So the above spreads of my Romanian roma gypsy photographs, are the final layout and pictures used and published in the current issue of Transit Magazine. (Available to buy now in big bookstores/magazine shops in Japan, or via Amazon.co.jp for those of you who live in the sticks).

If you read the previous posts on this blog you’ll see the comments I made on earlier layout options, and picture options, and you’ll see that the majority of my comments were perhaps read, but ultimately didn’t have too much effect on the final outcome of the design and spread.

The image of the girl against the Alpine landscape was taken out at my suggestion, as it was too similar to the very first colour image of the guy in front of a tree woodland photo-mural. The Alpine girl was taken out, and was finally replaced by Mia and her mermaid. I’d hoped Apline Girl would have been replaced by Yellow Dress Girl, as in pdf Option4 (previous post), but in the end it wasn’t to be. The last I’d heard was that myself and the picture editor preferred the Yellow Dress Girl, but the Editor and One Other preferred the Mermaid picture…I’m not sure who had the deciding vote, but it went for the Mermaid pic. A nice pic, I love it, but the Yellow Dress Girl told more of the rags to riches story in the context of this spread, and the brief I was given.

The title for the essay had always stayed the same, but I wasn’t so keen on the final font choice, the layout of it, or the fact that it overlaps the first black and white image.

I’d suggested keeping the images on the opening spread as the same height as each other, just as all other images on the following pages, but I see they didn’t go with it.

Another suggestion I’d made was moving the map from the opening double page spread to the final spread which has more room and space. The first page is very cluttered and crowded in comparison to the final page I felt.

And slightly annoyingly the captions on the opening double spread say that the men in the images, the black and white and colour, are the same man…when I’d categorically written in an email, in response to their query about this, that it wasn’t the same man.

I tell all these points not as grumbles, or complaints, but merely to illustrate how the spread evolved, and my thoughts on it along the way and on the final published version. It’s nice to get 8 pages of images, used big and fairly well, uncluttered by copious amounts of text, or broken by adverts. It’s good, I’m happy to an extent, but I felt it could have had more impact. Those intial black pages, in Option1, were more dramatic I thought, had more impact, and grabbed your attention. They would have been my choice.

Such is life. Onwards.