Fawn Magazine Website Progress

After much frustration and hours of work I have finally produced the basic structure and design for the Fawn Magazine website. 

Below is a snapshot of the Wordpress theme I used as a base to design my theme, and under that is a sneak peak of the Fawn Website home page.

I implemented my own HTML and CSS coding into the original theme to create this design. The black sections are for proposed banner advertisements.

NU BLU THEME

FAWN MAGAZINE THEME

Q-Man Website

This website was created for a project I was working on last trimester. We were split into teams of around 6 people and were asked to create and market a game level for Little Big Planet 2 on the Playstation.

I took on the role as Marketing Director and Web Designer. For this I needed to design and produce a website for the game level.

Our game was based on Qantm College. I wanted this to be reflected in the layout and colours of my design. I found this project very rewarding as it greatly improved my HTML and CSS coding skills. I also taught myself to make a flash based image gallery for the game screenshots. 

I have included a snapshot of the Qantm College website below for reference, as I was basing the style of my design on this.

 

 

Dandy Dukes Invitation

I created this invitation as a part of an ongoing design project last trimester. We worked in team of two and created and marketed a product using digital design methods. 

My team's product was Dandy Dukes bow ties, a range of quirky bow ties for the modern man. A personal friend of mine was our client and we worked with her to develop a marketing strategy and promotional material that would suit the image of her brand.

The brand itself seemed to take on quite a retro feel, and I wanted this to be reflected in the design of this invitation.

Music Poster Illustration

For this brief I chose to create posters for the Black Cherry Rockabilly Festival and Josh Pyke's Lighthouse Tour. The first being a poster based on airbrushing techniques, while the later was to be a stylised design. Below is the brief.

BRIEF
You are required to create 2 styles of Illustration for 2 music posters. The visual and written content must be different in both posters.

1. Project
The client requires an illustration based on the technique of gradients (Airbrushing in Photoshop - Gradients in Illustrator). You are also expected to design the poster using illustration and typographical elements only. Do NOT use any photographic elements in the final design. Photoshop and Illustrator are the only programs that can be utilised.

2. Project
The client requires an illustration rendering based on the process of stylisation. The illustration should not look realistic. This poster is also expected to be designed using only illustration and typographical elements. Do NOT use any photographic elements in the final design. Photoshop and Illustrator are the only programs that can be utilised.

Printing Methods Brochure

The purpose of this brochure was to demonstrate our knowledge of the correct procedures associated with print design and printing. We were asked to demonstrate our knowledge in brochure form in a style of our choice. 

 

 

 

 

Fashion Palette Brochure

For this brief I was required to choose a company of my choice and design a gatefold brochure for them. I chose to design a brochure for Fashion Palette as I am passionate about fashion and I think it is a great event. Below is the brief.

BRIEF
Design a Gate-fold brochure for a client. The brochure is double-sided and will only use PANTONE colours. The client is on a tight budget and has restricted the colours to only 2 PANTONE colours.

Fawn Magazine - Week 10

This week I conducted a lot of design based work, focusing largely on the Fawn Magazine master style sheets as well as implementing the website into a Wordpress theme.

I completed my sketches for the master style sheets this week which meant that I running a bit behind schedule on my Gannt chart. I did not think it would take as long as it did to sketch each section, but I wanted to make sure that every page had an interesting design layout different to the other pages. I found because I was trying to make each page relatively different it was harder to come up with a constant flow of ideas for these designs. I spent a lot of time researching magazines that I feel have similar design styles to what I wanted to achieve so that I could take inspiration from how they had styled their pages. For each section I sketched between 2 to 4 options so that I was able to work with a style that would work cohesively with the rest of the magazines pages.

After completing the layout sketches I then moved onto working on implementing these sketches into Indesign. Initially I thought it would take around 3 weeks to do this, however I now think it may take a little longer as constructing the website is exhausting my weekly time allocation as it is more challenging than I originally thought it would be. I developed a Indesign document mapping out the pages that will appear in the magazine, and have been slowly implementing my layouts into the pages. So far I have completed the Contents page, Calendar pages, Job Review page, and Beauty Shoot pages.

Developing my website in Wordpress has proved a little more challenging than I had originally planned. I had developed my HTML code in Dreamweaver last week and started to implement it into a blank Wordpress theme. I was following a tutorial on Lynda.com to do this as it shows you exactly where to cut and paste your HTML code around the Wordpress PHP code. As I am using a blank Wordpress theme I am having trouble adding particular elements from my design into the theme, as I have no knowledge of PHP. This particularly relates to the search bar, mailing list and particular blog post style that I want to achieve, all which use PHP to operate. 

