Diary Entry 17

I have just finished analysing the comments I recieved from my peers about my final draft. I have completed it in the first lesson which was my aim so I am very pleased. I have taken every comment on board and found each comment very helpful and I am confident that these comments will improve my magazine. I will now focus on applying the improvements to my magazine and also to keep on getting audience feedback throughout the process of improving so that I can keep making it appealing and attractive.

Diary Entry 16

This week I have been collecting comments from my peers about my magazine first drafts. I have started reading through them and working out ways to use their input to improve my magazine. Hopefully I will get this done after the next lesson so I can start making my magazine the best it can be.

Magazine First Draft Comments

I have read through the comments on my front cover and they are very helpful. I am going to change the colour of the 'December 2011' date because at the moment it is very difficult to read. I need to edit the colour of the black sell lines on the left hand side because they are also quite difficult to read. When making these sell lines I thought the drop shadow would make them easier to read, but I will have to increase the shadow to make it more visible.

For my contents page, I have read through the comments and found them very useful. I know I need to add the account name for the Twitter and Facebook addresses so I will definitely do that. I also like the idea of adding more images of other artists, which I planned on doing initially but ran out of time to do. The comment about changing the colour of the titles of the different sections ('NEWS') I will definitely take on board. I thought that I already made them different colours to make them stand out more, however it didn't seem to work so I will correct this. I will also edit the text at the bottom of the 'LIVE!' section because as my peer said, it is slightly too small to read. I found these comments extremely helpful and will certainly take them all on board.

For my first double page spread, I got a few useful comments. However, I think I may make the page number slightly smaller, whereas one of the comments was to make the page number bigger. If I do decide to make the page number bigger, I will make the magazine name 'BASS' bigger too, to provide consistency.

I am definitely going to take these comments on board. Max said that I need to make it more clear who 'B:' is in the interview so I think at the beginning I will use the magazines' full name 'BASS:' and then use just the letter 'B:' so it is clear to the reader who is speaking. I also definitely want to include sell line 'EXCLUSIVE' to make the reader feel like they are gaining important and rare information about this artist. I will also make a heading or include a pull quote, like Sonia suggested, to make it more clear to the reader that this is exciting article they will want to read.

The comments on this double page spread were very helpful and encouraging. Sonia said "I like the image used as its different from the other images you have used on the other pages and is quite entriguing for the reader." For an improvement, she highlighted that a good idea could be "to add an effect to the quote to make it stand out a bit more." which I will definitely take on board, as I wasn't entirely happy with my choice of font for this pull quote. Laura also agreed with changing the font or adding an effect to make it more interesting "I would add an effect to the main quote or change the font so its not all in capitals and links with the other texts on the previous pages" but also commented on the use of the image "I like the camera shot used as its full length and varies from the other images used. The colour scheme in the photo also matches well with the text used ontop of the page."