Cheerleading Brochure

For this project, I decided to do a brochure for the Roger Williams Cheerleading Team. I did this because in the past, we have had a problem with advertising and I was hoping that this brochure could help. Because of my specific topic, I decided to do this project alone instead of working with a partner. First, I started on the outside of the brochure. I added the text to the document by creating a text box and then altering the type. For the title, I used the font Perpetua Tiling at size 36 because it was easy to read but also very modern and stylish. I chose Papyrus at Size 24 for the word Cheerleading because it matched the font on our sweatshirts. For the back cover, I chose to use the font Nueva at size 30 for the quote. I chose this font because it seemed to match well with the title and the overall theme. For the text and titles throughout the brochure, I wanted to choose something legible and readable. I originally chose to do Perpetua Tiling MD at size 24 for the titles. For the text, I had Nueva Std at size 14. I brought this into class and showed it to the professor who informed me of some better options for font. After some alterations, I decided to change the title font to Perpetua at Size 24, and the text underneath to Optima at size 12. These fonts drastically improved the look of my brochure. At the bottom of the inside panel, I have the quote “In any other sport… all you miss is the ball.” I decided to make this Lucida Calligraphy. I did this because I usually see quotes as italicized and this font came close to that effect. The words, “In any other sport…” are in size 24. The words, “All you miss is the ball” are in size 36. I had to make these two different sizes because I wanted the first part of the quote to fit on one panel. I did this because when the brochure is only half open, I wanted to viewer to be intrigued to open the rest and finish the quote.

I added images to the brochure by creating an image box and then File → Place to put in the images. I originally had a very hard time finding out how to do this. It took me about an hour to find that File → Place was the combination that I needed to add the image. After I found this, I had a problem where I made my image box too small for the image. When this happens, the image does not display. It took me a while to realize what I had done wrong. When it was all figured out, I began to manipulate my images. The first image that I did was the hawk on the cover. I placed the hawk in Photoshop and selected it by clicking Select → Color Range, checking the box “Invert” and clicking on the white portion. This selected the hawk, which I then dragged to a new document. In this new image, I deleted the white background and sized it to fit the brochure by Image → Image Size. After placing the hawk, I decided that I wanted it to have pom-poms. I found an image of a clip-art cheerleader online and added the image to Photoshop. In Photoshop, I selected the cheerleader in the same way that I selected the hawk. Once I dragged the cheerleader into a new document with a transparent background, I erased the body and arms of the cheerleader, leaving only one pom-pom. I used the eye-dropper tool to color the pom-pom navy blue, which was the same color as the hawk. After saving the pom-pom, I colored the pom-pom the same gold as the outside of the hawk. I saved that version as a new image. I added each pom-pom to the brochure and placed them beneath the hawk by using the move tool. I added the image of the cheerleader to the back of the brochure in the same way that I added the other images. The cheerleader clip-art was originally black, so I used the eye-dropper tool to have the same blue as the hawk. Next, I began to work on the inside of the brochure. I added five images to the inside of the brochure the same way that I added the previous images. Each image was manipulated in Photoshop for a correct size and resolution. The large image on the brochure appeared too dark, so I brightened that image in Photoshop as well. I also increased the Sharpness of that picture to make it appear like it had a stronger resolution.

The background was the hardest part of this project. For the outside, I wanted to do a gradient for each panel. For the cover, I wanted it to fade from blue to white to yellow. I eventually figured out how to do this gradient. I did this by making the color that I wanted a swatch. I then made the color that I had selected blue, with the secondary color white. With the blue on top, I dragged the blue swatch into the Gradient on the left side. I then did the same thing to the yellow, but on the other side. I followed the same process with the white, but I placed this in the middle. After this, I had a gradient fading from blue to white to yellow. I added the gradient to the brochure, but I still was not satisfied with how it looked. I decided to play with the settings, and I liked the effect of the gradient feather. I added that to the gradient, which made it fade to white on one side. I decided to copy and paste the entire rectangle with the gradient in it, to create to gradients next to each other. I made the gradient feathers fade to white in the middle where the hawk would be. I was very proud of the final effect. In the middle panel, I created a radial gradient from yellow to white in the middle by using the same techniques. In the last panel, I created a gradient from blue to white to yellow. On the inside panel, I decided to create a large gradient across the entire background from yellow to white to blue. I did this because I wanted the reader to focus on the pictures and I didn’t want it to look too busy.

Overall, I liked Quark much better than Indesign. Indesign was very hard to figure out. Quark allowed for easier manipulation of images and fonts. I also liked Quark because I could figure out how to add effects to font. I wanted to add a drop shadow to my title but I couldn’t find out how to do this on Indesign. If I had the choice of which one to use, I would choose Quark.