Draft Feedback: Improvements to Final Magazine

From looking at the feedback and comments of my drafts, I have learnt that I will need to do a few things to improve the magazine, for the front cover, content's page and double-page spread.One of the main things that I will need to improve on is the use of images. This is probably the most important, as the images will be used on all three pages of the magazine. I will need to ensure that I get the best quality shots possible, including a variety of as many shots as I can. Things that will improve the final photos that I get will be: the outfits, the make-up and the setting. From my test shots I found that I need to get a much better location, rather than having the shoot taken around school.  All of these will make the photos a lot more relevant to my magazine, than my previous shots. I will also need other images to include in or on the magazine so that I don’t just have photos of the band. I could take shots of males to include on the contents. The target audience for the magazine is aimed at girls aged between 15-21.

For the front cover, I have decided to change the magazine to a monthly edition, rather than a weekly one. I will need to change the subheading ‘The weekly pop music magazine’ to ‘The monthly pop music magazine’. I think this will be a lot more suitable for the magazine. On my draft, I thought ‘£2.99’ suited the price well for the magazine. However, I found this was too expensive just for a weekly magazine, especially for my target audience. People aged between 15-21 probably wouldn’t be able to afford or willing to pay £2.99 a week, especially with cheaper competition such as ‘Heat’ and ‘Closer’ for under £1. From looking at inspiration of monthly magazines, I have decided that a price such as ‘£3.40’ would be suitable for my magazine. This will be affordable at a monthly cost. I will need to consider how many pages my magazine will have. For £3.40 people would expect a magazine with lots of pages. I also came across an error on the page.

The date of the edition was entitled ‘Feb 2010’, instead of ‘2011’. I will need to ensure that I change the date, and ensure that it is the correct one as this is vital. Many magazines come out onto the shelves every month. If the date was printed wrong, they would be thought to be out of date, and people would probably be put off buying them if they thought it was an old edition.

For the content’s page I will need to include a variety of different photos, using different shots and images of other artists. On my draft, all the photos are of ‘Ultralove’. This doesn’t fit in with the magazine, as the whole magazine isn’t just about Ultralove. I will need to get more models and come up with new artist names to come up with other artists. This will also improve my front cover, as I will use the new artist’s names in contrast to using existing artist names such as ‘Rihanna’ or ‘Miley Cyrus’.  I want to include a variety of different shots so that I can get photos at all angles. This will make the magazine look more interesting, as the photos will all be different.

Music magazines have many pages, usually into 3 figured numbers. My final magazine will be a monthly edition. Monthly editions in any magazine tend to have a lot more pages than a weekly edition would. For my draft, the contents page only had up to 16 pages, which is obviously far less than any ordinary magazine. To improve this on my final magazine, I will have to ensure that I include a lot more pages, especially considering it will be a monthly edition. I will need to make the contents more specific, by including a lot more information. This will need to fit on the page, so I will need to have a suitable font size, and brief simple sentences or phrases.  

For the double-page spread, I will need to improve the quality of the photo. The editing looks poor which gives a very grainy effect. This makes it look blurry and unclear, which is not professional for a music magazine. For the final magazine if I decide to edit the photo, I have decided that it will be best to stay clear from the special effects, as they all are quite blurry. I will probably only adjust the colour tone of the image, by editing the brightness and contrast.  The size of the image was also too big, as it was over half of the page. Although, this doesn’t look too noticeable on an A3 blank sheet of paper, it would be very noticeable in a magazine as the pages usually consist of A4. This would cut part of the image off down the centre of the page. I had a problem with this particular image as it was landscape and therefore didn’t fit in proportion to a portrait image. I will improve this by ensuring I take portrait photos as well as landscape.

Another problem with the double-page spread was that the article was not professional. It is not clear to the reader exactly who the interviewer is.  I couldn’t fit the whole of the article onto the page, so I had to cut a big chunk of it off at the end. Music magazines have very interesting articles that makes the reader want to carry on reading. Interviews will be cut down by including the best parts. To improve this, I will need to narrow down the amount of words, by cutting out the ‘boring’ bits. This will ensure that I will be able to fit the article on the page. Because of this problem, the ending was just cut off. There was no conclusion to end the interview, but instead just finished with another question that showed no relevancy that it was the final question. I have decided that I will end it by including a conclusion that will thank the interviewees and say goodbye so that it is clear to the reader that it is the end of the article.

Page numbers are always used at the bottom of mostly every page throughout any magazine. At the bottom of the pages, I included page numbers in a bubble like effect. I think this worked well. However, I noticed that on the contents page, the size of the font, and the colour of the bubble was different to the double-page spread. I will need to ensure I don’t make the same mistake on my final magazine, as page numbers need to be exactly the same throughout the magazine to make it look professional.

