media evaluation

Now I have finished creating my final piece I will evaluate it and talk about my thoughts and feelings thoroughout the process. I am pleased with my front cover, I had a clear image of how I wanted it to look in my head throughout the process of creating my magazine cover so I did not struggle designing it. I came up with the magazine name;I.R.NRoll, This is short for Indie Rock And Roll. I thought that this was a relevant, catchy and memorable title similar to text language because I wanted my magazine to be aimed at an indie music listener/ reader market. So like NME I shortened the name to make it easy to remember and easy to spot in a shop because of the short title and bold, simple font. For the font I was advised to download it off of a website called 'dafont'. I chose not to do this and just to use Ariel font because it is simple and common in magazines such as NME. I am happy with a font that people recognise and feel comfortable with and is also just as effective and perhaps in my opinion not as over powering as some of the fonts on the website.
The colour scheme of my magazine consists of three main colours: Red, Yellow and Black. These three colours are used to link my pages together and give consistency to my work and much like the font are able to be easily recognised by the public. Although these are not the only colours used throughout my magazine I feel these colours work well together and also help create an Indie Rock attitude for my magazine and help draw in the most suited readers.
I feel that my front cover works really well, I have presented it much like a cover used for NME magazine using the repetitive photographs of the same person to make a collage,this shows the reader who is mainly featuring in the magazine and fills the page in an interesting, effective way.I really enjoyed designing my front cover, it all pieced together bit by bit. Because I have made my magazine into a Brit Awards special I felt that sub-headings were not needed and that the simplicity of my cover really highlights that it is a special edition.
I struggled more with my contents page, I found it difficult to fill the page itself and had trouble organising the layout. The end result was alot simpler visually than I wanted it to be . I had originally hoped it would have been very full and much like the front cover. Yet by continuing to use the three main colours throughout my work to link the pages together, I feel that after a very busy vibrant front page, A clear, ordered contents page is just what is needed. Looking now at my three pages together I feel now it looks appealing and somehow works rather well.
I am most pleased with my double page spread, it has turned out really well and looks exactly how I feel a NME double page spread interview would look. Although it may look like alot of unnecessary space has been left blank at the top of the page I would argue that you don't always have to fill every part of a Page. The space that I have left helps to create impact visually for the reader and adds typical indie character and atmosphere, which I have seen in many music magazines and interviews.
Overall I feel that my attempt at magazine designing went very positively and I am very pleased with the final out come. Although I struggled initially with the software having never used it before, after several attempts I became more confident with the materials and was able to complete the task to the best of my ability.

flat plans

Below are my flat plans that i have designed for my final outcome.
These sketches roughly indicate what i want my magazine to look like.