Third Drafts

Again, I have decided to put all three pages of my magazine onto one post. So here is my third drafts of my front cover for my magazine.

There are a variety of improvements I have made (taken on board from my second draft feedback) but other minor things I decided to change myself. One of the main changes that I edited, was flipping the picture around. I decided to see which way round the picture looked best on and I preferred the model, being positioned on the right hand side. Additionally, I ended up emboldening the title, as I didn't believe it didn't stand out enough on the page. I still think it could probably stand out more, so I will probably try to fix this in Photoshop in my next draft. Another thing that I made sure I included (which I can't believe I forgot to add on in the first place!) was to say that this is an acoustic magazine! As this is the first issue of a new music magazine, I thought it would be appropriate to have the tagline of "Britain's Newest Acoustic Magazine". Other minor changes I made, was the font colours. I thought I'd change the "find out how to win tickets inside" to black to make it stand out more on the page, however, I may mess around with the colours again to make sure the best colour is used to help it grab the audience's attention. Again, I changed "March 2012" to the colour white, but I'm still not sure that was the best move to make so I'll probably end p changing that again on my next draft. Like my target audience said in my previous post, the bar code needed to be smaller still, so I did, which meant I could enlarge the "Mia Melloway" font to ensure that it lived up to it's purpose of being the boost, by standing out and grabbing the audiences attention. Furthermore, I decided to enlarge the picture of the model on the front cover, so it was more of a mid shot rather than a long mid shot. Lastly, I made the skyline a little smaller, as I felt it was a bit too big and took some attention away from the rest of the main sell lines on the page. Overall, I am pleased with my improvements I have made on my front cover and I feel it is taking more shape. However, there are a few little adjustments I''m sure I can make to my next draft.

One of the main changes I believe is the most noticeable on my third draft of my contents page, it adding the two thumbnails of my model on the bottom left hand side. I realised that I hadn't meet the requirements of having 4 original images in the 3 magazine pages I was producing, therefore, I thought the best place to add the other two images I was missing was on the contents page. This resulted in my having to change the layout of the contents page a bit, as the picture of the guitar and stool was there, so I had to make the editorial smaller so I could move that next to it. Although, I haven't made that many changes to this particular drafts, I would say that it is slowly getting there to look like a realistic (hopefully) acoustic magazine. I personally think there is something missing from this contents page, so I am going to go back to basics on my next draft and see what the typical conventions you usually find in an acoustic magazine.

Out of all the third drafts, I would say that the double page spread, has most probably changed and improved the most! One of the first changes I made to my second drafts, was to add the old line paper border across the top of the page.This was not only to help the stand first and the name of "Mia Melloway" stand out more, but to keep continuity throughout the magazine pages. I think by including this on the front cover, contents page and double page spread, makes this feature a particular house style, so the audience can see and tell that each page is from the same magazine and if they went to buy it they would know exactly what to look out for. Another feature, I nearly almost forgot to include was the drop cap, that I mentioned I wanted to include several posts ago! I decided to use quite a swirly "S" so it fitted in with the target market being primarily girls and link nicely with the font used for "Mia Melloway's" name. Another improvement I made to the double page spread, was to move the pull out quote to the middle of the main Q&A article. the only problem with his action, is that where I have moved the pull out quote from (bottom left hand corner) it looks rather bare, looking at it again and therefore, I will add something to fill the gap. Additionally, I felt the text of the Q&A interview in places was hard to read, so I decided to add a  rectangle shape behind the text and fill it in white and then change the transparency to 63%. This way the text is more visible, as the extra layer of the faint white background, helped the red and black contrast against it and be able to read the article, instead of having to guess what some words said. Another slight minor detail was moving the name of "Mia Melloway" and the stand first slightly more apart, so you could tell that they were both on separate pages, even though the line down the middle isn't in place, you could still tell.

Conclusion:

On the whole, the double page spread was probably the most improved, as it was the main page that needed changing. However, I am over all happy with all the adjustments I made to the front cover, contents page and double page spread, as they are all starting to take more shape now, compared to where I first started.