I discussed my design with Lance and he suggested I talk to another lecturer Leonard regarding customising a Wordpress theme, as he might be able to help me implement these features. I will be meeting with Leonard next week regarding my Independent Study project so I will discuss it with him then.

Lastly I discussed content ideas with one of my contributors Gaia. We went through each section and developed a list of what exactly we wanted each section to become as we developed it. As Gaia has written for various online publications having her expertise in this field is invaluable in producing appealing content for Fawn readers. We are both now searching for great news stories and products to put into the Fawn Loves spreads as well as any events that are scheduled for Summer 2012 for the Calendar spreads. We also set rough shoot dates but I am yet to confirm these dates with all the shoot talent.

JB

Fawn Magazine - Week 9

This week was spent heavily focusing on the creative design aspects of Fawn Magazine, as well as starting to write some of the editorial content.

I continued working on the layout sketches for Fawn which will help me design the final master style sheets in InDesign. I have been designing about 3 or 4 different options for each section that appears within the magazine. Doing so will give me greater freedom when I come to choosing the final pages for the layout to ensure that each page layout compliments the other layouts on surrounding pages.

After last week I was not happy with the final result of the style guide and layout I completed, so I spent some time experimenting with other fonts and layout styles. I finally found a combination of fonts that I was happy with and have decided to use this combination within Fawn. I am happy with my original colour scheme that was selected, so have decided not to change that.

After completing the style guide, I used this formula to create a layout for one of the spreads within the magazine. This layout in particular was for the Creative Job Review page and I wanted the design of the layout, the fonts and colour scheme, to be a good indicator of how the rest of the magazine will look. I really like my final layout and have gained client approval on it. The only changes that will need to be made are to the change numbers so that they are more cohesive with the rest of the page. Completing this page will help me design the rest of my master style sheets, as I will have a creative guide to work from.

As well as working on the design of the magazine itself, I also used this week to complete the final pages for my website and EDM Photoshop mockups. I'm really happy with the final design for the website, as it is easy to navigate and is a simple yet effective design. The design of the EDM mock up is very similar to that of the website, but has been redesigned slightly so that it is suitable for email. Now that I have completed the final designs for both the website and EDM I can begin to complete all pages in Dreamweaver.

I continued with a small amount of Dreamweaver this week, adding and changing things to the design as I finished the creative mock ups. Now that the mock ups are complete I can begin to finish all the HMTL and CSS elements in Dreamweaver, then focus on bringing the code from these documents into the Wordpress files.

Lastly I began researching questions for the Creative Job review page. I searched these online and found two really good sources for similar interviews that I will be conducting. The first was a post on the Sportsgirl website reviewing a freelance stylists job. The second was off the Dolly Magazine website, which has job reviews from all the staff members that work within Dolly. It was useful to see the responses for each question and how they differed from job to job even though the same questions were being asked. I have taken note of all the questions from these interviews and have started compiling my own list of suitable questions based on the research I undertook.

JB

Fawn Magazine - Week 8

I had a busy week this week working on several different elements of my project. I put the final touches and images into my marketing plan which is now complete. Completing the marketing plan for Fawn has also been extremely helpful in giving me the relevant information I need for the Fawn Magazine media kit.

I started designing and inputting information into several of the media kit pages this week and plan to finish it over the coming week. I scheduled this deliverable to be completed earlier in the project timeline as I require this document to give to the relevant public relations companies that have agreed to help me with Fawn Magazine. Giving them a media kit allows them to gather a greater understanding of what it is Fawn is all about, as well as presenting a professional image for the magazine.

Fawn Media Kit

Fawn Media Kit

To add to this professional image I created a company email to which I can direct and send all Fawn related emails from. Through this I then emailed several more PR companies discussing Fawn and asking if they would be interested in helping out. I have had a great response so far from the companies I emailed, and now have 4 PR companies on board willing to help.

From last weeks content outline I was able to develop a more detailed content plan of all the people or features that will be going into each section of the magazine. I have largely gathered most of the important resources for these sections, with only one main part(Featured Studio)still unconfirmed. I am waiting to hear back from a woman that has a photographic studio that may be willing to do a feature with the magazine.

I began to create some design sketches for all the page layouts for the magazine, which I found quite helpful in developing my style guide. At the moment I have created a Style Guide, although I am unsure about the font that I have used for the headings in the magazine, so I will continue to search this week for a suitable font to use for this. 

Style Guide Mock Up

Working from the design sketches I created last week for the Fawn website, I was able to start creating creative mockups for the website. As of yet I have only created the mock up for the home page, as most of the other pages will be very similar to this page. 

