel 4 logo on Google images and opened it onto my poster in
Photoshop.
 I added the tagline in the same font and colour underneath the title. To ensure I used
exactly the same colour, I used the colour picker tool on Photoshop and clicked on the
title.
 Finally, I added the text at the top to display the date, time and website. I chose the
font Eurostile in black which I thought looked quite similar to the Channel 4 font.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 1

18.  I designed a quick feedback sheet in Microsoft Word and printed out 7 copies in
order to see what my classmates thought of my main task and ancillary tasks, and
to help me evaluate the good and bad parts of my work.
EVALUATION – ANCILLARY 1

19. ANCILLARY
2:

20.  As I did with my ancillary 1
research, I used Google images
to find examples of double page
spreads from a magazine. At
first I simply searched ‘double
page spread magazine’. It had
a lot of results but they were
mainly from music magazines.
RESEARCH – ANCILLARY 2
 I then changed my search to ‘film
magazine double page spread’
which was much more useful and
relevant to my work.

21.  After analysing one of the double page spreads from Total Film magazine, I noticed
the Predicted Interest Curve it uses.
 As I hadn’t heard about it before, I researched it more, and read about it on the
Total Film wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Film
RESEARCH – ANCILLARY 2

22.  As I did with my ancillary 1, I created my very first mock ups for my magazine
double page spread on Word using the shapes and text boxes to represent what
everything means.
PLANNING – ANCILLARY 2

23.  I designed two very different mock up double page spreads in Photoshop. Below is
the first mock up I created.
 I used one of the photographs of barbed wire that I took, and next to it added an
image of a mural that was in an office at the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group.
 From my research, this first idea was more in the style of the Total Film magazine,
as I was going to include multiple images as well as many different banners, texts,
‘pop ups’ etc.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 2
 As I did with my first
ancillary I added the
Channel 4 logo as well as
the date and website in
the corners.

24. CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 2
 These are two different images which show the stages of my magazine being
constructed, as I was experimenting with the layout of the title, tagline, logo and
date.
 This general house style is very different to the previous mock up. I decided to use
the idea of one image as the background which is what I liked about two of the
articles I analysed in my research.

25.  This is the first proper draft of my magazine, which I made in Photoshop.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 2

26.  This is my final magazine double page spread. I made some improvements on my previous
mock which I received from my audience feedback.
 I made a few improvements on my previous mock up, such as adding black stars rather than
gold stars and the Empire logo, which I found by searching ‘black review stars’ and ‘empire
magazine logo’ on Google images and I moved them to underneath the title.
 I also changed the font on the main body of text, from Arial to Times New Roman, as I
thought it looked more professional and wrote a bit more so that the columns were the
same.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 2

27.  As I typed my article straight into the box on Photoshop, I found that I had to adjust
the height between each line of writing to 90pt, because otherwise the gap was too
big and I then couldn't’t fit enough writing in.
 I chose the colour of text to again be a slight off -white colour to go with the rest of
my tasks. I also found that this colour matched the background well, and also
because other colours such as black wouldn’t be clear to read.
CONSTRUCTION – ANCILLARY 2
 I also made the first letter of my article a much
bigger size than the rest of the text, which is a
technique I noticed when analysing other
magazine spreads which I think looks quite
professional.
 I added a banner in the bottom right hand corner
above the page number advertising the magazine
name, by clicking on the rectangle tool.