Audience feedback on my college magazine

Audience feedback on my college magazine

In terms of publishing a magazine, my magazine is seen as in general good. For my front cover, I found it easier to use Photoshop because it’s easy to learn and use it quickly; it enabled me to edit properly the main image of the artist in my front cover. But I would have preferred to use Photoshop for my contents page as well. I had many positive viewpoints for my front cover, for example one of my positive feedbacks was that “I really like the overall outcome for your front cover college magazine! The background suits well with the text fonts and styles that you have included on it. Also, you have made the masthead of your front cover appealing to its audiences as you have engaged them.” Another one is “Your front cover looks interesting because of the background you had used and I like how you linked your background colours with the masthead as it makes the masthead stand out clearly because of the black outline. Also the fonts are different sizes shows which is one are more important and that would immediately grabs the audience’s attention which is really good. The main image is well placed as it stands out from the rest of the text. Overall it is an excellent front cover.” And the others were “The background and masthead make it look very creative and appealing. When I scrolled past it, my eye catched it and I could help myself from scrolling back to see what it was.”

In my front cover I only had few coverlines because of the colour of the background and the artist image size. I should have used different background, which would have made my cover brighter and easier to read. In my contents page I had a bit of issue with resizing the images and with the fonts but later I first did a practice of using the fonts and images in a white background, and then I re-did it in my contents page. With the photography I managed to take loads of pics in 2 minutes and I quickly edited it in the computer, so I had no problem with the photography. For my front cover masthead I used the paint software to create it because I didn't wanted to make formal heading as with my background selection, I wanted to make it out stand from the other college magazine, more unique with creative way. on the other hand for my contents page I used the formal fonts from the InDesign, but I layered it bit differently for example with the contents page heading it’s not in a straight line together, the letters are bit separated. For my contents page I used bright colours like yellow, blue and red etc. Since my background is brighter and colourful, and to make sure it matches with it I used all the bright colours. Plus I applied all the colours that are used on the Leyton sixth form college logo in the website.  With Indesign the layouts kept getting separated after every time you add something new, which was a headache for me, so I had to be extra careful when doing new layers. Although in Photoshop I had no problems because I watched in YouTube how to use it and as  I did before ; I did a draft page practice  where I learned how to edit pictures , the layers, effects etc. The reason I didn't do it for Indesign is because thought I knew yet I have forgotten how to use the other tools. But in future I will keep that in mind that I should watch how to use Indesign creatively.

To make my magazine more exclusive and be conspicuous than other college magazine my main puff was “smoking at 16” and I only had few teasers since I want my audience only to focus on the main headline but mistakenly I forgot to put the price for it and I couldn't noticed it because of the background strong colour. I could have put more images in my front cover but I thought it’s better to have one image dominating the whole magazine but I suppose the image in my front cover didn't captured the attention of the audience , its mainly the background that got people’s interest.  As you can see my contents page there are too many teasers (cover stories) except, I sued different colours for both of the teasers: one is about the features and the other one is for student with their work etc. Although I should have separated both of the cover stories and the college tips ; for example putting the feature into the top first and then the other one in the other side. The images also look quite small but if I had more space I would have put more images as images attract more than words.  The layout looks okay from my audience feedback, meaning for me it would catch my audience attention. In addition, the feedbacks for my contents page were good:

“The use of colour you have used in your colour links with the colour you had used in the word 'which I really like. Also I like the way you had used different sort of fonts in your content page to make it stand out from the green background which makes it easier for the readers to see it. Another reason of what went well is the use of different pattern making the page more attractive as there are different patterns focusing in different places. One thing I would recommend you to improve in your content page is the way you had layered out the pictures.
Overall I would say it is a good content page.

Your contents page is extremely unique. The colour scheme is very eye-catching and makes the magazine more interesting as many content pages can be plain and boring. The text is easy to read and the images tie the page together. It's a generally good page: D

Wow, this is an amazing contents page!!! 
I really like the way you have written 'Contents' in the biggest font. It makes it outstanding and it obvious what the title of the page is.
You have chosen different pictures which all tell something different about the college, which is very lovely. It is obvious that your magazine is a college magazine, because of the pictures and the headlines.”

So hence with my front cover and contents page, I have received quite fine comments but as I said before I was trying to make my magazine more artistic but if I used Photoshop for the others I would have done much better with  it from my perspective. Nevertheless the things I could have improved for my front cover was: given the masthead a basic colour, like white or black. It mixes a bit with the background. Before writing up my font I was thinking of doing simple font but then I wanted to challenge myself into more complex way. I wanted to try something different rather than having the typical formal way. And for my contents page were: Use of too much colour and distraction may make your page un-organized and less controlled. The pictures should be parallel to each other and not placed messy on the page. To avoid making people confused about what is going on the page, you should have picked a couple of colours that fit each other, instead of using too many different colours. You could have fit the colours to the pictures, like red, black and blue (for example). Otherwise my audience said that my contents page best thing about is that it’s inviting you into it and certainly it matched with the code and convention of a typical magazine.

My improvement area is on mainly the choice of my background and the using more pictures in contents page to make it more exciting and engaging for the audience.  Making sure that if I'm not sure on anything then I should ask for help, plus making sure that fonts should be clearer to see and understand.

The three key points for development when producing the main task is that making sure that I should have plan my work  for example make a draft work. Use formal fonts and try to keep in mind about my audience choice when I’m doing my contents page.