Artical Research

Here is my double page spread artical that i worte about Ally Mac the information is from these questions he answered for me.

Double page spread article research

Questions that i am going to ask ally

1.   How did you start getting involved in creating music?

2.   Why did you start?

3.   Do your family support you?

4.   What instruments do you play?

5.   Who is your inspiration, who do you inspire to be like?

6.   Would you still like to be involved with music in the future?

7.   Have you always been interested in indie music since you was younger?

8.   What would your dream job be?

9.   Describe your personality in 3 words

10.                     When you’re not singing what do you do in your spare time?

Double page spread article with Ally Mac

Ex lead guitarist for the thespians Alexanda Macdonald goes solo and takes the Wirral bars and pubs by storm. Performing in vanilla bar in Heswall, the boot in Liscard and various other venues in Merseryside, the up and coming “ally mac” is beginning to get well known and liked with the local public.

Ally Mac who started to become interested in Indie music around the age of 15 is now studying “popular music” at the university of Chester, by being in Chester university and studying this, has given Ally Mac a greater love for music than he already had. From a young age he was inspired by a large number of artists, one of his favourites being John Mayer- an American pop rock and blues rock musician, singer/songwriter, recording artist, and music producer.

The main focus of ally’s music at the moment is the acoustic guitar, this relates back to John Mayer as his first genre of music was acoustic rock. He is in the middle of writing his brand new album which is Indie rock, ally tries to put as much realism into his music and lyrics as possible.

Because Alexandra still lives at home, it’s sometimes hard for him to practice his music all of the time as he doesn’t have as much space and freedom as he would like, but considering all of this ally says his parents have always stuck by him and supported when he needed it. I asked ally what is it that he loves about music and he said “when I play, I forget about everything. It’s like a world of my own. There’s nothing better than writing from your heart and playing for people”. 

Not only does Ally play electric guitar and acoustic guitar he also plays the piano which he learnt when I was a young boy and percussion, he is very musically talented and says that he’d love to learn how to play the drums later on in life. Ally’s favourite bands and musicians are the Courteeners, Razor Light and The Arctic Monkeys. After being part of a band ally says that at the moment he is really enjoying being a solo artist and is getting some experience under his belt and then will decide in a couple of years weather he seriously would like to get involved with a band again or stay on his own.

Recently this week I have caught up with Ryan Vernon who is a big fan of Ally Mac and says that he went to a gig of Allys when he was part of the Thespians, and “really enjoyed him on guitar”. Ryan Vernon also adds that he now prefers ally being a single artist and thinks that he will go very far with this new album and more and more people will begin to love him.

I also spoke to a close friend of Allys- Harry Lamb, and he adds that Ally is a very down to earth lad and that he has time for everyone and his voice is extraordinary.

Nobody knows what the future holds for Singer /songwriter Alex Macdonald but lets hope he succeeds in his life long dream and fulfils his passion for music.

Screen shots of my front cover,contents and double page spread

These are my screen shots of my double page spread, they were done on Quark they are the only 2 screen shots that i managed to get. The screen shot at the bottom is before i added all of the detail and writting, once i'd added the writting i had to fiddle around with the stand first, quote and heading. This image that i used for my double page spread had to be cropped because at the side it had a lot of free space that wouldnt fit into the box for my picture.

These are my two print screens of my cntents page, the bottom picture is before i added colour and bold lettering to make it more exciting. Since i have now changed my font of the front cover title i now have to change the font on this contents page. i have no taken all of the full stops out after the numbers to make it look more like a professional magazine. 

This is my original phot that i first ever put onto to photoshop. thios is my first layer, which all my writting will be one.

This is my second print screen that i created because i have added my barcode, and $ of my coverlines. i done this by adding the barcode as a photo then correcting it to the right size. i have also added the font for the title and the coverline. the colour that i choosen was red because red yellow and white and black are in indie magazine, i found out this through my magazine research.

This print screen is where i started to add more colour i added the colour yellow because this is in my colour sceme, and add my main coverling "Alex Mcdonald". I used the italic tool to make the writting underneith my main headline slanted.

This stage is where i started to move my cover lines round a lot more, and also started to make this bold to make them stand out. i done this with the B tool on the left hand side of the page on photoshop. At this point i still think that my magazine still look eally bare and that i need more coverlines.

This is where my front cover starts to look much fuller i think. i have changed the font and size of my masthead becasue i think that the heading before wasnt good or bold enough for a music magazine. I'm happy with the change i made because i think that it stands out a lot more and it gives the magazine a bit more character and makes it more exciting to look at. i've also added another colour (white) and started to bold and italic things to make them stand out, also i have moved most of the cover lines to the left.

Here is where my magazine starts to look really good in my opinion because everything has come together and i have added a circular graphic in the top right hand corner. i dont this by the shape tool and then enlarging it to the size i was happy with, then i added text inside tghe graphic. the reason why i used the graphic is because i wanted to emphasise the fact that their was a free poster inside. Ive made all of the main parts in my coverlines bold and white and size 28pt whereas the other parts of my coverlines are 24pt and not bold. I have also added a drop shaddow on all of my coverlines and my heading, which is done by clicking on the layer at the right hand side of the screen. this is to add more detail and effect to my coverlines. so they are more intersesting and eye grabbing.

this is now my final print screen and its my finsihed version of my front cover, i have changed the front cover image because this image works much better on the front cover as ally is giving direct adress. i done this by creating a new layer and editing and cropping his head out on photoshop, so his head fits over my title "FANATIC". i did this by using the eraser tool on photoshop, i found this very hard as its really fiddley.

this is now my final version of my contents page. im really happy with this now becasue i have removed an image off ally and moved the insturments down so i could add an image of a live festival from summer into the middle. this makes it look much more like a music magazine. i done this on quark by simply moving the images and text boxes around. the clicking on "scale picture to fit box".