Rough Cut Feedback: Contents Page

Positive                                                        Negative 

-Lots of different boxes of information.          -Need a few more photos.
-Full of content and no white spaces.              -Some text is hard to read.
-Love layout and stories.                               -Can't read the black boxes to well.
-Like the use of colours and fonts.                  -Change white text in bottom right corner.

-Nice layout.                                                 -Images of different artists.
-Really nice range of colours and fonts.            -Text should be slightly larger.
-Good use of different colours.                       -Instead of the editors have artists.

-Good layout.                                                -Need more photos.

Again I have been given plenty positives of my design and plenty negatives that I can use to make improvements with for my final cut. I was told that my layout is yet again good and the colours and fonts work well. This is good as it is a consistent feature that is vitally important to be appealing to my audience. To improve I was told that the most important feature were the photos, which I was already concentrating on changing anyway, the good tip was how I should change them. I was told that I should include more photos of artists, however I want to stay consistent to the hip hop genre so I may only include one photo of the main artist. Another feature was that the text is hard to read, some blamed it on the colour scheme but one said that the text just needs to be a larger font. I think this will solve the problem so I will look to rearrange the layout in order to include the one photo and larger fonts.

Rough Cut Feedback: Front Cover

Positive                                                                              Negative 

-Nice house style.                                                               -Need faces and '2014' not overlapped. 
-Good use of different fonts.                                              -Over crowded.
-Like the top banner, good use of fonts.                              -Can't read the red on white well. 
-Name of magazine.                                                           -White and red hard to read.

-Colour Scheme.                                                                -Put photo over 'watch out' story.
-Interesting language.                                                        -Feels cluttered.
-Lots of text and stories.                                                    -'Watch out' bit shouldn't overlap artists face.

-Title and top banner are really good.                                  -Too much white behind photo.

-I really like the layout.                                                       -Photo is bad quality.

From looking at my feedback I have learnt many good qualities about my front cover which I should keep, and many bad qualities that need improving. The feedback tells me that my top banner is good and appealing to the audience meaning I should keep it how it is. They also like the colour scheme and fonts used which is good as I put a lot of work into the selection of these. However, I got a lot of ways in which I can improve my magazine. This is good as I now know what I should be doing over the next few weeks. A few people said the magazine is over crowded and feels cluttered, I will have to cut down on the information I am offering in order to solve this problem. The most popular problem was my photos and the positioning of them, overlapping and bad quality. I will have to spend time going out and taking good quality photos and then spending time editing them to improve the appearance.

The Feedback...

I have just received my feedback for my rough cut from peers and tutors. I have been given more than enough to analyse for possible improvements and ideas that I can then develop. I will start on the peer feedback, but first I am going to cut it down to the most relevant, useful and popular comments. Then I will go onto the teachers feedback, analysing each point made and improvement suggested.

Preparing For Feedback

Now that I have handed in my rough cuts to my peers and tutors I will soon be receiving feedback. For my peer feedback I am going to take note of their possible improvements, and shortlist the ideas that are most popular and those that I find most interesting. Some of the possible improvements might just be the ideas of that individual, meaning others won't find it as appealing as my original design. I will take notice of all the feedback I receive from my tutors as they know how to create a professional magazine. Over the next week I will be analysing my feedback, getting back to you each day on what improvements I have taken note of and how I will use it. 

Rough Cut Double Page Spread

This is the rough cut for my double page spread. The colour scheme is different from the other pages as I have personalised it to fit the artists on the page. I made the colour scheme of the artists similar to that of the magazine to stop variation causing the magazine to have a colourful appearance, which is unconventional. Instead I kept the initial colour scheme, red, black and white, then added a dark green to make the artists unique from the rest, which is a convention usually found in hip hop magazines. Dark green is commonly associated with money and has connotations of ambition, greed and jealousy, which all are conventional to the rapper stereotype. I used my style models to notice that most music magazines use the left side of the double page spread for the image, therefore an image dominated approach. I have followed this approach to stay conventional, the only other feature I have used on that page is the name of the rap duo.  I have included all the text and article on the right side of the double page spread. At the top of the page I have used a header for the article to attract the viewer into reading it. Because I have written about new rappers I have included an introduction paragraph to the them. I then go into an interview, using the colour scheme, red and black, to separate the questions from answers. Half way through the article, at the top right, I have included another image for the double page spread. The image is similar to the other one I have used, so I plan to use two different photos for the final cut to add variation and make the images look individually interesting.

Rough Cut Contents Page

This is the rough cut of my contents page. Again I have stuck to my colour scheme of black, red and white. I have added an additional font to this page which is conventional of the rock genre, as well as using my original text font which is conventional of the hip hop genre. This adds variation to the page and allowed me to style my design to both genres. I have positioned my article page numbers down the left side of the page which I also saw being done in hip hop magazines. However I have challenged the conventions of a hip hop magazine and gone for the conventions of a rock magazine in terms of graphology. I have made all the text concerning artists the same size and haven't made any stand out over the rest which was used in the hip hop magazines. I also have used frames for 3 images, I haven't taken the photos yet so the photo used is just temporary so I can give you an idea of my design idea. A hip hop magazine mainly focuses on one photo, the main artist, and doesn't include any additional photos on the contents page. However, a rock magazine focuses on a few of the main artists that will be featured in the magazine on the contents page by including images of these artists. On the right side of the page I have talked about the 'road crew' and people involved in the editorial, contributions, publications etc. This is conventional of both genres so I made sure that I included it on the contents page. Finally when it came to language used I featured a lot of street slang and aggressive adjectives and nouns. This is very conventional of a hip hop magazine and will help to personalise the text to the idiolect of the target audience, creating a chance for diversion.

Rough Cut Front Cover

This is the front cover from my rough cut. Because my magazine is going to be created to include a mix between two genres I have taken ideas from both Kerrang! and Vibe. For the header I have used the font Tw Cen MT Condensed which is similar to one I saw used in a Vibe magazine, talking about a rap artist. This convention is then reinforced by my logo which uses a large bold font spreading across the page, this convention is consistent in hip hop magazines. I have styled the name of the main story differently from the rest of the page to help it stand out, this is also going to be the house style of the rappers in the double page spread. On the right I have included short introductions to stories inside the magazine which I also found used on the Kerrang! front cover. However, instead of using a black background to the text I have used white to play on the black clothing the model is wearing. At the bottom of the page I have used another feature I saw on the front cover of the Kerrang! magazine I researched. I have listed all the band names that will be featured in the magazine, using the same plus sign between each name. I have placed the photography behind all the text but in front of the title, which again is conventional of a music magazine. This helps to create a 3D effect with the photography, I have only covered a small amount of the logo to make sure it is still readable. The final feature I have included is the box dedicated to another article inside. Again I saw this feature on the front of the Kerrang! magazine. I included an additional image in it and used a quick description to attract people to the article. I have kept my red, white and black colour scheme consistent throughout the front cover, except for when I wrote about the main article. I did use 2 of my original colours to help it blend in a bit. If I used 3 completely different colours it would cause too much variation causing the magazine to lose its serious tone, this would be unconventional of a rap/rock magazine.