Double Page Spread - Final (1st draft)

After completing my first draft for my double page spread, I set up a blog poll to find out what my audience thought of it. Some answered 'good' and most answered 'amazing', I didn't receive any negative responses. This shows me that this double page spread layout pleases my audience and appeals to them, therefore I didn't need to change anything.

Contents Page - Final

After receiving negeative feedback from my traget audience about my 1st contents page draft, I decided to change it slightly. I changed it by moving the page listings over to fill up the empty space, and I coloured the titles and page numbers in red, to add more colour and make it more interesting. Also, I did this because the red text would match the red headband one of the models are wearing.

I set up another poll regarding this 2nd version of the contents page. The reponse was a lot more positive, as most people rated it as either 'amazing' or 'good', and therefore it appeals to them more.

Contents Page - 1st Draft

I set up a poll to find out what my target audience thought of my contents page. Most people voted either 'it's OK' or 'good', so they were only satisfied a bit, not too impressed. As the opinions weren't too negative I am only going to make minor adjustments such as add more colour, to improve it and make it appeal more to my target audience.

Double Page Spread Planning

Double page spread planning

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Contents Page Planning

Contents page planning

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Front Cover - Final

After receiving a really negative response from my audience regarding my 1st and 2nd front cover drafts, I decided to interview a member of my target audience to get their full-on opinion about the front covers. The interview helped massively. It gave me a really good understanding of what was going wrong and therefore I knew how to improve it.

I decided to completely start from scratch. Instead cutting out the main cover image and sticking it on the grey background, I left it completely and used the original colour image, but I photoshopped it a bit to improve the colour, as it was originally too yellow and too saturated.  I also scrapped my original colour scheme of pink, white, grey and black, it was just too boring! So I decided to really follow conventions and use a common colour scheme - red, black and white, which worked well as it matched the colours in the photo. I took away all of the headlines and puffs and simply replaced them with '+ Arcade Fire, The Gossip, Darwin Deez' at the bottom left corner. I kept most of the Betty Chicago headline, but replaced the sub title with 'behind the scenes' to fit in with teh atmosphere of the photo. Then I moved the barcode to the top left corner, as it originally made the bottom of the front cover look too busy.

I set up another blog poll, and the feedback improved a lot - my audience loved it! Finally, it has worked!

Audience Feedback - Interview

After I created a poll regarding the 1st draft of my front cover, I found out that most poeple didn't like it. So I tweaked it by fading the image, changing the masthead and using less fonts and text, to make it look better. However, when I posted another poll regarding my 2nd draft, I found out that people still didn't like it very much. So, I decided to interview someone from my target audience (a young female who likes indie music) to get her opinion about my two front cover drafts.

Interviewee:
Name: Rosie Butler
Age: 16

1)      I posted a poll on my blog about my first and second draft of my front cover, but no one liked it. Why do you think this is?

Because you’ve done it in black and white,  so it doesn’t jump out at you enough, it makes it look boring having pink as the only colour to stand out.

2)      So is it just the colour. Nothing else?

It’s also because it’s quite over crowded with writing, which can put people off. And there’s too many different fonts.

3)      Is the main cover image OK?

The image itself is good, the models are pretty and lure you in. But I think you should have the picture in colour, and play around with the background to make it look not so boring. Also, I can tell you’ve cut the picture out using photoshop or something, which is fine, but you should take more care when cutting it out to make it look neater. Like the girl on the left, you haven’t cut her hair out very well. Also, on your second draft, I don’t like the way you’ve faded the picture, it doesn’t look right.

4)      How about the content?

The content is good and would work well in attracting people to buy it if they read the writing on the front cover, but there’s too much of it on the 1^st draft, the 2^nd draft is fine.

5)      What about the fonts?

On the first draft there are too many fonts, you’ve used less fonts on the 2^nd draft but it still looks like too many, maybe take away one? I also much prefer the font you’ve used on the masthead for the 2^nd draft, it’s a lot classier.

6)      What jumps out at you the most (both drafts)?

The picture definitely! It’s nice, but as I said, make it in colour. The masthead on the 2^nd draft also stands out a lot, it’s really big and you’ve used a nice font. The poster special is also a good feature, A magazine is usually more attractive when it has a ‘special’ or if the magazine itself is a special edition.