Anyways - Zine development

We created a group Pinterest board (fig.1) for the overall project, but in particular the zine. This allowed us to have reference images when doing the photoshoot, developing the video and then when designing the zine to ensure that all of the project remained consistent.

Figure 1

Emma Shuffleton started by making some initial ideas for the zine to act as visuals based on the mood boards that we had created on Pinterest. The aim was to create something that physically related to the brief other than the visuals that would make up the content. To match the video, a 16:9 ratio was thought to be a good solution but this would be 1920 x 1080 px - a little too large for a zine. We decided that the ratio should be used so that when opened up it would be 16:9, but when folded around the same size of A5. 

Emma Shuffleton "Figure 2 is very different from the rest of the designs, using a pastel colour scheme with small, delicate text however, it wasn't really the aesthetic we were looking for when creating this zine. We wanted the design to be much bolder and really emphasising the biscuits with a bright colour scheme. Figure 3 and 4 used a similar design style with text being overlaid on the photographs, experimenting with using different colours. I liked the idea of the text disappearing into the background in Figure 3, keeping the emphasis on the photograph and using the text as more of a decoration. I also quite like the idea of placing a short quote over the top of an image in a bold typeface in Figure 4 although I feel this may take away too much from the photography which is the main aspect of this zine. I created Figure 5 with the idea that this could be a double page spread in the centre of the zine or the front/back cover as it displays our main colour scheme as well as briefly explaining our main concept for this project. For Figure 6 we had the idea of creating our own script handwritten typeface using an iPad in order to contrast the bold sans-serif typeface used throughout the rest of the zine with the yellow being colour swatched from a custard cream in the picture on the next page. Figure 7 is a slight adaptation from Figure 3 and 4 using the idea of overlaying text on photography however, I dotted the text about randomly rather than in an organised fashion. I also lowered the opacity of the image in order for the text to stand out due to white text not standing out at all therefore having to use a darker colour that is not legible when the image is at 100% opacity. The only issue with this design idea is that we wanted the images to be bold and be seen hence lowering the opacity that's this away from the design. 

Figure 8 - 10 use a similar design style with the use of colourised images. Each image has been colourised in order to emphasis the colour scheme that will be used throughout all the platforms in this project. Figure 10 uses a darker orange however, we are hoping to use pink, yellow and accents of blue rather than the orange pictured here. Figure 8 shows an overlay of image and text to show how the colour scheme would work, using the paler pink image as the background, the blue text overlaps creating a strong contrast making the text highly legible. I made a small typography graphic in order to mix up the way in which the text can be placed on the page. Figure 9 and 10 shows another way the colourised images can be used, having the images full bleed on one side and a blank page for a quote on the other side of the double page spread. The text has been colour swatched from the colourised image. There was also the option to overlay more text on the image however, this could be too crowed plus this takes away from the detail of the image as can be seen in Figure 9. Although, I do really like the aesthetic to this double page spread."

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10

Development 

As a group we discussed the initial zine idea and agreed that the more simplistic but bold approach to designs were the strongest and related the most to our concept and visual style. Emma continued in another document to look at the sequencing of the preferred design styles and ensure that there wasn't too much repetition and that a good balance of colour use and typography was achieved within the zine. Having decided upon the colour scheme of pink, yellow and blue we were able to develop a theme for each page. 

Although this layout was becoming more developed, we decided that we wanted the zine to be more photography focused and in order to do this we needed to do a new photoshoot of biscuits that can be used purely for the purpose of the zine. 

Zine photoshoot:

During the filming we took a number of pictures that we thought we could use for the zine, but upon revision they did not fit our aesthetic. This was due to the lighting set up, the images came out either too saturated or dull - as shown in the images below.

As we started to design the zine we realised that the photos we had did not fully fit the style that we wanted so we thought that planning another photoshoot would be good. We hired out the backdrop and a camera and Sophie took some more photos based on the mood board that we put together. 

Mood board for the photoshoot:

Photoshoot set up:

Some of the unedited photos: 

Zine further development:
After the photoshoot we all decided to spend around an hour each to come up with some designs focusing mainly on the layout. We all met up and then discussed what we liked and took some elements from each of them to create a zine that had a consistent style and a good sense of harmony and balance.  

