Double Page Spread Text Draft

Here is a draft of the article on the double page spread:

JUST REPLAY member Rimona has revealed to Music Core that the musical superstars will be soon making their long awaited and anticipated comeback and that their upcoming, as-of-yet-untitled album will be a vast change from their previous albums.

   The  duo have been out of the spotlight for over 18 months, but they weren’t just slacking off; they have been working intensely and meticulously on their forthcoming album. They are currently working on their third studio album  (scheduled to release at the beginning of January)  at the Siwa Entertainment Empire Studios in New York with Grammy Award winning producer Aiden Lee.

   ‘With this album we wanted to show to the world just how much we have grown musically in the past few years’,  reveals Sangma as she takes a break from editing.  ‘With our past few albums, we’ve been producing them with the attitude of learning and experimenting … this time, we’re going to put together all we’ve learned and really let our fans to feel the maturity in the quality of our music.’

   ‘This is the first time we’ve been able to go through each and every aspect of the album with a fine tooth comb. Usually, we just get three months for recording, mixing, filming the music video, etc and it’s always just been rush, rush, rush, got to finish this, got to start that ... We’ve never been able to go through our songs like this and get everything as refined and as amazing as possible.’ Rimona explains. ‘For this album, we allowed ourselves the time and luxury of exploring each and every part of all the songs and really making sure that everything including the lyrics, the layering, the arrangement, the beats, the melody and everything were perfect and conveyed exactly what we wanted to convey to our listeners. It's a great feeling.’

   ‘And especially, this time, we have gone in a completely different direction from our last two albums, so I’m very excited to see how our audiences will respond to that.’ says Sangma anticipatively.

   The duo are infamous for being the chameleons of the music industry and coming back with a different sound and theme each time and have confided in Music Core that this time, instead of having one theme for the whole album, they’ve combined a number of different themes.

   ‘For this album, we wanted each  song to have it’s own story and be unique. Also, we’ve both always wanted to explore all aspects of music and didn’t want to be restricted to a particular sound, so we ending up trying out a variety of genres and styles in this album,  while still keeping elements of our own identity and music style incorporated in the album.’ Sangma explains.

  ‘And we’ve collaborated with many songwriters that we admire and have been wanting to work with like Norah Jones, Imogen Heap, Bruno Mars, Ryan Tedder, and Rodney Jerkins.  We’ve also worked with Far East Movement whom we’ve always admired for their amazing beats. I really believe that this album is something special and different - we’ve got songs with our standard indie/pop vibe; songs with touches of  R’n’B melodies; subtle hip hop beats; rock attitude; slow songs; fun, upbeat songs; as well some that are just acoustic and really simple and light - so it really is just a huge combination of different sounds and  different worlds within the music industry. Trying to skilfully manoeuvre a balancing act between all the different genres was hard but I genuinely do think it ended up creating something really beautiful and exciting. It’s one of those albums that you can just pop on and it’s guaranteed to have at least one or two songs that completely matches your mood at that moment in time. I don’t think there’s anything like it in the market at the moment.’ says Rimona excitedly.

   ‘With this album, we really did just go all out . We’re both strong believers of the saying ‘Never a failure, always a lesson’ and we just want to learn as much as possible now so that we can continue to provide great music to everyone in later years and just keep evolving musically. I think that the attitude to always be willing to learn and experiment is very important to surviving in the music industry as it’s ever-changing and people’s tastes and trends are always changing. We just wanted to give our audiences something fun and different.’ Sangma says.

‘I think out of all our albums, this is the one that I’m most excited for. I cannot wait for it to hit the shelves! I mean, we wanted this album to really be a masterpiece and make our listeners feel something special through listening to our songs. After all, they say that ‘words make you think a thought, music makes you feel a feeling and a song makes you feel a thought.’ We hope that we can connect to our audiences and just let them feel the music that we have created for them. Because of this, we worked extremely hard on this album and just tried our best because ‘a genius can’t win a hard-working person’, right?’ Rimona says with an easy smile. ‘There’s also another saying that says you must concentrate on doing your best, not being the best - and that is exactly what we tried to do. We hope our efforts pay off and that everyone likes what we came up with this time around.’

Just Replay’s fourth album will be out in stores in early January so be sure to hit the music stores and purchase this incredible comeback album because from the preview we heard—it’s definitely going to be on replay worthy.

Rough Draft of the Double Page Spread & Evaluations from Peers

Before continuing on the drafting of the article, I decided to first focus on the layout of the double page spread and see if the photographs look as planned. Here are the rough drafts:

After doing the rough draft, I decided to review it before going any further. To get an objective view of the spread, I asked some friends and peers to have a look at the pages and fill out an evaluation form about what they think. Here are 2 examples of the evaluations that I have scanned:

Contents Page Draft using DTP

Here is the first draft of the contents page after being constructed on DTP:

Front Cover Draft using DTP

Since I got all my pictures and plans ready, I went on to constructing the front cover on the computer using DTP. Here is the first draft of the front cover:

First Rough Draft - Experimenting with Colour Schemes

At first, I had wanted a red and black colour scheme to match the more rock/indie genre of the magazine and so I started constructing a rough draft with this colour scheme to see how it looked.

 

 However, I came to realise as I was constructing the draft that the colours looked too harsh and aggressive, which was not I wanted to convey to the audience. The magazine was meant to be represent all music genres but with more indie/rock focus and influences, however, the red and black colour scheme was enforcing the rock theme too heavily due to its aggressive and angry connotations. Also, the red would not go well with the green backdrop of the pictures. Therefore, I decided to substitute the red for green. I felt that green was a better choice as it represented the 'darker' genres of indie and rock, yet not so heavy as to completely exclude the pop and hip-hip genres. Also, according to psychological colour properties, green represents 'balance', which I felt fit the magazine nicely as I did not want the magazine to be too discriminative in regards with genre - I wanted the magazine to focus on good music and talented artists rather than just genre. 

Here is the draft I made with the new colour scheme:

 

Editing the Pictures: Before & After

Image source: http://saitraining.co.uk/trainingLightroom.html

For the magazine, I edited several of the photographs taken due to problems with lighting, colouring, etc. I edited the pictures using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 - a program often used by professional photographers. Here, you can see the photographs as they were normally and the photographing after the manipulation - the before and after.

Before:                                                                                                         After:
                                         

 

  

Taking the Photographs

Preparing for the shoot! :)

After having planned the photoshoot and doing the pencil drafts, I decided to go ahead and take the pictures. I wanted the images to be in a studio so I asked to borrow the studio in the Art Department at my school. I also, borrowed some of the props required from the Music Department such as mics, guitars, and headphones.

I found my models through asking my friends ... I chose them based on who suited the look I was going for the most. After choosing my models, I briefed them on the type of clothes, colour of the clothes and the make-up I wanted for the photoshoot and then we carried out the photoshoot a couple days later. Here are the results:

    

 

To make my models achieve their specific looks, we used the help of make-up to convey their concepts. Here is the make-up we used!

I had originally wanted to borrow one of the professional DSLR cameras from Art Department, however, the camera I had borrowed was not working, therefore, I had to use my own camera - the Canon IXUS 750: