Evaluation:

Compared to existing products, my product does look very professional as there isn’t many products to compare to in terms of the genre, but in terms of looks, it matches a lot of the professional fashion magazines which is what I set off to do as most of the free magazines looked boring as if there was no effort put into them, I wanted to change that so I did and created the magazine front cover.

The double page spread is similar to most music interviews double page spreads in terms of the layout and the way it was written which is something I looked into as I find it interesting how the journalist can capture and keep the attention of the target audience by using words. This was one of my influences to my writing work.

The contents page is very similar to that of fashion magazines which is what I wanted as most people who would read this magazine wouldn’t really read the big name fashion magazines, however they would know what one looks like therefore, it would make them feel as if they are reading a fashion magazine when really it is a different genre free magazine.

The advertisement is a different page entirely as there wasn’t many examples of the same brand doing print advertisement so I had to start from scratch with it, it was a hidden blessing but also a curse as I had no way of knowing if it looked like something you’d see the brand being advertised like so I had to go off my own opinions and the opinions of my peers.

In the end, I do feel that I had met my brief. My brief was to met as I had set out to make a free magazine that had one advertisement because it had to show how the free magazines get their funding which was added into my brief. The brief also stated that my target audience was seventeen to twenty-five year old women who were in the C2DE social category but did want to be trendy and explore new music; therefore this magazine would be without its stereotypes.

The magazine isn’t written in a patronising way either as one would expect for that social category, as that isn’t how you win readers by treating them like children. I feel that the colour scheme meets its signifying reasoning behind it, which was that; it was meant to signify springtime, which I feel that it did.

Overall, I feel that this product was a success as it achieved what it was created to do, there are some things that could be changed which will be spoken about in the individual evaluations of the pages but apart from that, the product was a success.

This is the front cover of my magazine. This has had a dramatic makeover during the production period, which has resulted in the way it appears during the final product.

At first, I originally wanted to have a purple and blue colour scheme because it was very girly and had the springtime connotations with it, however as soon as I started creating and putting the bleedlines onto the front cover, it didn’t look professional and looked very childish which wasn’t what I was aiming for. The font I had originally used for the bleedlines was very boring and plain and was hard to read at some points because of the way it blended into the central image.

To avoid these problems or at least try and fix them, I experimented with different fonts, but there was no difference. The only way of changing this would be to change the colour scheme and consequently, change the central image. At this point, I wasn’t sure on changing the central image because in my mind, I

thought that this central image was perfect for the magazine, however this wasn’t the case as it was badly blurred by the amount of editing I had put into the original image.

Unfortunately, the original image was slightly blurred too and it had to be changed to the image that is on the final front cover. With this, I had to start again from scratch and edit again, however as I had aimed to not make it look as fake as the first image, I didn’t have much to edit, I wanted to take away the dark purple tones underneath the model’s eyes as you wouldn’t see that on a front cover of a magazine. The model was also made to appear thinner than what she is which is a classic editing trick from the professionals.

After I was happy with it, I wanted to experiment with different colours as I felt that the blue and yellow scheme might not be the best and I wanted to see if I could change it, however most of the colours didn’t go with the blue background apart from the orange. This would have been the case to change the whole colour scheme, however I wanted to stick to a springtime colour scheme and the blue and yellow was the only way I could achieve it so I stuck to the yellow and blue colour scheme.

If I were to do this front cover again, I think I would have not second-guessed my original colour scheme because on my plans, it was blue and green, however was then changed in my mind to blue and yellow. I think I second-guessed the colour scheme and changed it to the purple and blue because the model stood out a lot more on those colours and especially with how much I had edited the image and as a result of the image changing, the colour scheme had to be reverted back to the original colour scheme.

However, I did enjoy creating this front cover, it was good to show my skills, especially even if it meant that the image started to appear fake, I could still use the skills I had learnt over the past years even if it didn’t look right, but I soon learnt that less is more, especially with editing images of people.

Here is my contents page.

Originally, I didn’t know how this page was going to look printed out as I didn’t have a clear image in my mind of this page which turned out to play in my advantage as I could then play around and see which layout suited the page.

I was certain on where the image was going to go, but I wasn’t use on which side the masthead should go as it could have easily have followed the front cover design with being in the top left hand corner. However, I wanted the contents page to be different as if it was the same, it would have been boring to look at for the target audience. The original font I had used was very boring as it matched the first font I had used on the front cover.

