Charlie Atkin reflects on the 10 week process of creating a print-based magazine as their final major project (FMP). In the early weeks, they researched topics, tested designs through magazine mockups, and experimented with layouts, fonts, and color schemes. They created style guides, flat plans, and pre-production documents to plan the magazine. Later weeks were spent sourcing images, writing articles, and assembling all content into a final magazine design for feedback and evaluation. Based on feedback, adjustments were made to further improve the layout and documents.

1. Production Reflection
Charlie Atkin

2. Process
In week one we got to see the brief and know what I am going
to be making. Of all of the briefs I decided to go for a print
based project as it is something that I think that I am more
suited towards as I enjoyed the moving image projects but I
don’t think that I was very suited towards it. So I decided to go
for the print project as it is something that I think I am more
suited towards as I have been using Photoshop for 2 years
now and I have been doing quite a bit of design work for
products in school beforehand so I am a lot more adapt to
print design. In my print project I am going to have to make a
magazine on my chosen topic. I also have the option to make
some more products along with my magazine such as a
website or even some merchandise, this is something that I
am going to consider.
Week 1

3. Process
For the second week of the FMP we started to finish
my research and this took form of a survey that I
sent out to people doing the same course as me.
We then started to do some production research, in
the week I got one magazine test done completely
and then halfway through a second one. In this
week I tested out different styles of how to do my
magazine such as lots of different fonts, different
colour schemes, different fills for the font such as
space filling, PCB filling and a white fill with purple
stroke and a space background. I then also
experimented a bit with the layout of the magazine.
Week 2

4. Process
For week 3 I focused on my experiments such as
making different magazine covers that I could
test out different design techniques on such as
layout and the front cover design and my fonts
that I might be using in my magazine. I also tried
to incorporate my use of colour scheme into the
magazine tests to make sure that the colour
scheme will work together and look effective.
Week 3

5. Process
In week 4 I started on my Pre-Production document, I started out with
a style sheet as this helped me to understand what sort of look I might
go for on my magazine. I also consider and talk about the polar
opposites of what I have looked at and talk about the pros and cons of
bother of them. I talked about my colours schemes and I also consider
the fonts and the layouts of the magazines in my slides as well as the
images being used in the front covers and what was good about the
images. I also started to look at making some Flat Plans for my
magazine as these can help me layout the front cover so I have an idea
on what might work and what might not work and how to get my
magazine looking the best. I also then started to talk about the
resources that I will need to use in my production of my magazine, this
will help me to plan out what and when I will need my stuff. I also then
did my Health and Safety as well as my Contingency Planning, which
will help me to be safer and at less risk when doing my work and will
help me to prevent problems or fix them if they occur.
Week 4

6. Process
In week 5 I started off with my production on my magazine. The first
thing I started off doing was starting to fully know what content I was
going to put into my magazine double page spread, after starting to do
some research on some topics I thought about putting in my magazine
I decided on phones as it is a topic I am very familiar with as I work
with them. This magazine and doing the research on phones will
hopefully give me a better insight in a customers mind. I decided on
how many phones I was going to review/put against each other and
decided on 6 and this was a sweet spot and gave me 3 double page
spreads to populate. I am going to use images of the phone next to the
article discussing the phone as this will help the reader to form and
opinion a bit better than just reading about the phone as some people
are more visual than others and an image can help entice them more
than just a massive chunk of text.
Week 5

7. In week 6 I started by doing some rudimentary layouts on a InDesign
document with the right amount of pages with 3 double page spreads
and a cover with a back page. For the double page spreads I decided
on having one big title across the top of the two pages as if I can get
the titles to help the reader understand what is going to be in the
articles, the title across both pages will look a lot better than two
separate titles. In the rudimentary layouts I added in some images
from the internet to help me to understand the layout and where I
could place the images and the text layouts. In this week I realised that
I wouldn’t be able to use the images that I borrowed from the internet
so I had to source my images somehow. So I thought about either
using my camera or my laptop as a graphics tablet and drawing the
images that I needed. I decided to go for this as it game me a bit more
flexibility in terms of production time as this is something that I could
do at home or in my free time.
Week 6
Process

8. In week 7 I started to realise that I was running out of more
and more as I now only had 2 more weeks left. In this week I
started to do some more of the phone drawings that I decided
to do last week. Also whilst I was researching for my articles I
found out about a new phone that has just recently been
released and has very similar specifications to the top of the
line phones out at the moment but with one major difference,
the price is a lot less than other phones of the same
specification. So I decided to make a special spotlight in my
magazine about this new budget phone that is a very good
performance for the price. In this week I also started to write
my articles for my double page spreads and I also started to
draw my image for the new phone.
Week 7
Process

9. In week 8 I started to put all of the assets that I have been
collecting/making together, to make a final version of my
magazine. This final version is the version that I did my
feedback on and got my peers/readers to evaluate. I added all
the elements together to make a magazine that I think is very
effective in what it does as it can bring attention to the
articles whilst also having some attention to the images. In
this week after putting my magazine together I have realized
that I don’t have enough time to put together a magazine and
a clothing line as it would have taken too much time and
having to finish off some presentations that I didn’t get
finished in my time that I allotted for them meant I would just
get even further behind.
Week 8
Process

10. In week 9 I took the evaluation and TA feedback into
consideration and started to make some adjustments to
my magazine such as changing the layout of the
masthead and the position of the main image and the
text around it, I also moved some of the taglines to be
paired with some of the other text as it when it is with
the other text I think that in the terms of the layout it
looks a lot better than just random taglines around an
image. In week 9 I also looked at adding some
developments to my documents such as my Pre-
Production as it wasn’t as thorough as it could have been
so I added more detail to the document.
Week 9
Process

11. In week 10
Week 10
Process