The feedback I have had for my magazine has been very positive, I am incredibly pleased with how my draft turned out however I now have a clearer idea of the direction that I am intending to take with my final draft of my magazine. The main decision I have made so far is to re-take most of my pictures and to really style my models in a more slick manner to fit the rest of my magazine. This is because one of my models was wearing a Jack Daniels T-Shirt and it was a mistake on my behalf and I should have styled the models better and that is something that I am going to do for the next photo shoot that I will do. The logo on the t-shirt was too garish and bold for my magazine, it didn't fit the style or genre really of my magazine and so this is something I am going rectify for my final draft.
Another thing that I learnt from my feedback is that I need to make some of the writing on the front of my magazine legible because unfortunately the cover line on the front, when it was announcing my band The Requiem, was black and my model's shirt distorted the text and made it so it was almost unreadable. The contrast of colours was the problem and my next choice would be to either choose a re-done picture and make sure my model is wearing a plainer shirt; or I could change the colour of my font and this would definitely be the easier option however I might in fact change both of these elements because then I can really enhance my magazine to the standard that I am expecting of myself by creating something different to my original draft design.
Another element of my draft magazine that I need to improve on is the picture quality of my main DPS photos because the colours in the pictures are slightly off, to change this yet again I am going to take more photos. Hopefully now because I have more experience taking pictures that when I have my second photo shoot I will be able to take photos that really match the style of my magazine. Also because now I have had feedback, I really know the direction I am wanting to take with my magazine and the style I want it to emulate. So also I part of this re-design I am going to completely re-design the contents page and I know exactly how I want that to look. The contents page also will need some new pictures however I could use some from my photo shoot because there are some pictures that I haven't used already and looking back at the ones I have taken I feel as though there are some good ones that I can still use without them being discoloured and they are bright enough to look credible for a professional and slick monthly music magazine.
Also in my DPS I have used a lower case font and an upper case font for my introduction and main article. My feedback said that I needed to justify this more and explain where I have seen this done before and why I have included it in my magazine for this page. I have been looking at more individual magazine that use quirky layouts such as Clash and The Wire; these magazines don't use this text type and format but it is something that I imagine they would do. The particular fonts I have used are made to be lower case and upper case all the way through and that is something that I can't change unless I change my fonts altogether. I would prefer if the fonts were able to include both lower case and upper case in the set font and I am reluctant to change the fonts because I feel as though they match the style and format of my current magazine. The font I have chosen in particular for the introduction of my article, as well as using it for the front cover and contents, I have a particular fondness to as I think it really does fit the style and the way I intended the magazine to look like. For my next post I am going to be looking at my style models and what I am taking inspiration from to achieve my design.
Action Plan:
My first plan of action is to re-do my photographs for all sections of my magazine, I want to make sure that everything looks pristine and exactly how I want it, and this primarily means the photos because to me they aren't quite right. I love my choice of models and I will definitely be using them again however I need to properly make sure that my styling is exactly how I want it, and make sure that I tell my models what to bring so that they match the idea I have in my head. Also I'm curious to take pictures outside, however I don't think I will be able to as I don't have a professional camera at home and I have ideas about locations and I don't want to be limited to the school grounds. I have gained more inspiration from the likes of Clash and looking at past issues I have found a lot of features that have intrigued me. Such as, their page numbers are in the middle of the page and I really like that effect as it is different to any other page I have seen before. Also the layout in general is something I am inspired by with Clash, they arrange their text in a really unusual way and in my draft I tried to do this as well however I have been inspired by looking at different issues in Clash and finding different ways of laying out my text and even though I was pleased with my DPS generally I still want to try out more things and experiment to see if I can develop my skills further and make my magazine look more professional.
Also I am thinking I will change my contents page, which I have already discussed in previous posts. For this I am thinking of keeping it slick and simple; taking away the black background and the portrait style photo and maybe replacing it with a landscape version. Also I am really going to strip back the whole look so it really matches the style of my magazine. I will probably cut down the amount of writing or just make the text smaller. I wanted it to be fairly text heavy because I took inspiration from Clash, yet again, and their contents pages. Because they seem to have a lot of writing on their page and I wanted to replicate that in my own way. I might have included too much text to that page, and for that I will more than likely cut it down. However I might put the text in two columns to help to condense down the text even more, this will give a cleaner look to the contents page and hopefully give more credit to my magazine. There will be more improvements to be made generally which I am sure that I will comment on them in later posts.
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