Evaluation
In this self evaluation I will be explaining and judging my college magazine front cover and contents page, describing the different software I used as well as the tools within the software and the different features I applied which you would find in a normal magazine.
For the front cover of my college magazine I used Photoshop because this piece of software enables you to edit photos because my front cover had a cover star for the magazine so therefore I decided Photoshop was the best option to choose from. A disadvantage to my picture was that it was not very high quality which was feedback that I received from my teacher and in future to avoid this happening I will take pictures with a high quality camera instead of the one on my phone. Also on Photoshop I was able to use a rubber tool which made the masthead seem like it was in the background as the part of the letters that were covering to cover star I removed. This is to make the magazine seem more professional as popular magazines have part of the masthead covered by the main star as most people would know the magazine without having to see the full masthead. However I wasn’t able to get the masthead perfect as when you are rubbing out part of the masthead it is hard to make it discrete. I used a flash/puff by using the shape tool, to make the content inside the flash/puff seem important and highlighted it out to the audience. I included a big trip to Dubai within this flash/puff as it is something people would be really interested and in most magazines the information within the flash/puff is the highlight of the magazine and its everyday people get a opportunity to go to Dubai. A very important feature I included was cover lines which gives the reader an idea as to what was going to be inside the magazine. I had 3 cover lines on my front cover which were about: the college results, new equipment and updated times. I also kept the same font and style on most of my writing on the front cover so it doesn’t look like I’m over doing the page as it wouldn’t look tidy of clean if you had different fonts and sizes which was a good thing for me. Furthermore my front cover had a date and barcode. The date is there to show the customers that they are up to date with what they are reading and I have got my date in a small font so as not to distract people from the other more important information. The barcode is there so when people want the magazine it has its own unique code although it is a free sheet magazine.
Now my contents page has been seen by a person in my class and has commented on my work. ‘This doesn't look like a magazine contents page, use of columns would make it look way better at the moment it looks like a jumble sale. The pictures used are stretched and look like they have been taken from a poor resolution camera. Layout should follow a conventional cover which you have analysed and should stop trying to experiment with such necessary features of a contents page. Overall the context such as the writing is good and the display of page number, still using the three colour scheme from your front cover”. I do agree with some of this criticism as I didn’t realy know how to layout my contents page so i thought I would just do it in a random layout but this comment says otherwise so in future I will look out for things like an organised layout. For example I will use columns like this person suggested. Secondly just like the front cover my pictures are not a good quality which I should be using a proper camera when taking photos for a magazine, not only that but I should hold down the shift key as I reduce or increase the size of this picture so it doesn’t stretch and get out of shape. Now for my self I think I done well with keeping the same colour scheme in the contents as well as the front cover which this person did spot out which is positive but as you can see I had more negative criticism. Finally the thing I realy liked about my contents was mainly the background as it suits the magazine very well as it is a picture of the college building.
