Zine

We made a practise magazine cover and contents page to help us learn our way around Photoshop and also give us an idea of what making our final product will involve.

Cover

Contents

Zine Evaluation

My Zine magazine is targeted at college students ages 16-18, the magazine would have articles about the college; what’s happening what will be happening in and around college, events in and outside the college and other articles that might interest or be of relevance to college students. I think that my magazine would appeal to college students because it will inform them of what’s happening in their college and let them know about upcoming events.

This was my first time using Photoshop and I found it a struggle to say the least, the concept of layers within the program did take me quite a while to grasp. After the first lesson I was able to do simple things like making new layers and select and deselect objects, and slowly I learnt more tools and techniques. I did eventually finish my front cover fore Zine; however I think I still have a lot to learn with the program as my front cover shows, I used minimal Photoshop skills to create the cover as I am not confident enough to use the program to its full potential as of yet. This is something I am going to work on and develop in order to make my final magazine as good as possible.

My Zine cover looks quite bare, with minimal text and images. The images also do not look as if they have much relevance to the magazine, especially as there are not captions or coverlines to explain them. They are also not presented on the page in a very imaginative or interesting way which makes them even less interesting to look at. The minimal text on the cover also makes the magazine look like there is perhaps not much content inside and again allows the page to look bare. I also think that the use of a black and white main image was a bad choice as it makes the page look colourless and not as eye catching as it could be had the image been left in colour. I do however like the title and I think the size is suitable and will catch people’s attention. When I come to create my music magazine cover I will make it a lot busier with more relevant image used in a more creative way and more relevant information to grab reader’s attention. I will also ensure that my main image is not black and white as this has proven not to be effective.

I also think my contents page was lacking in content and looked quite bare, however the background pattern did help make the page look slightly fuller in comparison to the white background of the front cover. I did feel that although the images weren’t as effective as I would have liked them to have been, buy using them on the contents page as well as the cover, there showed continuity between the two pages. When I come to create the contents page for my music magazine I will look to make it busy and interesting, with more informative information and use more interesting images in a more effective and creative way.

My planning also could have been better as my draft of the cover was not annotated which would have helped hugely in the production of the piece and also colour would have been helpful as well, this way I might have foreseen the black and white effect of the main image not working well on the page. I will plan more carefully and in more detail when I start planning for my final music magazine.

Thoughts: I need to know my way around Photoshop by experimenting and exploring with the program and learning from trial and error. I also need to use my time more wisely.