My approach towards the double-page spread had the intention of using one photograph to serve as the main image that would fill both pages. This gives the reader a sense of spaciousness and visual pleasure as they take in the written content. With that in mind I needed a photo that was striking but also relatively empty in terms of mise en scene so that the text could be positioned around the subject without being imposed on by the surrounding composition. My first choice of photo is the one below. This mid-shot frames me in a central position which makes the rest of the frame open enough to place text around the subject.
Firstly I started by copying part of the article onto the page in order to gain an awareness of where I will distribute the text. The benefit of having a photo where the subject is centralised is that you can divide the text into smaller sections. Consequently this will make the feature seem less overpowering and a more accomplishable read. Furthermore it would create consistency over both pages rather than segregating the photo and article to different sides.
At this point I wanted to come up with a way of arranging the opening to my article. I gave the standfirst a bold highlight and also added a temporary title that just stated my artist's alias. The font of the headline is as you'll notice, relatively slim. For the moment I think that it compliments the tranquility of the photograph, but once my finished product is nearer completion I might need to adapt it to assert it's presence in a more visual form.
With the need to include at least 4 photos, I thought that I include an image on a smaller scale to offer additional insight into a subverted topic mentioned in the article. Since the main image is of the beach (referring to the new album Charming Shores) I concluded that it would be beneficial to incorporate a shot from the farm to act as a flashback relevant to the artist's progression.
In terms of its placement, I thought that it needed to be positioned somewhere that was unintrusive to the composition of the overall double page. This would mean forming the text over two columns to fit the image in the bottom corner. After I had done this, I encountered a problem; I was leaving too much space on the right hand side of the subject.
I scanned through my article and couldn't find a suitable point to divide it into different sections because each paragraph had a sense of incompletion when separated from the whole text. Therefore my plan to distribute smaller chunks of writing around the artist wasn't working entirely to plan.
Upon reflection I decided that if the subject was being centralised, he at least needed to have body language and expressions that conveyed significance, which in this particular photograph, I didn't. As a result I chose to find a new picture from my shortlist that either confronted this problem or offered an alternative to this particular layout style.
Instead of an image that keeps the subject in the centre of the frame I opted for a close up that placed their significance on one side of the page. This way the writing can be placed on the left. Rather than this resembling a layout where the picture is compacted onto one page and the text on an alternate page, I will place the text in the foreground of the picture so that it doesn't resemble two separate pages.
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