Two-Page Spread Format Plans/Drafts

 Now that the research on what the content of the articles in the tech genre of magazines is like, it is time to make the draft for the two-page spread's layout. There will be three drafts in total with all of them being drawn by hand.

Sketch #1 -

The idea for this sketch was to emulate the design of these two pages:

The reason for this is because the article will be in steps and is a tutorial for getting something done, just like this article, so if a similar layout is used but with just different content, it would be perfect.

The title of this article will be "Steps for Overclocking a PC", as it is short, simple, and tells the reader exactly what they should be expecting. There will be headings for each step with a number and text for each step, just like in the example article above.

The color scheme of this spread will break from the blue, red, and white combination of the TOC and cover and will instead feature white, red, and black, with white being the background, black being for the letters, and red being for the title and headings. The reason why this change was made is because it is exasperating to see the same bright blue background for every single page, so it was changed to white for the actual articles.

There will be no pull quotes included in the spread as they are very unnecessary since it is only a tutorial article.

There will be drop caps included, which are the enlarged numbers. This is because they will be excellent for guiding the reader's attention throughout the different steps of the article.

There will be page numbers included on the pages which will be 23 and 24, as it says that this article starts on page 23 on the TOC.

As for the fonts, everything will be kept in the same sans serif fonts as the cover and TOC, except this time the title of the article will be a serif font. The reason for this change is that it allows for the title to be more distinguished and stand out more from the rest of the text.

The images for this article will simply be images of what the software that will be used in the tutorial looks like. This is because it will help readers understand what the process should look like for them. There will be an image for every change that is made so readers can ensure that they are following the correct steps.

The layout of the article allows for readers to read top to bottom for each column going from left to right. The article title was positioned in the top left and made large so that it is definitely the first thing that will be seen.

Sketch #2 -

For this design, a whole new approach was taken. Firstly, the use of vertical bars was implemented in order to split up the different steps and make it look like each step is secluded and not part of the other. Additionally, all of the images were split up unlike the previous layout as it might be beneficial to scatter the images throughout the spread rather than clustering them in one small area.

What elements that were changed from the previous layout include:

The title was changed to "How to Overclock your Computer". The reason why the title is different from the previous title is that the title is now meant to stretch horizontally across the whole first page, so it needed to have longer words to achieve this, but it also needs to be able to get the idea across to the reader.

The layout has a different way of being read as the previous layout. Instead of being read mostly horizontally, this layout makes the reader have to read vertically in the many different columns. The title of the article's format was also changed so that instead of taking a small amount of space and being very concentrated, it now is a lot wider and takes up the width of the entire first page.

Sketch #3 -

For this sketch, the idea was to have an image for each step and have the layout more "blocky" with each step having its own block. The same bars from the previous layout were implemented, but instead they are a lot thinner now to allow for more space used for images and text. The article title and text directly underneath it are kept the same as sketch #1 as well.

What elements that were changed from the previous layout include:

The title was changed back to the title used in sketch #1 as it is supposed to not take as much space since there are more images.

As for how this layout is supposed to be read, each steps content will be read from top to bottom, but to transition from step to step, the reader will have to go from left to right, then down.

Conclusion -

In this process, the basic layouts of the two-page spread were drafted, although sketch #3 appears to be the best option to choose moving forward. This is because it is in a lot more simple of a format and readers will easily obtain the information they desire. All of the layout aligns with the conventions of tech magazines except for the serif title, as serif titles aren't as suited for tech magazines since they give an "old" feeling when tech magazines are meant to be more mdoern.