Working with InDesign was honestly not that bad. It was complex sure, but once you get the hang of it, its relatively easy to use. I found it easy to play with the background colors to make interesting fading of colors. I thought that the red and purple combo I used to make the background of my magazine was quite nice; a bit dark, but still looks vibrant when printed.
For my final layout, I wanted my character to be the focus; the written aspect is her story, so I wanted the magazine to present just like she would. Samia is a red Tiefling, which is basically a half demon person, who basically gets possessed by an ancient spirit named Mistari. Mistari makes Samia do horrible things, which is detailed in the story, but Samia has to go through the internal struggle of keeping Mistari at bay and learning how to use her new abilities. So, to represent this inner struggle, I wanted the background of the magazine layout to start as this muted purple, due to the fact that it would be better on the eyes for the text, and fade into the dark red. Showing that Samia is still in there even if Mistari is fighting for control most of the time. Next, I wanted people to be able to see her character sheet, this way people who understand Dungeons and Dragons can really see how this character would play in a campaign. I also wanted to include a picture of the character so that readers could understand who they were reading about. I also think it draws the readers eye due to the bright colors and cute looking character. People will want to read more about her and they will learn about her story.
Honestly, something I found useful when learning InDesign was being able to walk through it step by step in class. Otherwise, I feel like the program would feel really overwhelming and I wouldn’t know what I was doing. I feel that InDesign is a complicated program, but if you are taught how to use it, it is very simple to get better with on your own. I enjoyed linking all the text boxes together and seeing my story fill the page. Overall, InDesign was complicated to learn, but once I learned how to use it I found it quite easy.
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