William Young spent 5 days creating a gaming magazine as a school project. On day 1, he designed the magazine cover featuring the game God of War with effects and advertising various articles. On day 2, he wrote a 2000+ word article predicting winners at The Game Awards and spread it across 4 pages. On day 3, he continued the article predicting more categories. On day 4, he created a contents page with a Smash Bros background, controller images, and listings of articles. On day 5, he added effects to his article and rearranged images.

1. Production Reflection
William Young

2. Process - Day 1
• On the first day of my production, I
created this cover for my magazine. I
made use of the 'Drop Shadow' and
'Outer Glow' tools on the text in order to
create a shadow/glow effect on some of
the text featured on the cover, such as
the masthead and the text talking about
the main article of the magazine (that
being predictions of what would have
taken home the awards at 2018's 'The
Game Awards', an awards ceremony
similar to the Academy Awards. I also
featured text talking about other things
that would be featured in my magazine,
such as a review for the game 'Just Cause
4', and a contest to win the game 'Super
Smash Bros. Ultimate'. I used the
gradient tool to create the effect of dark
green rising from the bottom of the
magazine cover to just below where a
blue box runs across the centre, in order
to make it look more impressive than the
front cover's picture just being a picture
of the game 'God of War'.

3. Process - Day 1 cont.
• As well as this, I included text at the bottom of
the screen in order to advertise more minor
articles that would come in this magazine,
such as a review of 'Just Cause 4', a list of
video games to look out for in 2019 and the
ranking of the new coming fighters in the
video game 'Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'.
Other things I did on the cover included
making three coloured boxes that featured
text. I did this, along with colouring the text to
stand out from the colour of the boxes
containing them, to make the text inside
these boxes stand out from the rest of the
magazine. I also placed pictures (of the games
'Super Smash Bros. Ultimate' and 'Battlefield
V') into two of the three boxes in order to not
make the red boxes seem empty. The font I
used for the 'Game Awards' section of the
magazine cover is different to the other font
on the magazine cover (which is a pixelated
font called 'ArcadeClassic') in order to make it
stand out more from the rest of the text on
the magazine cover.

4. Process – Day 2
• On the second day of magazine production, I
began work on my double-page spread
article, which detailed my predictions of
what would win awards at 2018's 'The Game
Awards'. Due to how many words I had
written in the article overall (which ended
up numbering over 2000), there was no way
I would be able to have the text be able to
be placed on two single pages, add in text
and make it legible. Therefore, I decided to
spread the text out onto four pages. The
first two pages of the article include my
predictions of the awards of Game of the
Year, Best Game Direction, Best Narrative,
Best Art Direction, Best Score/Music, Best
Performance, Games for Impact, Best
Independent Game, Best Mobile Game and
Best VR/AR Game. I also included a picture
of myself on this page of the magazine
because in some articles in magazines that
I've read, there is a picture of the journalist
who wrote said article next to the article.

5. Process – Day 3
• On the third day of production, I
continued work on my article. My
work comprised of the second part of
the article, which consisted of what I
thought would win the categories of:
Best Action Game, Best
Action/Adventure Game, Best RPG,
Best Fighting Game, Best Family Game,
Best Strategy Game, Best
Sports/Racing Game and Best Debut
Indie Game, and my predictions for
what would have won each category. I
also included a picture of the popular
game 'Red Dead Redemption 2' in the
page, along with a picture of the logo
of the Game Awards, given that the
article has the Game Awards as a
topic.

6. Process – Day 4
• On the fourth day of production, I
created a contents page for my gaming
magazine. The first thing I did was paste
in a background image for the contents
page, and for that, I found a poster for
the video game 'Super Smash Bros.
Ultimate' and used that. I used the
gradient tool to create the white-to-
image gradation that is seen at the
bottom of the image, which served two
purposes: one was to blur out the logo of
the game (which would take too long to
remove manually) and the other was to
make room for images of a Nintendo
Switch Pro Controller, a PlayStation 4
controller, an Xbox One Controller, and a
keyboard (specifically, a Corsair K63
Wireless Keyboard, which I own myself). I
also darkened the image in 'Image >
Adjustments > Levels' to help the text
and the image stand out from each other.

7. Process – Day 4 cont.
• For the listed contents for my magazine, I
just thought of some things that would
be in a gaming magazine (taking ideas
from things that I had advertised on the
cover of my magazine, such as a review
of Just Cause 4 and a general list of
games to look out for that are coming out
in 2019, such as Bayonetta 3, Doom:
Eternal and The Last of Us Part II. I
alternated between the two colours I
used for this portion of the contents
(dark yellow and red) in order to make
the contents seem less like a giant wall of
text. I also utilised the drop shadow tool
in order to create a black border around
all the text featured on this contents
page, in order to help it stand out even
more than the Smash Bros. picture that is
the background.

8. Process – Day 4 cont.
• As well as the Smash Bros. picture in the
background, I found some other images
from the Internet and pasted them into
the contents page: these images being of
the trophy awarded to winners at the
Game Awards, and a screenshot from the
video game 'Just Cause 4'. To create the
black border around the screenshot of
JC4, I created a new blank layer in my
Photoshop project, drew a box around
the screenshot of Just Cause 4 with that
blank layer (which I positioned under the
screenshot of Just Cause 4) selected, and
filled in that box with the paint tool, with
the colour selected to black, which
creates the black border.

9. Process – Day 5
• On the fifth day of production of my
magazine, I made a few changes to my
double-page spread article. One major
thing I did was create a gradating red and
silver background in Photoshop (with the
use of the gradient tool), turned that into
a jpeg image and pasted that into
InDesign, underneath all my text and
pictures. Something else I did, on the
second pair of pages of the article, was
re-arrange the position of the images on
the second page, in order for me to be
able to place an image of the indie game
Celeste, which was nominated for Game
of the Year, Best Score/Music, Games for
Impact and Best Indie Game.

10. Finished Work
Double Page Spread
Articles Part 1 and 2
Magazine Front
CoverMagazine
Contents Page