Friday, 16 December 2016

Record Reviews

In class, we had a review a couple of songs from the 60s. So, I went onto the chart website and went to a random week in 1967. I decided to pick a couple of records that stood out to me, starting further down in the charts and making my way up.

The first is I'll Never Fall in Love Again by Tom Jones. On this particular week, it was number 45, but it did reach number 2 in the UK and number 6 in the US. It's a slower song, and the focus is mainly Jones' voice. It's a sweet, sad song and I do like it. However, it's not my favourite as it's pretty simple, and, well, I'm not heartbroken to love it too much. Apparently America agreed when it was first released as it only reached number 49, but then when released two years later, it reached number 2.

The next is Soul Man by Sam and Dave. This is literally the opposite of Jones' track, as it's upbeat and jazzy. This is their first single, and it hit number 14 at it's best, but did win the 1967 Grammy for Best Rhythm And Blues Group Performance. I love this one, as it's upbeat and has a lot of energy.

The next one is Big Spender by Shirley Bassey. This one is a signature song for Bassey, and reached number 14 in the UK charts. I enjoy listening to this one because of her voice, but it also reminds me of glamour. People like Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, all come to mind when I hear this.

Next is I'm Wondering by Stevie Wonder.  This peaked at number 12 in the US and number 22 in the UK. This is probably one of my favourite tracks, as it's catchy and stays in your head. The lyrics are easy and light-hearted.

Finally, I had to do the number one of that week. That was Baby Now That I've Found You by Foundations. This one is very upbeat and, again, catchy. I like this one again because it's very disco and high energy.

Peer Evaluation

In class, we all pinned up our covers and ideas for our book early on. This gave us all a chance to give and receive feedback.

I pinned up my covers and, also, a couple of layout ideas for the inside of my book. I got feedback that the layouts were good, one particularly interested people, which was the 'MUSIC' page. However, the others were very neat and clean, and in the 60's pages didn't look too precise and organised. So, when I was editing my book, I took this on board and didn't line up images with text, and I even used text wrap on the images so the words would be placed around them.

Another bit of feedback I got was on my covers. People generally seemed to like them, but there was pointed out a way to improve them - or the one I chose. It was suggested I could make into an interactive GIF, and when you scroll over the cover, a spotlight appears on the figure.

At first, I liked this idea but then I realised we were exporting this project as an iBook, and in print (if we had time). So, I decided not do this, but the feedback helped me a great deal with choosing the cover I wanted.

Thursday, 8 December 2016

My (Flat) Plan

The next step in my book, is to sort out the content and organise the book. I did a simple flat plan in Illustrator. This clearly lays out the structure. It's different from a print book as you cannot do double spreads in web versions of books. So, this is why each page is laid out separately.








After the cover, I have a contents page. This will include links to the pages so you can skip to certain pages, and this is to make the book a bit more interactive. I have also included a couple of 60's adverts in my book, as many magazines had full-page advertisements, and I want to have a 60's style.

I also laid out the entire book in Indesign (only some pages are completely designed). These aren't all the pages, but you can see how it has been organised. I need to fill the blanks still, and then focus on the contents. I also want to add some audio of their songs, but that's for a later date.

So far, I like how it's turning out and I think my content is really good. However, I'm a little worried about the colour in the book as I haven't really added any. It's something to experiment with and start toying with.

The Audience

I want to have a vague age range, and for two groups of people: younger adults and people who grew up in the 60's. I want to reach out to people who grew up in the sixties, as the style of my book will be 60's inspired, and will look as if it was made in the 60's, so this group will recognise that (hopefully). I also want to reach out to younger adults, as it's an informative reading piece and it'll be an interactive online book which appeals to this group. I think the book as great cross between old and new, which is why I have two groups.

Making my product accessible is important, as I don't want to make my product only available for certain people. I was using Helvetica for the font in my book, however, after some research Arial and Georgia seem to be preferred fonts, and older people prefer 14 point size font. Because of this, I am changing some of my fonts, but I am sticking to my 16 point size as I want the text to be slightly larger than normal books. This is to help people with dyslexia and reading issues, and the sans-serif fonts will help with that, too.
Source: http://www.awaionline.com/2011/10/the-best-fonts-to-use-in-print-online-and-email/

I believe my product is tuned for my audience(s), as there are things about it that people will like (the interactivity, the style, the context). However, if there was one thing I am worried about it making it all flow, and writing about the 60's to people who lived in that era.

Friday, 2 December 2016

Page Layouts

I had sketched some interesting layouts from 60's examples, and so I produced one of these in InDesign. It needs work, for sure, but I think it's different and interesting. I may experiment by making some letters bigger and putting more text in others. Also, I may fiddle with the fonts a little.

twen magazineOther pages I wanted to be more simple - all about the information. However, there's a huge difference between most 60's styled pages and mine. Mine's too neat.

Twen magazineI love having straight lines and perfectly lined up photos, but many 60's examples weren't quite like that. Paragraphs were dotted around and photos didn't fit around the text. However, there are many ways (like my 'MUSIC' page) to do this creatively.

So, though I like my simple layouts, I may have to dig a little deeper and get more creative, to bring my book to the 60's.

Thursday, 1 December 2016

Book Cover

Image result for 1960 book coversI decided to design a mock-up book cover for my interactive 60's styled book. First comes the research, so I looked at book covers in that era.

Image result for 1960 book coversMost book covers use icons to represent what the book content was, and the colours were bright and retro. So, my first designs were very bright, and had the silhouettes of two faces and one woman. I really liked the icon idea, but I thought I could improve it.

With some more looking, I found Helvetica was used widely back then. So I used that font and added more colours.

I also changed the opacity of the icons so you could see slight colour changes in the pictures, too. This gives it a nice flow and the colour seems naturally faded.

I tried a couple of colour themes (blue and pink) to see if other colours worked better. Personally, I like the pink and purple one best, because it seems more musical and disco-like with the way the orange pops out.

I did some more experimenting with my covers, but I carried on with the pink colour theme. I added opaque circles, more shapes and one I even changed the icon. To me, now, the most successful ones are the bottom middle and the bottom right - mostly the bottom right. This is because of the dynamic shapes included and how it's 60's inspired but still different from just any other 60's book cover.