The document summarizes feedback from questionnaires about a fanzine created with a neon aesthetic design. The summaries note that the neon color scheme is effective at drawing in the audience. However, one font used for interview answers and a written message is considered too bold and hard to read. While the design aims to convey mystery, the color palette of neon signs does not seem to fit well with the topic of 1910s murders. Overall, the neon design is well executed but some elements could be improved, such as making text more readable and ensuring the design theme matches the topic.

1. Evaluation

2. Questionnaire
• What specific parts of my fanzine do you like and why?
• Gorgeous neon aesthetic, with the dark and light contrast serving to
draw in the audience. It is evident that you have also done
thorough research on the topic.
• What parts of my fanzine do you dislike and how could I improve
these?
• I’d recommend running your text through spellchecking software,
and altering some pieces so that they’re more readable.
• Do you think that the colour palette and design works well with the
topic of my Fanzine?
• Yes, I believe that it serves to highlight the mystery of the source
material and conveys very vivid imagery of real-life events.

3. Questionnaire
• What specific parts of my fanzine do you like and why?
• I really like the neon colour scheme and design. The continuity of
the neon aesthetic throughout the fanzine really brings the whole
thing together
• What parts of my fanzine do you dislike and how could I improve
these?
• I feel the font for the interview answers and the written message is
too hard to read. The lettering is too bold and compressed and
overall I feel the font doesn’t really fit in
• Do you think that the colour palette and design works well with the
topic of my Fanzine?
• Personally I don’t really understand how the neon lighting which is
associated with the 70’s and 80’s fits in with the theme of a 1910’s
murderer. I feel the article and design are great they just don’t
really fit together in my opinion

4. Design
• Colour Schemes:
• In the fanzine, I believe my use of colours is one of the strongest points. This is because I
needed colours to stand out, otherwise, my overall design would have looked very lacklustre.
My design is created using bright neon colours to create a dark dingy environment, to
represent somewhere there doesn't feel safe or makes the reader feel secluded. I kept the
same two main colours throughout my work, these were purple and green, I initially planned
to have different colours depending on what I was talking about, for example I was going to
have different colours when I was talking about suspects to when I was talking about the
events of the around the murders. However, when I was making the Fanzine I found that
using the same colour scheme created much more unison between the pages and design.
For page titles I always used a green and for the page border I would use a purple, the only
time this didn't happen is on the front page where the title is in purple and the main part of
the cover image is green, I wish I had done this different so that the cover was more fitting
with the rest of the fanzine. Throughout the fanzine I used different colours on smaller
images and effects, this worked really well as it added small amounts of variation which just
using two colours would not achieve. For example, I use red to show blood on some of the
images and this works really well as it adds far more depth to the image, this makes it much
more interesting and unique.

5. Design
• Images, images and text ratio:
• The images inside my fanzine were all thought out so that they linked well with the current topic that is being discussed. A
good example of this would be the slide where I discuss police action to counteract the murders, I used an image of a police
hat to show the topic visually. Using a simple design works well, especially when working on a page that has a large amount
of information, the design was highly important in getting this to work. This is because the neon look meant that I was able
to individually scale each image to fit the page necessary. For example one of the theory pages there is a very little amount
of text on it, so to fill the remaining space I was able to adjust the size of the neon signs (which in this case was a ghost).
However when I did this I would use the transform tool in Photoshop, this had an overall negative impact on my fanzine.
This is mostly down to my images being a form of line art, as every time I changed the size of an image the thickness of the
lines would change. Due to doing this meant my design wasn’t consistent, this made the neon design somewhat less
believable (as the line art was supposed to represent neon lighting, and I wanted to have a consistent “Pipe” size). I could
have overcome this issue by planning out each page in. a far more detailed manner so that all of the images have a fixed
space, I could have also put the text in first so I could see exactly the space I had to draw the images in.
• However other than the variation of line sizes I think that the overall design has worked extremely well with the mystery and
dirtiness of the crime story I was telling. My design represents a dirty bar. I used the foreground and background to create
this aesthetic, the background changes are much more minor than the ones in the foreground but are just as important. In
the background, I used a black background, but rather than using the fill tool I built it up slowly using a black brush. I used a
spatter brush with the brush opacity set to 15%, this worked in my design as it means my background looks to have cracks
and gaps in it as if it is a dirty run down building. The foreground design is very in your face in comparison but works great
to draw audiences in. The neon design was also simple as the majority of designing I was able to just repeat using a
blending option style I had created, then just changing the colour overlay to the correct colour. I would also have a blending
style created for the wires behind the lights, this allowed me to just use a size 8 brush to draw them in. One of the only
challenges with this design is that I had to make it look like a neon sign, so corners couldn’t be too sharp, I stuck to this in
some respects but not always, however I did make sure that there was never a part in any design that split the pipe in two
directions, I would always have a gap if this was going to happen. Overall this design came out extremely well and was very
recognizable to audiences, I know this as in my questionnaire someone responded by saying “Gorgeous neon aesthetic, with
the dark and light contrast serving to draw in the audience”.

6. Font
• In my magazine only used three different fonts two of which worked well. One of the fonts was used as a heading
on the majority of pages. This font was called “ “. The key reason I used it was due it fitting extremely well with
neon design whilst still being quite a thin font. When creating my fanzine I found that a lot of fonts, especially the
thinner fonts, did not have enough pixels in for my blending style to appear. This was a problem for me as I did
not want the headlines to be bold as often when you see neon signs they are quite sharp and clean, so the larger I
made the font the more cluttered my page appeared. So, in the end, I used this font which works perfectly as it
has a sharp style that already has a somewhat neon and nightlife aesthetic to it, but it did mean sacrificing my
blending style slightly, even if it is not that noticeable. I also used a similar font to this for my larger body's of text,
the font I used was “ “. This font was much easier to decide upon because I knew I wasn’t going to put the neon
blending style on it. This was because using the neon effect would have made my pages clutter which as
mentioned before I did not want. I decided that I would have a small bold font that still has a neon shape and feel
to it, which is what this font offered. I feel as though my pages with this font a very clear and easy to read, this
makes a much more enjoyable experience for my readers. I did also have text on my front cover, however, I did
not use a font for that and drew it myself, this was a great decision as I needed that text to be larger, which is why
it has a very different aesthetic to the inside of my fanzine. However I do feel as though the text on the front is
still somewhat lacklustre and unclean, this is mostly due to the gaps in the text, which is should have lined up
much better so that the lines followed a clear path.
• There is one font in my fanzine that I got completely wrong, this is also mentioned by someone who answered my
questionnaire, they say “I feel the font for the interview answers and the written message is too hard to read. The
lettering is too bold and compressed and overall I feel the font doesn’t really fit in”. I agree with this statement
and should have changed this during production. The reason I chose this font was that I wanted it to appear as
though someone insane had written the message, as this is what had happened in real life. I personally think that
the text works well to show that someone insane had written it, however, I definitely should not have put
aesthetic over readability. In future I would definitely change this font, however, I would not remove the design
entirely, I would instead have found a different font that shows clearly that someone insane has written or said
something.