Creating The Coram Boy Leaflet – Part 1

The poster was printed and displayed, and I was also asked to create the theatre program with the details of the play, cast and crew, etc. Below is evidence of client contact in the form of an email, detailing the initial ideas and instructions for the design.

From: “ALLAN, Sally” < sallan@mail.sis.edu.hk >; 
Sent: 14-11-2013 13:40:25
To: “CHAN, Bryan” < 14chanbn1@webmail.sis.edu.hk >; “LIN, Faye” < flin@mail.sis.edu.hk >; 
Cc: “CANNON, Helen” < hcannon@mail.sis.edu.hk >; 
Subject: FW: Programme Details

 Hello Faye and Bryan,

We nearly have all of the contents of our 8 page, A5 programme.

Bryan – would it be possible to meet with me and Faye and discuss a design for each page please. The option is to have some art at the bottom of each page based on either the close up photos of the fabric of Karina’s dress blended into the colour of the page. or, we could look at the idea of using the background used in the poster and the tickets as a blend at the bottom of each page…or as a full background on each page? Hopefully we can chat after sports day tmrw or after 3.10 today. Bryan -please reply all and let us know – thanks.

page 1 -front cover – is the Coram Boy poster

page 2 – is the children’s poem – also as on foam board

page 3 -is the ‘Coram Programme’ attached – this is a background to the Coram history

page 4 – is the cast list

page 5 is the choir/orchestra – to be sent

page 6 is the crew – to be sent

page 7 is the director’s thanks – tbc

page 8 – back page- is the mother’s choice page – also as on foam board

I knew that I had to use the software Adobe InDesign, which I owned, but I had never used it before. Although I had no knowledge with the software, I hoped that my general knowledge with the Adobe interface would help me.

I really should have done more of a plan here. I had a general idea of what I wanted it to look like, but I did not make a concise plan or draw out the design. I am not entirely sure as to whether or not it would have made too much of a difference as I did not encounter any major problems, but it would have been better to have a clear idea to work towards.

I started off with something that I knew, knowing that I would have to create a background to input into the program. I spoke to the client and she gave me some ideas for the background. The first was using the fabric from one of the character’s dresses, and the second was to use the same forest background used for the poster. She asked for both to incorporate the red and black color scheme of the poster.

Starting off with a photo of the dress fabric, I used the channels selection technique I learnt earlier to select and copy the translucent fabric pattern onto a new A5 document.

I then added on another image of a dress pattern, using the overlay blend mode to make it blend better with the background and other layers. I used color gradients and adjustment layers to get the hue and brightness right, layering on multiple adjustments.

The final look of the first background idea:

I actually quite liked this background, and I think it would have worked well as the background. I am not sure if the pattern would have conflicted with the text, as I did not try it, but aesthetically I think it looked nicer than the trees.

I also used similar techniques to create a background using the forest drawings:

In the end, the second background was selected as it had more in common with the poster, and the client wished for the common theme and images to be kept constant.

I then started the process of creating the leaflet using InDesign. I began by searching up some tutorials on getting started with Indesign:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-evangelists-terry-white/how-to-get-started-with-adobe-indesign-cs6-10-things-beginners-want-to-know-how-to-do/

http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/topics/indesign-tutorials.html

http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/publishing/articles/68233.aspx

http://www.ehow.com/how_5065632_use-indesign.html

I made the new document and filled in the settings specified by the client: A5 booklet with 8 pages. Then I placed in the page background which I had created before in Photoshop using the File > Place function. This function, as I learned, does not actively copy the image into the document but simply creates a reference link to the existing image file. That meant that I had to be careful to not move or delete any of the source files.

 

I then input the text by using the Type tool to drag out the outline of a text box, and then copy and pasting the text that had been sent to me, including the cast list, production crew, director’s thanks, etc. I adjusted the font using the font settings bar at the top, changing the font, size, word spacing, line spacing, alignment, etc. I repeated this process for all of the text until I was satisfied with the aesthetic.

In terms of the techniques used, I think the skills utilized here were rather basic, as I really only learned what was necessary to make the leaflet. However, I am not particularly able to distinguish the difficulty of it as I have no real prior knowledge of the software.

Although the text had been pasted in, the entire leaflet looked very bland and repetitive. I contacted the client to inquire about this problem.

From: “Bryan CHAN” < 14chanbn1@webmail.sis.edu.hk >; 
Sent: 21-11-2013 18:10:37
To: “ALLAN, Sally” < sallan@mail.sis.edu.hk >; “CANNON, Helen” < hcannon@mail.sis.edu.hk >; 
Subject: Coram Program

I’m a bit worried that the program doesn’t look very interesting. Do you have any suggestions of things I can add to the design before it is sent off?

From: “CANNON, Helen” < hcannon@mail.sis.edu.hk >; 
Sent: 21-11-2013 21:05:02
To: “CHAN, Bryan” < 14chanbn1@webmail.sis.edu.hk >; “ALLAN, Sally” < sallan@mail.sis.edu.hk >; 
Subject: RE: Coram Program

 Do we have any pictures of rehearsals for Page 7 ?  And then put MC on 8 as originally intended. You could add some of the token images- I have the books you could look at in DR1 office.

Ms C

The option of putting in rehearsal photos was suggested, but the images turned out to be too rough to put into the programme. So we decided to put in some images of one of the play’s motifs, orphan tokens. These included small items like coins, keys and other trinkets, and could be scattered throughout the pages.

I wanted to make the tokens quite large and have some of the text warp around the image, so I did some research on how to do this and came across some tutorials on using the text wrap function.

http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/text-wrap.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Wrap-Text-in-Indesign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzTM05bdNXI

http://layersmagazine.com/text-wrap-and-text-formatting-in-indesign.html

Now having gathered this knowledge, I set about creating the actual images to be used in the leaflet. I imported some images found online into photoshop so I could do some manual shadow and lighting work to make them fit in more.

I started with the image of the coin. I cropped out the bottom half, as the image would be on the bottom of the page. It would not have made a difference if I had not done this, but reduced the workload as I did not have to do the shadow for the bottom half. I adjusted the brightness and contrast and hue and saturation sliders to change the colors of the coin. Then I used the Transform > Skew tool to warp the shape of the coin to create the illusion of perspective.

After this, I used a black brush to draw shadows around certain areas of the coin, adjusting the opacity to make them look more realistic. I also used the drop shadow on the layer effects on the coin itself to add to the shadow.

I then altered the layer blending options to make the shadows more realistic, changing them mostly to the darken or multiply options for a stronger shadow.

I repeated this process for 3 other tokens. After having created the images, it was time to put them into the InDesign document.