From the home page mock up I have been following a tutorial on Lynda.com about creating custom themes in Wordpress. It takes you through the process of creating the HTML and CSS for your website and then shows you where to input this information in between the PHP coding on the Wordpress themes. I spent several hours making my website design using Dreamweaver, and am quite happy with my result so far. The basic structure and colouring is there, I just need to focus on refining the smaller details.

Fawn Website - Work In Progress

Fawn Website - Work In Progress

Fawn Website - Work In Progress

 

 

I also need to research how I can have my most recent posts thumbnails on the website home page. At the moment I haven't found a plug-in or tutorial that covers this design, but I plan on continuing to look and if that fails I will see a lecturer that is more experienced in coding or Wordpress so that they are able to guide me in how to create this look.

Finally I set up the Fawn Magazine Facebook and Twitter pages, so that I can start implementing my marketing plan. I plan on posting regular content next trimester to gain awareness of the brand and build anticipation for the magazines release in December.

That's all for this week.

JB

Fawn Magazine - Week 7

This week I spent a lot of time working on my marketing plan and style guides for Fawn Magazine. 

The majority of this time was spent developing the content for the marketing plan, as I had already researched possible techniques it was more a matter of further detailing the techniques I want to use.

A large amount of marketing Fawn will be digital/online based. I find this extremely relevant to the project due to the fact that Fawn is an online magazine. Promoting the magazine through these avenues, such as Facebook and Twitter, will encourage people to visit the website and view the magazine due to it's instant accessibility through the Internet.

Other avenues that are going to be used for promotion are a company website, EDM (Electronic Digital Mail), an industry appearance, and a media write up. The later two options have become possible since the initial conception of Fawn. The industry appearance involves judging a fashion show for styleXpose which I have mentioned in previous blog updates. The media write up will be conducted by Sydney Party People (a review website) that will be doing a write up on Fawn Magazine. Thanks to Fawn's contributing writer Gaia Gardiner for setting up this opportunity with her contacts at Sydney Party People. Both these elements will help develop Fawn's reputation as well as create great exposure.

Lastly I am still hoping to arrange a magazine launch party for Fawn to happen in early Decemeber when the magazine goes live. I have not included the planning and execution of a launch party in my scope, as I still don't know if it will be possible due to lack of funding and limited budget. However during the final trimester I will be looking into whether or not I can gain sponsorship to cover the party's expenses, as I think it will be an invaluable form of marketing for the magazine.

The Fawn style guide is slowing coming together. As I mentioned in my last post, I was having trouble deciding on the theme I wanted to adopt for the magazine's design. After spending a few more hours on the style guide last weekend, I feel that the design is starting to come together and should be finished this week.

As well as working on this documentation, I also spent some time developing business card design concepts for Fawn. I wanted to keep it fairly simple, using a black and cream colour scheme, while including the Fawn logo and icon. Here are a few of the final versions of the business card. I will be developing the final design from these.

 

On top of this I spent time creating sketches for the EDM template, as well as the magazine layout sketches. Both are just rough layouts at the moment with multiple options. I am hoping to narrow the design down a bit after all the sketches are complete to develop the final designs.

Lastly I created a document with an outline of all the content that will be appearing in the magazine. This content outline defines what each item will be, and on what pages the item will occur. This gives me a good indication of how many pages the magazine is going to be all up. At the moment I am sitting on 66 pages, but I will possibly add more pages if I end up adding more sections to the magazine. There are about 3 or so possible content ideas that I need to further research before I plan to include them. 

That's all for this week.

JB

Fawn Magazine - Week 6

This week was largely dedicated to finishing off my project documentation. As usual bringing all the pieces together and laying it out in Indesign took longer than expected, but in the end I managed to hand in a project plan that I am really happy with. I had hoped to finish both my style guide and marketing plan by the end of week 6 as well, but was unable to spend the necessary time finishing them due to my project plan taking priority. I plan on finishing them off over the next week so that I can get client approval on them.

As well as working on documentation, I also began working on my website sketches. The most important thing I want from my website design is that it is easy to navigate. It is crucial that visitors of the site can easily access important information such as contact details, as well as being able to easily navigate to the actual magazine. I would also like the design to be fairly simple, as the main point of the website is to house the magazine. I don't want the design to compete with that of the magazine. 

At this present stage I have drawn up 6 page sketches, one for each page linking from and including the Home page. That includes the following pages Home, About Fawn, Gallery, Mag, Advertise, Contact Us. I am unsure of how the final design of the Gallery page will be as I don't know the full capabilities of Wordpress in regards to image galleries and video. I'll be researching that over the next week so that I am able to draw an accurate sketch of what the page will look like.