Final Photo Shoot

These are the final photos of the artist for my magazine. I will need to edit the colour tones, by changing the contrast of the skin tone. This will add brightness to bring out the colour and make the image look more ‘eye-catching’ which will gain more attention to bring appeal to the magazine. This will prevent the images from looking too ‘wishy-washy’ on the page. This will ensure that my photos look as high quality as possible, so that they are as professional as any magazine photos can be.

I will also be editing other effects such as the make-up. I want the make-up to stand well so that the model fits in well with the pop genre. It will also appeal to the target market, as young teenage females tend to have an interest in make-up. On my draft images I managed to edit the lip colour. For the final magazine, I will also try and edit the eyes and nail colour, as well as the lip colour. Although I used make-up on my model, I want to try and edit this to add extra colour. For the eyes, I want to make them darker by adding more black. This will bring out the eyes more and make them look full, which will achieve a very ‘eye-catching’ effect. I want it to achieve a smoky eyed effect, like I previously stated I wanted earlier on in my research. For the lips, I will ensure that it is a bright colour. This will work well with the smoky black eyes as the colours won’t clash or look over the top. I will ensure that the nail colour matches the lip colour to prevent this problem.

I wanted my model to have stylish, fashionable clothing to give a modern look to my magazine. I chose a variety of trendy, yet different outfits so that I achieved this. I wanted her to look ‘dressed-up’. Pop artists have fashion stylists so that they are up to date with fashion. They are also very iconic to the target audience, so I want my artist to inspire them by their clothing, as well as make-up.

I decided to take the photo shoot at home, so that I could specifically use a wall with a plain white background. This is so that it will be easy for me to edit the images out. This was improved from my test shots, as a plain wall was difficult to find around school.

I also decided to use one model. This enabled me to have more room to take the photo, so that I could take a variety of different shots; long-shots, mid-shots and close-ups. This will be good for when I use the magazine, as in my drafts I found that I could only take long shots and mid-shots because there was more than one model.

As I previously researched poses, I had a good idea of the poses that I wanted my model to do. This made the process much easier as I knew what I wanted her to do. This makes the photos look a lot more professional, compared to the test shots, as it looks like the model knows what she is doing. This conveys a confident vibe, which is essential for an image on a magazine so that the model doesn’t look awkward. This adds more appeal to the photo. I like the use of different photos, and the way that the artist is looking at the camera on some, and also in other directions. This will give me a wider variety to choose from when deciding the most ideal image I want for my magazine.

First Draft: Double-page Spread

First Draft: Content's Page

First Draft: Front Cover

Cover Line and Content's Ideas

For the drafts of the magazine, I had to come up with ideas for cover lines and ideas for the content's page as improvements from the mock. The mock was just to give me an idea of the layout on the pages, and give me knowledge of photoshop. By including real headings for the cover lines, this ensured the draft's were as professional as they could be, to give me a real idea of what the final magazine will look like. I had to think of things associated with music, specifically including the genre pop so that it related to my magazine. I chose to feature certain pop artists such as Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears and P!nk etc. For the content's page I chose to include sub-headings with a catchy slogan.

Mock Evaluation

When making the mocks for my magazine, I decided that I didn't have enough images to choose from. Although I had a suitable amount of photos, I didn't have a huge variety. This prevented me from getting the best possible picture I could for my magazine.

One problem was that some images were not useable for the way that I wanted it. This was because I found that the landscape images that I wanted to use in particular places were not long enough lengthways but too wide. For example, on the front cover for my mock I orignally used a landscape image. But so that it fit on the page, I had to resize the image so it looked very small. Whereas, I found that for the double page spreads, it was better using portrait images compared to landscape. Landscape images took up too much of the page so I had to use portrait images instead, which disabled me from using the image(s) that I wanted. Therefore, when taking the final photo shot I will ensure that I take the photos both portrait and landscape. This will prevent this problem when making the final magazine.

I also found difficulty when choosing photo's for my content's page. Although, I took a variety of photos of the band for my magazine, I didn't take any other photos of anything else. Content's pages include photos of anything that is in the magazine, which means I will have to come up with title pages for the content's page. Therefore, I want to use a range of different photos on my covers page, compared to just photos of the band, as not everything in the magazine is just about the band. I had this problem for my mock because I  only had photos of the band. This will only be particularly important if I use more than one image on the content's page, which I might need to do if theres any spare room on the page. Therefore, for my final shots I will need to come up with ideas for photo's for the content's page.

Another thing I noticed was that when editing the photos, I couldn't cut around every single person. This was because some models overlapped other other models and therefore I could only cut certain models out. I have decided that in my final photo shoot I will include single shots of my models on their own, rather than all of them in the photos together. This will enable me to be able to edit them out of the image so they are on the own incase I want to have them separate somewhere on the pages.