Digital Diary Leaflet

Here I have recorded a digital diary of the leaflet I made for my assignment. It was a leaflet to advertise the media company I had created for the project called Print Rose Media. The leaflet was created in Adobe Photoshop using photos I had taken previously on my 3.2 mega pixel smart phone camera. I used Photoshop as this is the best format for working with real photos and images and outputs into a bitmap format.

I started by taking two photos of Manchester I had taken previously. The first photo is from the gardens just outside of the Chetham’s School of Music. I framed this photo to show the light reflecting of the water and the whole scene at the time of the day as the sun was setting. The second photo was of a street in the China Town area, this is my favorite part of the city and this shows the signs and lights and busy nature of the street and culture. As the photos were at this point already printed I scanned them into the computer using a digital scanner at a dpi of 300.

Next i was ready to start in Photoshop. I opened up a new document in A4 size in portrait format. My plan was to create the back of my leaflet in one document, then the front in one document and then bring them together on a new document to create the completed leaflet. So at first i started with the back. I used the rulers in Photoshop to set some guidelines on my work space to help me align my leaflet. Next i brought the first image of the China Town street into Photoshop on a new layer and transformed it to fit into place using the guidelines. This can be seen below.

Next on a new layer I added a layer mask effect to the photo of a red colour hue. I think this worked well as part of the design and tied into the company name and logo designs including the red rose. This can be seen below.

Next on a new layer I added a thin rectangle and coloured it grey to use as a border between the image I would be filling the top of the page with and the text and logos I would be filling the bottom of the page with. I also on a new layer added some white box,s over the image, these would be too include text about the company and the work it does, as well as example images. The guidelines helped me arrange these box,s well. I put the opacity lower on the box,s so the original image could be seen and the design effect kept. These changes can be seen below.

The next step was to take examples of images of work I had done, including logos and posters I had created and restored photos and bring them into the document on a new layer for each. I then arranged the images over some of the white box,s. Fitting two images per box, though in hindsight this looked cluttered and i changed it too one image per box in a later edit. The added images can be seen below.

Then on new layers I added text to the remaining box,s of details about the company and what it does. On each row i alternated the order in which the images and text went to improve the design. I made sure the text and alignment was the same throughout . The text added can be seen below.

Next from using online resources I brought in the logos for web address,s and YouTube on new layers, transform re-sized them and combined them with text to add the website address and the YouTube page details of my media company. This can be seen below.

Finally on a new layer I added text giving the contact details and address  for the media company. I used the guidelines to make sure all these elements at the bottom of the page where aligned well. This completed the back of the leaflet which can be seen below. 

With the back of the leaflet done I moved onto the front. I opened a new document in the same way as before and brought in on a new layer my image of the gardens mentioned above. On the document for the front of my leaflet I again used guidelines to help the design. The first step can be seen below.

To keep the design consistent I added a new layer mask effect for the image and changed the colouring to the same red hue as used on the back. I also on a new layer added the same grey rectangle border. These changes can be seen below.

I then on new layer added the web address for the media company on top of the grey border and using larger text added the company name at the bottom of the page covering the lower part. Using text settings I made the text fill the bottom area. This can be seen below.

This was the front of my leaflet completed too. So to complete the leaflet I opened a new document, this time reversing the values to put it in landscape format and brought into the document on new layers the saved final images of the back and the front of the leaflet. Using guidelines I transformed the images to fit together exactly and each fill half of the page. This creating my final leaflet as can be seen below. 

I saved the files as jpeg. The leaflet here was saved at a resolution of 300 dpi for use for print. I also saved a lower quality resolution version to use as part of a website or online promo The lower resolution file was more compressed and could be easily uploaded and used in web work to take up less bandwidth. Where as the higher resolution files though bigger in size keep all the details and quality for presentation and to use as a printed leaflet. I have included images of the leaflet in a lower and then higher resolution zoomed in below.

For the leaflet I liked how i got to use my own images and I think the clean cut style, alignment and planned design worked well. I didn't like how the images looked a bit cluttered and squashed two per box and I wasn't sure about the font I used on the back text. I tried many different font styles but didn't really find one i was happy with.

If i was to to do the leaflet again I would either change the images on the back so they were only one per box or change the design to incorporate more images and I would work harder on the font and typography used .