Photo Shoot 2

Today I went out and took photos for my magazine. I went down to Cullercoats beach where I found a range of caves, I decided to take some photos there. The dark background adds mystery to the artists and, especially in the double page spread, hint that there is more to them that meets the eye. The bottom photo is in front of the gates to a power plant. It looks like a rough area with the steel fence and worn down sign, which reflects the past of the artists lives in my article story. I will have to edit my photos to adjust the lighting and quality of colouring etc. so they look more professional and appealing to the viewer.

Target Audience Feedback

I have asked a member of my target audience to give me detailed feedback on my Rough Cut Front Cover, including what they like and what can be improved.

Teacher Feedback: Double Page Spread

Positive
- Strong layout.
- Good mix of font and colour.

Negative
- Not enough overall text.
- Opening paragraph too chunky.
- Photo doesn't really achieve much - look for examples.
- Not sure on colour scheme (green).
- Needs 3 columns in the article.
- Perhaps change the central colour green.
- The page is uneven, it needs to be half and half.

This time I have received a huge amount of negatives for my double page spread and not so many positives. The positives were the same as usual, a strong layout and good mix of font and colour. The good thing about getting a lot of negatives is I now know a lot of ways on how to improve. I need to work on my article, making sure it covers 3 columns of a consistent size. I will look back at my research to find out what a rap magazine talks about in their article so I can work on extending mine. Again I need to find a photo that looks more conventional and ambitious, however I will use it to also help my fonts. I have put a lot of work into the green font choice so I will look to create a photo with similar coloring in order to help it fit my design.

Teacher Feedback: Contents Page

Positive
-Great Layout.
-Good use of colour and font.
-Appropriate Features
-The overall look is good
- I really like the left hand side of the page.

Negatives
- Need new photos for the page.
- Still not totally genre-specific.
- Obviously need new photos.
- Needs to be more of a specific genre.

The positives were the same as the ones I got from my peers, the layout, colour scheme and fonts are good. I was also told that it had the appropriate features and the overall design is good, especially the left hand side. I will look to keep the design roughly the same when I change it to be more of a hip hop style. Again I have been told that I need more photos, I am going to put this top of my agenda to make sure it happens. The other improvement was also the same as the last, to make the genre more specific. These are clearly the two main improvements that I need to make so I will put all my focus into making them happen. 

Teacher Feedback: Front Cover

Positive

-Having a reference to style of double page spread.

-Good layout and use of fonts.
-The overall layout is good.
-It looks conventional.

Negative

-Photoshop a bit messy.

-Plain white background not really working.

-No clear genre, find a style model.

-Find a more definite genre.

-Need a stronger photo with more ambitious mise en scene.

I am happy with the positives I received for my front cover design. Again I've been told my layout and fonts are good and work well to stay conventional. However I have been given some quite difficult feedback which I must act on. Again I have been told my photos aren't good enough so I must act on these straight away, I will spend a few days developing photos. I have then been told my magazine must stick to just one genre which is going to be awkward as I have used conventions from two genres. Because my article is about two rappers I will replace all the rock conventions with that of rap. This is probably the easiest way around it as it is the genre I am strongest with and already have quite a lot of features I have taken from rap. However, I will still keep to a bit of the rock style in order to give the effect of my distinct rap type.

Rough Cut Feedback: Double Page Spread

Positive                                                                              Negative 

-Like the layout.                                                                 -Different headings from front cover.
-Article fills the space well.                                                 -A different setting for one of the photos.
-The layout is good.                                                            -Need page number.
-The colour scheme is good.                                                -Page number.

-Really good overall.                                                            -The photos are out of focus.
-Colours work well.                                                             -Pictures are a bit blurry.
-Name of the artists works well.                                          -Photo on the right looks unconventional.

-Nice banner at the top.                                                      -Please change the photos.

-Like the use of two photos.                                                -Photo is bad quality.

The layout and colour scheme seems to be a consistent favourite throughout my design so I will be keeping the same colour scheme and a similar layout. They also like the name of the artists and the article, this is good as it means I can focus more on the design when making improvements. I haven't been given that many pointers on how to improve, however I have had a lot of criticism for one feature. A lot of people don't like the photos as they are bad quality and maybe unconventional. I will look back at my research to help understand what a conventional hip hop photo looks like. Because I have had the same said about the front cover and contents page I will spend a lot of time taking new photos over the next few days and editing them on Photoshop. They also mentioned that I don't have page numbers, I will have to look back at my list of codes and conventions for a double page spread and make sure I include them all.

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.