Evaluation - Question 7

In my preliminary task I created a college magazine, and I feel I have developed significantly from this first attempt to the completion of my final product.

In my preliminary task, I used a picture that had a lot of white space above the subject. Whilst this in itself was not an issue, the way I used it was. There was nothing placed in the white space to fill it, and as a result my cover looks bare, empty, and boring. When compared to my final product, it is evident that my final magazine makes much better use of the white space. To begin with, there isn't as much white space on my cover as I made the picture fit the page a lot better. However, what white space there is, is utilised a lot better, by having a masthead that fills the page a lot more effectively and by having a banner across the top which fills more of the white space that was left bare on my prelim task. As a result of this, my cover is a lot more interesting to perspective readers, and more likely to draw them in.

 
Furthermore, in my prelim task I used the same font for all items on the cover. After researching many different magazines, I saw this was not the convention, and again made my cover look dull and boring. I decided to change this for my final front cover, and therefore I used a range of fonts (both serif and sans serif), all selected to represent my genre. I feel the use of a range of fonts is a much better choice than just having one font, and therefore makes my magazine look more professional. Also, the colours of the text on my preliminary cover were dull, and did not compliment the image well. Upon reflection, placing yellow font on a blue puff was not the correct choice, and therefore I would look at changing the colour of the puff/text/both in order to compliment the image more, perhaps picking the colours from my subjects jumper if I were to try this again.

Upon reflection, the puff used in my prelim task was way too big. Once again, after studying many magazines, I made the puff on my final magazine much smaller, which gave my magazine a more professional look. Also, on my prelim cover, the text does not fit on to the puff, giving my cover an untidy look. When compared to this, the text on the puff on the final front cover is much smaller, thus fitting inside the puff, giving my cover a much tidier and professional appearance.