My ideas:
For the first and last two pages of the zine I thought that a full spread of text would look interesting and contrast well to the photo focused zine. I had a think about what could be said and decided that one section could be tea/tea break snacks and then the other section could be focused on biscuit facts. 

Tea facts

When Eastenders comes to an end five times a week, the national grid has to deal with around 1.75 million kettles requiring power at the same time in the UK to make a cup of tea.

Low Tea is “posher” than High Tea. Low tea was served on low lounge chairs and sofas with low tables, and high tea was served on high chairs around a table. In Britain we drink 165 million cups of tea a day. That’s enough to fill about 20 Olympic swimming pools. The uncurling of tea leaves when hot water is poured on them is called “the agony of the leaves”. Official UK figures report that 37 people went to hospital for tea cosy related injuries in 1999. 80% of office workers say they find out more about what's going on at work over a cup of tea than any other way. The number of recommended cups of tea to drink each day is 4, this gives you optimal benefit. Tea is a natural source of fluoride that can help protect against tooth decay. 7% of people are so picky about how they drink their tea they wouldn’t let anyone else make it for them. Adding tea to milk originated because early tea drinkers didn’t want to mess up their porcelain. Milk was put into the cups first to take some of the heat out of the tea, so that cups wouldn’t crack. Now, 93% of tea is taken with milk in the UK. There are more uses for tea than just drinking it. Cold tea is said to be good for taking the sting out of sunburn.

Biscuit facts

Each British household buys an average of 96 packets of biscuits a year and a whopping 420,000 tonnes of them were eaten in 2016. Manchester is the biscuit capital of Britain with 96% of people having one every single day and sales across the country reached £1.8billion last year. Prince William and Kate’s wedding cake was made by McVitie’s out of 1,700 Rich Tea biscuits and 17kg of chocolate. A study found that nearly half of people had been injured by a biscuit - most from scalding themselves while dunking, with the custard cream the main offender. According to a survey for National Biscuit Day, 83 per cent of people say they would rather eat a biscuit and a cuppa than go out on a date. It was also the first biscuit to be eaten on the moon… by Buzz Aldrin. 71 million packets of Digestives are sold every year in the UK. That’s 52 scoffed every second. Developed in Yorkshire during the 17th century, Rich Tea biscuits were designed as a light snack for the upper classes to enjoy between meals. McVities recently dropped the bombshell that Chocolate Digestives have the chocolate at the bottom of the biscuit, not the top. Biscuits used to be popular with sea explorers as they stayed fresh for so long, forming part of the staple diet for sea voyagers.

Photo editing:

We placed the unedited images on an Indesign document with the layout that we wanted to have as our final zine. Emma then placed them all in Adobe Lightroom Classic and edited one of the images to the visual style that we were aiming for and then used that as a reference image (fig.1+2) to then ensure that all of the images had the same pink and level of vibrance. 

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Below are the images that we chose to be part of the zine and then edited individually in Adobe Lightroom. 

Fig 3

- creases in the backdrop 

- shadows in the background are hard to edit out 

- editing made it over exposed

- different to the other images in the zine so it worked to be left and not edited too much 

Fig 4-6

- started too purple and too bright 

- made dark and more pink 

All other figures show the comparison from before editing to after. 

Fig 23 + 24

- options for the double page spread

- an image we took whilst filming to tie it all together again back to the ident 

- 23 was too over exposed and dark 

- 24 fit the visual style much better

Figure 3

Figure 4, 5 & 6

Figure 7 & 8

Figure 9 & 10

Figure 11 & 12

Figure 13

Figure 14, 15 & 16

Figure 17 & 18

Figure 19 & 20

Figure 21

Figure 22

Figure 23

Figure 24

Final zine:
We took pages from each of our own development as inspiration and put together the final zine together. We decided to dedicate two double page spreads to purely text based design which listed a number of facts first relating to tea and then to biscuits. The rest of the spreads were laid out using different layouts to avoid repetitiveness or the zine becoming to predictable.

- not to use the same brand of biscuit on the same spread
- no text with the images
- bold block colours for the front and back page = ties the colour scheme together
- printed on sturdy stock 
- bound using saddle stitch
- opened out to a 16:9 ratio