That quickly changed when the font for the front cover was changed, the font on this has to be changed too. It was difficult at first because all the font size had to be changed; therefore I had a lot more room to fill with text. My original plan was to have a small magazine with only six pages, however that soon changed when I had room to fill, the magazine is still quite small but it is free and would be expensive to run if there was a lot of pages to create and this magazine was designed to keep people informed of the necessary things that the target audience ought to know.

From the contact sheet, it is easy to see that the professional look of the image really does effect how well the page looks which is what I noticed when I originally changed the image to the reedited image, after that the page fell into place. I added the lines by the masthead because it looked boring and plain without something else there and the lines work very well and add a sense of professionalism to the page.

If I were to do this page again, I’d change little. One of the things I’d change is that I add a direct plan for this page. It was good to not have one as it did give me a little room to play around in, however this did cost time from other pages as I didn’t know how I was setting this page out, I think this page was the most difficult out of all of them because of this factor but I’d definitely not change the

image as it is perfect for the page. I think I’d change the size of the image so it could all fit in and not look clipped which it is, this could have then resulted in me having less to write in terms of what is in the magazine but it would look unprofessional as at the moment, both the text box and image are the same size.

This is the double page spread.

From the planning part of this production, I knew how this page was going to be laid out so it wasn’t difficult to put where I wanted the text and the image. It wasn’t long till I started typing the interview.

It wasn’t until I got to the first finished draft that I didn’t like the way it had turned out. It looked boring and something that wouldn’t change the attention of the target audience as it wasn’t attention grabbing if they were to just flick through the magazine. That’s when I decided to change the colour of the background on the image to the light blue that is seen on the front cover. It was at this point where I started about adding more colour to this double page spread.

At first, the font had to be changed because of the changes to the front cover; this affected all my pages apart from the advertisement page. Of course, the colour scheme of the double page spread had to change so the A had to be changed, I originally changed it back to black, however I wasn’t satisfied as it made the page look boring. I then had the idea to put the blue background on the other page and change the A to white. It worked very well and made that page look eye-catching which is something I wanted.

I then had the problem of the other page not looking right with the white background, this was easily changed by going back to Adobe Photoshop and making the entire background to the blue which is on the other pages. This worked very well and as that is the page the target audience are likely to see first, it would certainly catch their eye.

The colour change to yellow was decided after making some slight changes to the front cover as I had the idea to feature all the colours I had used on the pages as that is what most magazines do to keep the house style going throughout the magazine, which adds to the professionalism.

If I were to do this page again, I’d probably change the image first before even thinking about creating pages. I think that was the problem that I hadn’t thought about how the main image was going to look on the page as I was rushing, as I didn’t have time to have set backs, especially with the time I had spent on the contents page.

This is the advertisement page.

This page was by far, the most difficult to create. The original idea behind this page was that magazines, especially free magazines, get their funding from advertisements, which is what I was trying to show that I understood.

At first, it seemed to be easy with editing around the main image for the advertisement, however that was the first of my problems. The font was definitely a problem, as the font I originally thought would go well with the advertisement didn’t, it was this that made me lose a lot of time because I had to try and find other fonts that worked well with the advertisement.

While doing this, I discovered that the main image wasn’t as bright as it could be so I had to change the levels on that and change it so it was bright enough to my liking. I then noticed that the writing on the mug was fading so I had to go over the text in the same colour I was working with for the background, luckily this is the exact same colour that the brand uses.

Once I had decided on a font, I had noticed that the advertisement looked plain and boring which wouldn’t catch the target audience’s attention, especially with the voucher. So I made the image on the voucher larger and the text on that image more noticeable so it would catch the target audience’s attention. Then I moved onto making a design for the background, as I wasn’t happy that it was plain. I then noticed an opportunity to add this design onto the voucher so it

would link into the advertisement and even that design would help it stick out of the page and help the target audience see it.

I then decided to add the social media logos on the advertisement, as that would help link into the young target audience I have with my magazine. It also helps with the company, as their social media doesn’t get as much exposure as other coffee companies, therefore it helps with the company rebranding which has moved its target audience to a younger target audience.

If I were to improve this page, I’d definitely try to sort out the fonts before creating the page, I think this lost me a lot of time as I did struggle trying to find fonts that would match the atmosphere the brand has. I think I would properly plan this page too as I knew what I wanted it to look like in my head but it didn’t work that way when actually making it on the software.