This week I also started working on developing the Fawn brand, by designing and developing an icon to use as a favicon on the website. This icon will also be used on any corporate identity such as business cards. One of the reasons I chose to name the magazine Fawn is because it is the name of a young deer. I thought that was a good representation of my magazine, fresh and young emerging into the world for the first time. This is also representative of the emerging designers and artists we are hoping to feature in every issue. I thought it would be great to tie the icon in with this definition by illustrating the silhouette of a fawn. I ended up researching images of fawns and eventually came up with the below design that I am extremely happy with. 

That's all for this week.

JB

My first DSLR

Well as some of you may already heard, I am now the proud owner of a Canon DSLR camera!

Yes that's right I took the plunge a couple of weeks ago (with the help of some generous relatives) and invested in a Canon 600D and 3 different lenses.

I chose the Canon 600D for a couple of reasons, it's 18mp, takes good HD video, and it fit comfortably in my hand compared to the 60D that felt a bit heavier. It also has a lot of the same functions as the 60D but for a cheaper price. 

As well as getting the 600D camera body, I also got 3 lenses (two came with the camera and one I bought myself). The camera twin lens kit came with 18-55mm lens and well as a 55-250mm lens. The 18-55mm lens is a good basic lens to start off with, as it give you a little bit of zoom when needed. The 55-250mm lens has a much larger zoom capacity, so is good for shooting objects that are further away or if you want to get quite close to your subject with out having to be standing on top of them.

As well as these lenses I opted to buy a 50mm lens as well, which is best for shooting portrait style photography. This is good when the ability to zoom isn't really necessary because you are in a controlled environment. You can just move yourself closer or further away depending on the desired shot. As there is no zoom on the 50mm lens this lens can take much sharper and brighter images then a zoom lens.

As well as getting the extra lens I also bought myself a 16GB SanDisk memory card, so that I can take lots of photos. My lecturer Leonard suggested that I should get a couple of smaller memory cards so that I can alternate between all of them when shooting in case one of them becomes corrupt. It sounds like a smart idea so I might go out and buy a couple of 4GB ones.

I would still really like to get a proper flash for my camera as well as a tripod and some reflectors so that I can be fully prepared when I shoot. However that might have to wait a couple of weeks until I have a little bit more money to burn!

JB

Fawn Magazine - Week 5

I spent the majority of week 5 doing the bulk of my project documentation and compiling my research from Survey Monkey.

All of the Fawn project documentation is due at the end of next week (week 6), this includes a project plan outlining scope as well as all the technical aspects of the project such as risks management, quality assurance and communication strategies. I spent a lot of week 5 paying close attention to my project documentation in the hope that I wouldn't have as much to work on in the last week. I managed to get a lot done, but still have about a third to go, so will finish that in week 6. The project plan needs to include a project budget which I have found quite hard to predict. As I have never produced a project like this before a lot of it is guessing how much time I think I will need for a certain task.

I compiled the research from my two surveys that were on Survey Monkey. I found the research really helpful, as it allowed me to develop a greater understanding of who my target market are and what they want from an online magazine. The majority of the survey responses indicated that my readers are low income earners, which means I should put a focus on affordable design within Fawn. A few other important points I have drawn from my research are that my readers prefer tidy layouts with a large amount of images focusing on experimental photography, and most importantly they want to be inspired by a magazines content. I think all the responses I gathered will help me create a unique magazine that is suitable and appealing for my target audience.

This week I was able to confirm a hair stylist for my shoots, so with her on board I now have all the necessary resources for these shoots. Although I have found enough resources for the initial shoots, I will still be on the look out for anyone else who is suitable as I will always need people to help out on future issues of Fawn.

I began researching possible shoot ideas for the magazine. As the issue will be releasing in December I am focusing on summer style shoots. My first idea was to have a desert style photo shoot, which seemed like an impossible idea as there are no deserts anywhere near Sydney. However after talking my friend Candice Basa I have been informed that the sand dunes in Cronulla would be prefect for a desert themed shoot. I want the outfits to be a bit tribal, focusing on earthy tones such as beige, rust and khaki. Think bronzed skin, chunky wooden jewellery, beading and thinly woven fabrics. I think it would be perfect for a summer issue. Below are a few inspiration images I found.

As well as a desert themed shoot I also wanted to do a graffiti art shoot, shooting models against graffiti art walls. As I plan on doing an article on graffiti art, I thought it might be a good shoot to tie in with the article. All white outfits were dominant at SS 11/12 Fashion Week, so I thought it would look great to shoot all white outfits against the graffiti art. Here are some research images below that have inspired my idea.

 

As well as researching content for the magazine, I also started drawing up my website wire-frame, in preparation for design sketches and page mock ups. I am aiming to have the website done by the end of this trimester so that I can start to properly promote Fawn Magazine.

JB