2. Against Initial Plans
I feel my magazine was quite a good show against my initial plans that I had created. This is
because it is bright and colourful to go with my target audience of younger children. Although it
was changed a bit so that it fit together a lot better, this is because as it was being created, it
was obvious that the design was not working for that content as much as it could have.
My front cover had to change quite a lot as I discovered
through more research and experimentation with layouts
and colour schemes. It seemed that I did not realise at the
very beginning of my creations just how bad my colour
scheme was, but through more layout experiments, it was
discovered to actually not be very good and so had to be
changed.
3. My double page spread has changed the design quite a bit
from my initial plans as it was not a very effective for my
article that I decided to use for my double page spread. This is
not a bad thing though as it makes it much better for this
individual article and if it was a more individual article instead
of having the 6 separate areas that were needing to be kept
apart.
This layout may also not be great if there is more text than
can fit on just the one page though, as it may confuse some
people as to why the headline is on the 2nd page and where
you are supposed to start the reading from. And especially if it
is young children, then they may not understand so much.
6. My website definitely changed quite a bit from my initial plans as I figured that I did not know
how to do many things as much as I had wanted to do, so I had to change much of it. Also the
fact that I did not have as much time as I had wished to so that I could continue with it. Possibly
if I had much more time to learn the website creator and to actually explore and experiment, I
may have been able to complete it more to the design, but I don’t think that’s too essential.
7. Reflect on Production Process
For my front cover I used Adobe Photoshop to produce it. This lead to me
being able to do most things I feel, as I am much more knowledgeable
about that programme than the others I used. This means that I was much
more knowledgeable about how to use the sections that I needed to
including the photo placement tools and shape creations. These was heavily
used to try get the shape and colour of the different areas. I also used the
text tool which was leading to being difficult as we changed computers and
rooms almost every lesson meaning to re-install the fonts used to each
computer but it eventually managed to work out as I could put the fonts
onto my hard-drive and download them to each computer that I used. I
started using the chalk font for my title as I thought it was quite a playful
childish font that many can recognise.
I chose a green background as it is a nice mutual colour and can be
represented as a fun outdoors colour that may remind children of grass in
an open field. This then lead to me needing to find other colours similar, to
which lead to me also finding that if I stick to the colours of the ponies in
the main picture then it seems to make it all fit together.
8. For my double page spread, I used InDesign which I am not as familiar with so I was unsure how to do quite as much as I
was with Photoshop. This means that it was much harder to work through. I had to install a font for the headline as there
was not one I felt would be appropriate already on the computers that I was using at the time that I was producing this
page spread. The colours, I decided on a background that I felt was appropriate.
I then wanted to add in photos of each of the characters that I
was talking about, which I was hoping would fit into the
background as it is their town that they live in so it did. This lead
to trying to do the text, but with this programme I was much
more unsure of how to change the colours and have free reign
of colours, but also because it is for a spread it needed to be
easy to read so I decided for just black. This lead to the blocking
behind the text, so that it could be read at all. But also because I
was not sure how to change the colours to more than the base
colours, I had to decide on just any colour I could. And this lead
to blue, that was not great. So I decided to lower the opacity so
that you could still see the text but also some of the
background image.
9. For my website, I used Wix, which was completely new to me so it lead to a
lot of trial and error and experimentation within the creation. This lead to it
possibly not being as good as it could have, but still something that has used
a lot of effort and experimentation. This used a lot of trying to figure out
how to add the photos to the page and every little aspect of this. It used a
lot to try to figure out how the site works and how to get each aspect as I
had to search through the options available and see if each aspect I was
wanting would be there to use when I wanted to. Making me change my
choice as to what I would use. This lead to possibly most of the time spent
producing, used the menu to try figure out how to add more aspects that I
was wanting to use. This may have meant that I did not have as much time
to put my work together, but I think it’s essential as it meant that I have
been able to use the best possible aspects.
10. Issues
One of the issues I faced during this production was that I was unknowledgeable on some of the
programmes I was using, this made it much harder to create a higher quality piece of work. For
example, while working with InDesign, I had previously had limited experience with such a highly
professional application. Leading to a lot of confusion within the software and searching through
the settings. I feel this may have lead to it not being quite as good as it could have been if I knew
what exactly it had to offer and what I could create in the software. Compared to Photoshop
which I have used much more and so I was able to know where different tools were and be able
to just click to how it worked much better.
11. Effectiveness
I feel, compared to other similar products, such as
the My Little Pony magazine, my product is pretty
effective as there as some similarities due to the fact
that I was using these sort of magazines to give me
inspiration throughout my production. I feel that with
this in mind, it shows that I was trying to make it as
effective as possible with the intention for it to be
used very similarly to the pre-existing ones.
12. Possible Improvements
I feel it would be possible for me to improve multiple aspects of my production.
One such improvement may be to spend more time researching my website design, this could
mean that it would be possible to complete more different and diverse pages, with more
working links and activities. For example, one of my plans was to add in an embedded game
within one page, but due to lack of time and preparations I was unable to complete that action.
Another possible improvement would possibly be to change the language that I used
throughout, as it may have possibly been slightly more sophisticated than I was planning to use
with this magazine being aimed towards younger children that may not be able to understand
too much.
Related to this, I would have liked to have a little more time to spend proofreading all of my
written segments, as I feel it may have not been fully understood.
13. What have I learned?
Through the production of this magazine and website, I have learned a great deal to do with the
programmes I used, Photoshop, InDesign and the website creator, Wix. Along with this though, I
feel that I may have learned quite a lot about layouts and how to create a proper colour scheme.
I mention this as to start with, my front cover was a mishmash of every colour that I could use,
until I asked some peers and my tutor to help me out with it. They confirmed my suspicions of it
not being the most aesthetically pleasing of covers due to the fact that I used too many colours
and should have stuck to a basic colour scheme as others did of around 3 main colours to use
without. I feel that I may not have thought of this without this project.
