Evaluation.

  

My finished double page spread I feel works very well, it fits the brief and in my eye very well proportioned in layout. I think that my use of the 9 column grids made the piece work very well and really attracts the attention to the imagery and title to begin and then to the information. I also think that the gutters/margins work well in separating the images and text along with the lines. I feel the layout design is consistent throughout my double page spreads. I think the black and white imagery worked well with my chosen theme about the issues in the coastal environment and signified the dinginess of litter very well. I also feel that my imagery worked well with telling its own story from my inspiration of Dave Gibbeson and William Eckersley.

If I could change anything about this piece it would be to maybe have tried out a more unique layout and also experimented with colour to see how that would have worked.

After looking at the piece overall I feel like although It could be improved it does fit the brief well and is a well proportioned layout design and signifies the point I was getting across.

Step By Step.

Here is my step by step of how I will be creating my double page spreads I have taken into consideration what I am trying to signify and with my photos and research I will be putting together my work to fit the brief I have been given.

Firstly I began with my grid I decided to work in millimetres as for me that was the best measurement to work in personally. I decided on a 9 column grid. 12mm bleed and 5mm margins. I decided on this grid asI found it would work well for a magazine and work well for a well balanced layout. Here are some of the steps I carried out.

When creating my grid I decided to change the size of the inner margin to 12mm as the magazine is 200×200 I thought it would work better with my layout.

From my initial layout sketches I placed my images in cropping them to fit my grid. I found that on this piece the image of the beer can needed to be cropped to fit the layout of my text and header so I decided to change it a crop to size.

 

I found this worked well and I believed that it was well proportioned to the text and the imagery throughout. I decided to keep to the black and white theme to signify the dullness and who dirty beaches in Britain can be.

When I created my second double page spread I decided there was something missing. I played around with adding further imagery relating to the article I had written to make sure the signified and the signifier worked well together.

This worked well I kept gutter space in-between the images to make them balanced and lined them up with the text to ensure a consistent layout throughout. However I still thought there was something wrong. I looked at my choice of fonts for my header, sub header and paragraphs and realised I had used both serif typefaces. So I decided to research what typefaces work well together in and editorial and found that using a serif and sans serif typeface on the same page work well together as a contrasting font so I tried out typefaces and found Gill Sans instead of Big Carlson. This worked very well so I decided to use this consistently throughout my spreads.

After doing this I realised that I wanted my sub header to not be the main focus so to use a different style of Gill Sans which was the light version. This worked well at giving the subtitle the 2nd main focus of typography which was intended.

I then came to these outcomes. I decided to give some finishing touches by editing the titles and overhang the speech marks to give it more a magazine look. I also noticed a capital letter on beaches and changed that.

From this I noticed that in my text there was too much spacing throughout and was not proportionate this needed to change I also noticed the title of ‘British beaches’ the lettering wasn’t aligned correctly so from this I have decided to align my text to the left and also make sure the title was aligned properly as well as the over hang of the speech marks.

At this stage I then realised that there was a inconsistency with the spacing in-between the imagery (left side) so I need to make sure that is consistent.

Here our the final outcomes.

My Article.

From putting together my research and survey I have managed to come up with this article to relate to my theme and photographs.

For the majority of people in Britain the beach is a place to have fun, relax and a place of beauty to visit with the family. However environmental problems that litter is causing to our beaches and our wildlife is getting worse day by day.

After carrying out an anonymous survey on how many people have dropped litter in their lifetime was a shock. Every person I asked out of 50 people have dropped litter at least once in their lifetime. If you imagine if everyone in Britain dropped one piece of litter on our beaches in one day what would that look like? How would that effect our marine life?

Now I decided to go on a journey around many beaches in the southeast to see what I could find, as by memory I couldn’t remember being at the beach and noticing any litter or any effect of litter to the environment but is this because the beaches we choose to go are because of cleanliness and that we avoid the beaches that wash up our rubbish?

I decided to look at what beaches had a better cleanliness rating and which were most popular. I began at a beach near Broadstairs called Botany Bay rated well. It was beautiful at first glance and walked up and down the beach to find fishing line and netting more often than I expected, I then travelled to Hastings beach which was a favourite as a child so was looking forward to this trip however had a lower rating than the previous… It was astonishing. I found fish wrapped in fishing line and weights and plenty of plastic bottles. This was a surprise for me as I had never noticed anything when coming to spend a day in the sun. Finally my last trip was to a low rated beach on the Isle of Sheppey called Leysdown. This was the worst I found everything from shoes to beer cans. My question is why do we not notice this?

I decided to look into this further and find some statistics to find out where the rubbish on our beaches comes from. From my research I found that 40.4% of our coastal litter comes from the public which is a real eye opener, 4.5% Sewage related debris, 13.9% fishing litter, 0.7% fly tipping, 3.9% shipping, 0.2% medical waste, 36.3% non-sourced.

When researching the environment I found a photographer called Dave Gibbeson of whom had photographed beach litter. I found an image of his of a cigarette packet and found this very interesting which made me think. I wonder where that came from. Who was it who owned the packet of cigarettes? What journey had they been on? From research I had found that ‘Plastic is not biodegradable and will degrade slower in the marine environment than on land. A normal plastic bottle may persist for more than 450 years if left on a beach. When in the sea, plastics can also adsorb toxic chemicals, becoming increasingly harmful over time, and often entering the food chain when mistaken for food items by fish, seabirds, marine mammals and other organisms. Over 100,000 marine mammals and over 1 million seabirds die every year from ingestion of and entanglement in marine litter.’ So when I was taking my photographs it made me think how old is that plastic water bottle that was washed up on the beach and how many marine mammals and seabirds have that affected.

