Preliminary- My Evaluation

The conventions I have used is a Masthead for the branding of the magazine so that it is recognizable for loyal people to pick up quickly. A slogan to be catchy for the audience and to try and attract them in. Bright coverlines to give people an idea of what is in the magazine so they know whether the magazine is right for them. A bright NEW! image on the front cover so people know that the magazine is new and that they should try it out. A lure at the bottom of the page so people want to buy the magazine to have a chance of winning the prize found inside. Other ways of interacting with the magazine eg. Instagram so people can keep in touch and send in new ideas for the magazines viewers to enjoy. Finally I included bright colours to attract people in and make the magazine stand out compared to the other competitive magazines in the market.

I decided to base my magazine on the idea of travel because there is not many travel magazines in the market and people of my target audience are very much interested in travelling now and in the future.

During my magazines production i feel as though i dealt with problems well. For example I had a problem as i could not use the photo i wanted to from my holiday in Greece as it was taken landscape and could therefore not cover the whole cover and would therefore look unprofessional. I dealt with this problem by in the short amount of time i had going out into the woods behind my house and taking a picture of something that signified travel and a trip. Which ended up being a long path that showed the long trip and adventure that travel is.

Overall I believe that my magazine was reasonably successful as I included lots of good conventions and did a good job of making the magazine bright and therefore it will stand out. I was also happy with my coverlines as they were simple but therefore stand out to the reader and do not overcrowd the screen and make it look unprofessional.  I also feel as though i did a good job with my time management and have managed to achieve all my ideas in a reasonable amount of time.

On the other side of things i feel for the real coursework portfolio i need to improve on a few things. Firstly i need to improve on my photography skills as i believe that the image i took was a bit dark and dreary. Therefore the image drowned out the other colours and made it hard for the slogan and masthead to stand out. I also need to improve on my editing skills as if i was able to i would have made the image brighter so the slogan could stand out more and therefore make the front cover more accessible and interesting for people. Finally i need to get better at making the cover look professional as i believe that the main problem with my magazine cover is that it looks unprofessional and therefore would be not good enough to go onto shop shelves.
Finally i believe that this was a good experience as i got a chance to develop my designing skills and also have had a chance to see what my weaknesses are so i can improve them for my actual magazine cover.