Level 2 Print Media Production

So far you've Analysed Proposed Pitched Designed and you're now in a position where you have A First Draft Front Cover A First Draft Article Time to swing back to working on your FRONT COVER - there's no avoiding the fact that you need INDESIGN TIME - the thought that you'll get the design aspects of your magazine ready in a week is for the birds - not gonna happen. You're only spending about five or six hours a week in here and you'll need it to improve your skills. Well aware that when left to your own devices you'll mainly muck around on your own devices I want this creative process to unfold like this. 1. Open up a new blogpost. Call it 'Print Production Week 5 - Front Cover Second Draft' 2. Open up your First Draft of your front cover in Indesign, and open up your production diary from the week you created it (Week 1). Are you still going to stick with your original draft layout or are you going to change it? If you want ...

Okay, on your magazine production work you should have - Done a DRAFT LAYOUT and FIRST GO of your FRONT COVER - PITCHED the article you're going to write. - WRITTEN a FIRST DRAFT of that article & sent it me. - Done a DRAFT LAYOUT for your ARTICLE While you wait for me to edit your article and send it back to you, it'd be a good time for you to continue experimenting with Indesign towards making a FIRST ATTEMPT at laying your article out on the page. Complete this part in the following way. 1. Open up a new blogpost. Call it 'ARTICLE FLAT PLAN' 2. Paste in your DRAFT LAYOUT and just add the sentence. 'This is the draft layout I will be working towards'. 3. Using Indesign or Photoshop, try putting the text from your FIRST DRAFT together with pictures to compose your magazine pages. You'll need your draft layout open so you know where things should go - your first attempt should be roughly to your layout. You should be averaging about 500-8...

So, you've proposed a magazine, had a first go at designing a front cover, have pitched a suitable article for your magazine giving yourself a word-count and deadline . . . . it's now time to do the most important part of being a writer/journalist - get your bum in the chair and WRITE. Complete this week's post in the following way.  1. Open up a new Blogpost. Call it 'PRINT MEDIA PRODUCTION WEEK 3: WRITING MY FIRST DRAFT. 2. Write your article in MSWord according to your pitch. Aim for your full exact wordcount, although 10% above or below that wordcount is acceptable. Give it a headline, and get your byline in there too. A few pointers at this early stage . . ..  READ similar articles, they'll give you guidance as to the kind of tone to strike.  READ your own article before sending it to me. Does it flow? Does it have rhythm or is it unwieldly and stilted? Are you getting out of breath reading anything - if so, you need to break that pa...

You've finished your proposal, as well as a first go at your front cover as well as a diary-entry. It's now time to also think about the ARTICLE you're going to write for your magazine. Nobody for any mag or newspaper simply writes things without first checking that someone is going to run it. The way writers do this is by writing an email to their editor where they PITCH an article for consideration that they want to write. It's a vital part of pre-production for a magazine (often pitches are discussed at editorial meetings - remember the preproduction stage for print media products?) so it's something that I feel is essential for you to do also. I want you to pitch the article you're going to write and design for your proposed magazine. You'll do this as follows. 1. OPEN UP A NEW BLOGPOST. Call it 'PRINT MEDIA PRODUCTION: WEEK 2' 2. Add the heading 'THE PITCH'. Then using these headings tell me the following . . . .  WHAT I WANT...

Until we get Indesign up in this room it's going to be tricky to actually complete design elements of this unit - however initially you just have to PLAN it which doesn't require Indesign. Complete this part in the following way and remember to carefully give the post the right title. The moderator is going to want to see a Print Production Process that goes from Week 1 through to Week 8. Complete this first part of your Print production process in the following way. 1. Open up a new blogpost. Call it 'Print Media Production Week 1'. 2. Insert the subheading - 'FRONT COVER DRAFT LAYOUT'. Have a look at this, yes I made it in MSPaint, I'm an old man. But it's a basic draft layout of how I think the front cover of my mag should look (yes I'm making a mag too). As you can see, it points out where images are going to go and where text is going to go and that'll do.  HAVE A LOOK AT A MAGAZINE - you'll find there's a bit ...

Here's a few Indesign tutorials to help you get started. Remember - we're just playing.  Here's a few short tutorials from Adobe themselves And here's some longer vids. I know you'll get annoyed with their voices or SOMETHING. Can't help that, sorry. 

You probably won't know who this is. This is  Daphne Caruana Galizia , a journalist from Malta who wrote stories about the ties between organized crime, government and gambling in Malta. In 2017 in mid-October she was killed in a car-bomb attack, suspected to be the work of the mafia. She was killed for telling the truth.  You possibly also won't know who this is. This is Mahzer Mahmood , a journalist for the Sun and the News Of The World who has been writing undercover-stories for them for decades, often stories he's got by posing as an Arab business man ('fake sheik' was his nickname) and doing 'sting' operations on celebs  (selling drugs, offering business deals) and others to entrap stars and gain information. He was convicted in October last year of perverting the course of justice by publishing false-information that prejudiced a court case. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for lying in print and getting his stories in ways that bro...