Prelim Task

To make myself  familiar with Photoshop and the tools which I would be using I decided to make a mock magazine that would challenge me to create a magazine to a high standard, which I could then ask for feedback upon, and depending on feedback, appropriately edit my creation methods when making my final product.

I made the basic colours the same as I had planned to use in my main product, even though the content was different. I had already researched the conventions of magazines, in particular music magazines, but after some quick searching, I found that many types of magazines all shared the same conventions.

The front cover has many conventions of a typical magazines, the masthead is at the top of the page, and the cover has the date and issue number. The additional text and the puff show the variety of te content within the magazine and that makes it clear as to what is in the actual magazine.
The front cover does not contain a  bar code, like a lot of magazines would, but as this was not designed to be sold this was in fact deliberate. The image is in the typical place, but the face of the main person is slightly obscured by the masthead, but since the magazine is not particularly well-known the masthead should not be covered either so the image needs to be re-sized. Points like this will be what I will use to make sure my own final magazine is as good as possible.




The contents page follows some conventions; The lists of the content within the magazine, the date and title of magazine, the editors note and some images. The content page does although lack allot of content such as a title identifying the page as the "Contents Page" which would be located under the masthead in most magazines. The images are not included with a page reference  so seem to be just irrelevant to the actual content. The layout is correctly split into thirds, which is a typical convention, but it has allot of space which could have been used to  add additional content, either more photos or text.








Feedback:
I asked two other media students to give me some initial comments on this product:

Response one (16 year old female):
The cover makes the product look like a school magazine sue to the image and the text content, but the image could be better- the colour is slightly off, but the masthead looks good. Your  colour scheme is very effective and the text is easy to read, but it does look a little simple, some effects would look good. The Puff could be used more effectively as the square does not seem to fit the theme of the magazine. The contents page lacks text, if there is not allot of content within your magazine you should describe each page with an extra line of text for example. The images also need to be relevant: many magazines put a small caption and the page number which tells you where the content involving the image can be found within the magazine. The images seem relevant, but some could do with some editing- lightened and imperfections cured.

Response Two (17 year old male):
The front cover is good, the image is relevant and you have a clear colour scheme. The masthead is simple but effective, alike the text on the page. The simple colour scheme makes it easy for you to make the text stand out on both pages. The contents page is well set out, and also fits the colour scheme  but there is allot of empty space that could be filled with images or more text relevant to the magazine, but the editors not is a good convention to include. The fonts are consistent throughout, although very typical as I believe it is the Photoshop preset, you should try to be more original. Overall a good start but can be improved on quite a few areas.

1