Page - Coffee shop and area focus

Rather than review each and every cafe in detail, I came up with the idea of a regular feature within my magazine that looked closely at one independent in particular and promoted it whilst giving an honest opinion. There is a question over whether this feature could be sponsored in the future and therefore generate an income for the publication, however for now I am content with the idea that readers of the journal can send in their own favourite cafes and recommendations through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram via their hashtag features.

The finished pages were something that I worked on as one and only separated them for printing, because these two pages are effectively going to be viewed as one whole spread within the magazine. I feel that the flow between these two pages is effective and this is due to the fact that I designed both of them with the other in mind. The colours, although different on each page, were chosen using an eyedropper tool from one to the other. Initially, I designed the Suzzle page first, then proceeded to complete the Brick Lane page by taking various colours and swapping them around to create something that corresponds. I really tried to make the bean print connect between the two pages, however this wasn't working for me and will try and fix it in the future. This small detail though was easy to overlook and probably wont be noticed by the reader.

The illustrations work well within the piece and I was glad that I chose not to fill them in as the line art is just as effective. I did create an under-layer on Photoshop then changing the properties to get the final result seen in the image below, but this is much more subtle.

I kept it simple with the titles, choosing to use a simple heading format for the Suzzle page and almost replicating that for the Brick Lane one. The original idea for the Brick Lane page was to create a pattern with the text so that it replicated a brick wall, however this with the photographs and the bean print was just too much and I resorted to just confining this to the bottom of the page, leaving the tapered edge to retain the effect.

Changing the colours of the images was definitely a spontaneous thing, as is most of my decision making relating to design as much of it is done on Photoshop as and when it looks best. The differing effect of the photographs is not too fussy and instead adds a contemporary feel to the double spread which balances out the illustrations nicely. Referring back to the Flint magazine that was sent to me from Norwich University of the Arts, I noticed a lot of manipulating photo's within that to remain a single colour, which is what inspired me to edit the bottom photo to a blue hue. Note: both these picture from different cafe shops in Brick Lane were taken by myself when exploring the cafes within this area.