Research and Planning: preliminary task

Evaluation of my college magazine.

What worked well?

Whilst planning my college magazine I used photoshop to plan the front cover of the magazine. I used different ways and layouts to see which way works the best. Once I had planned the layout I wanted it was easy to go ahead and make the front cover of the magazine, deciding on the masthead was easy as it was a college magazine the first thing that comes in to your head is students so that was the header I went with. Deciding where to put the pictures and logos etc was also easy once I had my plan because I could go straight into it and know what I expected. The making of my contents page was on indesign. Indesign was more difficult to use than Photoshop but once got used to the tools i could easily create my contents page. Deciding on where to put things was also easy for the contents page as i tried to do a similar layout to the front cover so it had a scheme running through, this makes my magazine look more professional.

What did not work well?



Whilst making my magazine I found that a couple of things didn't work as well I expected them to. I found it difficult to use Indesign as I couldn't get the hang of the tools and the way to use them. Whilst putting my front cover together I found that the fonts I had used were too big and once printed they were cut off the paper so this made me go back and rearrange my front cover. I also found i had this problem with my contents page. Deciding on the stories to put in the magazine was also a hard task for me.

How well it meets its purpose.

My magazine meets its purpose as I have used other magazines to compare it to and see if it has the things needed to be a magazine. For example my magazine has a masthead, subline, a dominant image, small articles around the image etc. It also has a contents page with another dominant image and small images to show you what the stories are about.

What could you improve if you created it again.

If I was to create my magazine again I would use another color scheme throughout as it is a boring color and doesn't really stand out. I would also use a different font as mine is boring. I would use another picture on the front cover to make it look more like a student.