The journey of our rubbish can be hundreds years or just a few. I hope after you have read this article you will think the next time you see a piece of litter and take control of our litters lifespan.

Photo Development.

From the photos I took I decided to develop them to focus on the litter like in Dave Gibbeson’s shot. I also decided to make the images black and white to signify the dinginess that the litter creates swell as focusing on the piece of litter itself. I played around with curves to create a greater contrast of lights and darks making the images more clear I repeated the process throughout.

Here are the edited images.

Although these are the final edited shots they will be cropped further to fit in the magazine layout.

Photographs on the Beach.

I travelled further to the Isle of Sheppy and Hastings to take more photographs for my project. There was a bit of an issue with the weather however I managed to get a few snaps relating to my research and brief.

I was mostly inspired by Dave Gibbeson when on this trip but also the photographer William Eckersley with his shots that really show the filth litter produces which we do not notice when a place is empty like the beach I have shot these on. Trying to create similar shots and capturing the journey. From this I am going to edit the imagery and play around with saturation of which the final chosen images will be placed on my grid.

Survey.

To research further for my article I decided to carry out an anonymous survey asking 50 different people, in as many different age brackets as I could to find out how many of them have dropped litter in their life time here were the questions I asked at these were the results. I had to make the questions I asked got the correct answers I had to choose my words wisely to make sure they were understood correctly.

1. Have you ever in your lifetime intentionally dropped a piece of litter? 50 (100%) said yes 0 (0%) said no

2. Are you aware of the risks of litter/plastics to the coastal environment? 20 (40%) said yes 30 (60%) said no

From this survey it makes you realise how many people have dropped rubbish baring in mind how many people are in Britain and to think that if everyone in Britain dropped a piece of rubbish in the same place how big that pile would be and how many people do litter on a regular basis. Like I imagined not many people know about the effects of litter in the coastal environment.

I will be using this information in my article.

Beginning of my Photographs.

From my research I began visiting coastal areas to find rubbish on the beach suitable for my project. I have begun in botany bay and stumbled across some tangled fishing line with plastic and seaweed. It struck my eye with the way it was placed all tangled up together. It made me wonder how the line got here whether it was washed up from somewhere far and the way it was wrapped around the seaweed showed the danger of such a small item.

 

I decided to make it the main focus of my photograph although wanted the beauty of the area it was surrounded by. I thought it would tell a story which I think it did. My inspiration here was Dave Gibbeson trying to capture the story of the items I have found and with the contrast of the background looking beautiful to the rubbish that is on it worked well.

 

When I looked at this further I found the background could distract from the main focus of the image. I felt what I was trying to signify could be perceived differently because of the beauty of the background and I did not want that so I decided to crop the image and make the image black and white to become more striking to the audience and reduce the amount of signifiers.

The Journey of our Rubbish.

Dave Gibbeson

I found a photographer called Dave Gibbeson of whom has photographed beach litter. He stated that he went to Instow beach for the day for a walk looking for interesting things to photograph and that on the way back he came across a cigarette packet in the sand.

To me I really liked this piece as the colours in it grabbed my attention with the contrast of background, it stood out. I feel this piece tells its own story as it could have been dropped by a regular walker along the beach or someone travelling for miles on a journey. Where were they going? How did the packet end up here, was it dropped intentionally? What might that person be like?

I feel my article could look at the statistics as well as look deeper into the items. For example how long might that have been there, what journey that piece of rubbish might have been on as well as where it began.

Coastal Litter.

‘Coastal litter is made up of discarded objects that do not occur naturally in the marine and coastal environment. Alarmingly, over the past 15 years the amount of marine litter washing up on UK beaches has almost doubled. Typical examples of marine litter include waste from beach users, sewage-related debris, medical waste, shipping debris and fishing waste.’

Sources of coastal litter:

• 40.4% from the public
• 4.5% Sewage related Debris
• 13.9% fishing litter
• 0.7% fly tipping
• 3.9% shipping
• 0.2% medical waste
• 36.3% non-sourced

Fish and wildlife litter issues.

It is thought that coastal litter causes a reduction in fish populations through higher mortality rates from wounds caused by litter, starvation due to blockages in the digestive tract, and impaired reproductive capacity due to toxins such as parabens. Fishing line is also a huge problem in coastal areas tangling up animals in coastal areas as well as lakes.

‘On average there are 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean.’

‘When in the sea, plastics can also adsorb toxic chemicals, becoming increasingly harmful over time, and often entering the food chain when mistaken for food items by fish, seabirds, marine mammals and other organisms. Over 100,000 marine mammals and over 1 million seabirds die every year from ingestion of and entanglement in marine litter.

Plastic debris can be found littering coastlines all across the world’s oceans, even on the most far-flung and inaccessible of beaches. Plastic is not biodegradable and will degrade slower in the marine environment than on land. A normal plastic bottle may persist for more than 450 years if left on a beach.’

From this I will be travelling around coastal areas to find examples of these statistics and with the evidence I have found will begin to write my article about these environmental issues.