Jamie has made a great job of his magazine article and front cover.
This is the opening double page spread of the article, and is designed to grab the reader's attention as he / she browses the magazine.
Jamie has paid close attention to how articles are laid out in PSM3 magazine.
He has included repeating headers and footers, pull-quotes, drop capitals and side bars / sub-articles.
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Colour has been particularly well handled, with muted grey/blue and browns. A subtle brick wall texture has been knocked back, to add more interest to the white space.
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The article was laid out in the following open source software:
dtp - Scribus;
vector drawing - Inkscape;
image manipulation - Gimp.
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Jamie put a lot of effort in to preparing the images for his front cover.
Sarah's main image was too small to use, without noticeable pixellation. To solve this she took it in to Inkscape and did a vector trace of it. It was then possible to scale it to a usable size.
A super front cover, missing only a bar code.
Calum's article is carefully assembled, with all the elements you'd expect used well - sub-headings, pull-quotes, capitions, headers, footers and graphics integrating with text.
This is the opening double page spread of the article, designed to grab a reader's attention.
Pages three and four of the article.
The final two pages of the article include a sub-article / side bar, on each page. The side bars are easily identified by having a gray background.
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Jennifer's magazine article features Guy Ritchie's film 'Rock 'n Rolla'. She's made a really good job of it.
This is the opening double page spread of the article, where Jennifer has done a 'vector trace' of the main image, to allow her to manipulate the colour of each layer of the trace, and enlarge the image without having problems with the pixels. A rich textural effect is also achieved.
In the second double page spread of the article, Jennifer has made the background texture less pronounced, achieving a difference in value from it to the text, to allow the text to be easily read.
Jennifer has opted for a very wide column of text on the verso page, and a two column layout on the recto. This is unusual in 'Empire' magazine, which most often employs three columns. Nevertheless, the lines of text aren't too long to make them difficult to scan over.
In the third double page spread Jennifer has included two side bars / sub-articles, featuring information about two of the actors. This helps achieve an asymmetic balance in the layout.
Throughout the article, Jennifer has been very consistent in her use of sub-headings, body text, background colours etc., and has achieved visual unity. Repetition of the 'bullet' header, and the pale footer also help this.
Her use of line elements has been particularly effective, with a thick white line bordering images, and bounding large text elements.
