Section 10: Evaluation

The Project

To kick-start my project I considered a wide range of clients I could potentially work with and different artefacts I could produce. I took into consideration various factors such as the relevance to my university degree, existing client relationships and my current multimedia skills.

I eventually decided to work alone on the project, to create a magazine aimed at the blogging community. I have a keen interest and knowledge of the blogging industry and believed I could combine this with my graphic design skills to create a new product.

As well as having an interest in the blogging industry I also had a lot of contacts, having been a blogger myself for over three years. I chose to collaborate with a range of bloggers to produce content for the magazine, and thought that my connection with the community would mean that I could easily find people to work with.

I aimed to complete a full first month’s issue of the magazine, around 50-80 pages long, covering topics such as beauty, fashion, health and blogging advice.

Process

I had a clear vision for the magazine from quite early on in the project. As the blogging industry is strongly dominated by young, female entrepreneurs I intended the magazine to focus on celebrating "girl power", featuring regular articles on inspirational women in the industry and encouraging positive female relationships. As well as being entertained by interesting articles, I wanted the audience to go away feeling empowered, inspired and motivated by the magazine. My target audience is young females aged 15-27 who were either bloggers themselves or regular readers of blogs.

In terms of design I wanted a very distinct house style that combined expressive, illustrations with geometric fonts and minimalist layouts.

Before producing the magazine, I researched existing publications aimed at my target audience, experimented with house styles and developed a clear direction for my publication.

I considered a lot of different names before deciding on Blogette. The name combines the subject of blogging with the “ette” implying a female audience and providing opportunity to create an engaged fan base for the magazine, which could be referred to as “blogettes”.  

From this point I created a logo, a list of articles and collaborators and recruited collaborators.

Once I had responses I conducted interviews online via email and Twitter chats, both of which had their merits. I found that conducting interviews via Twitter chats allowed for more honest answers and gave the interviewee freedom to lead the interview in a natural direction. Email interviews gave the interviewee time to consider their answers and provide a more detailed response. I believe I used the correct method for each person.  When writing the introductions to interviews, and the other articles I focused on using a chatty, “down-to-earth” tone of voice that worked well in both the light-hearted and serious articles.

After overcoming a few problems with recruiting models, I conducted a photo shoot for the autumn look book, in early January. The photos featured vintage outfits, with autumnal colours and details, set against interesting brickwork and textures. The photographs ended up being a key strength in the magazine and showcased my skills well.

To create the magazine spreads, I used the Blurb Adobe InDesign plugin. Although I later decided not to print with Blurb, I continued to use the plugin as it was already set up to accommodate a magazine layout and I liked the unusual dimensions (22x28cm).

I developed a house style early on in the production of the magazine, which I instilled across every spread. I spent a lot of time experimenting, and trying to get the layout right for each page. I experimented with everything from colours (of the text, background, accents, washi tapes etc.), to the title fonts, body text size, text alignment, and the positioning of elements (images, texts, embellishments) and adverts.

Overall I think the pages are visually dynamic, expressing individuality whilst following a distinct house style and working well as a whole publication. I opted to print the magazine on 150gsm silk paper, with a 300gsm silk cover and perfect binding. The outcome is professional looking as I anticipated it would be.

After printing the magazine I conducted a survey, encouraging audience feedback, which has helped me evaluate the artefact effectively.

Merits and Problems

Creating a brand new magazine was an ambitious project and so I implemented project management skills at the beginning of the project, making a very detailed Gantt chart and work schedule as a starting point, in order to keep on top of the workload.

I contacted bloggers as soon as possible and made quick decisions regarding slow responses in order to keep the project moving. I believe I showed particular strength in this area, especially when overcoming a last minute cancellation with the photo shoot. I was good at judging when an article was no longer working (such as the Pixiwoo interview) and when to persevere with an idea such as the look book.

In my opinion, the most notable merit of the project and artefact is the look book photography. I have received quite a lot of positive feedback about it from both my peers and target audience. I think the images are striking and capture Leigh’s personality, as well as conveying the autumnal theme clearly.

I moved into production of the magazine quickly, conducting most of my interviews in the same week and writing the rest of the articles shortly after. By January I had completed all of the content for the magazine, which I was proud of, as there was a lot of content to create. Being organised early on in the project helped, as towards the middle there were issues.

Unfortunately an on-going illness significantly impacted the progress of the project, which was quite difficult to rectify later on. I realized I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to test the artefact or rectify any mistakes, which proved to be problematic as there are mistakes in the print.

Another problem area was the illustrations. I had a lot to take on and didn’t make enough time for learning watercolour skills, which would have been beneficial. The majority worked well in the magazine but the front cover wasn’t of the same quality and resulted in a last minute change of idea that, on reflection, wasn’t as strong which was reflected in my audience feedback.

The survey responses highlighted that the front cover didn't reflect the same energy as the artistic pages in the magazine and also that it didn't provide enough information about who Corrie is or what the magazine entails.

The rest of the feedback was largely positive. Bloggers seem to enjoy the overall look and idea of the magazine, and were very impressed with the design elements. The key comments were that it looked professional, creative and that the articles were uplifting.

Improvements

I have learned a lot of lessons from this unit both in regards to project management and magazine production. Firstly I realized that I need to be more open to working with others. I approached this project very independently from the start, choosing not to work for a client, writing the majority of the articles myself and creating all of the illustrations.

As I was being assessed on project management it was difficult knowing how much outside help was appropriate, however in a real life situation setting up a team to work on the magazine would be a much better idea than approaching it alone.

Due to the structure of the project, testing/reviewing wasn’t conducted until much later on but in hindsight, it would’ve been better to get feedback earlier so that I could’ve made improvements before printing. Furthermore I needed to create more of a contingency plan and leave more time for rectifying mistakes.

On reflection I also would recruit an illustrator to produce the front cover, as this was a key weakness with the magazine.

Conclusion

Overall I believe this has been a successful project and I have created a product, which has been well received by  my target audience. I think that I approached the project with ambition, organising my time well and managing multiple aspects of the project at once.

Although I suffered from problems during the middle of the project, I believe I recovered it well and still managed to produce a completed artefact that, with improvements to the cover and a few tweaks, has potential to be a real publication.

Section Seven: Audience Feedback & Reviews

I am currently still waiting for the magazine to print and in the mean time I wanted to get some feedback on the magazine. I composed a survey, asking respondents to rate certain aspects of the magazine and provide feedback on what they enjoyed about the magazine and what they would improve.

Recruiting survey respondents 

After appealing for applicants on Facebook, I sent out the PDF version of the magazine to participants and the survey (view the survey HERE). So far I have had 16 responses which are relatively the same. Here are some of the statistics from the responses

As you can see the majority of the feedback is really positive. Bloggers seem to enjoy the overall look and idea of the magazine, and were very impressed with the design elements. One of the key bits of feedback was that it looked professional and they loved it.

Some positive feedback

The key area for improvement, highlighted in the responses is the front cover. A lot of people commented that it didn't reflect the same energy as the artistic pages in the magazine and also that it didn't provide enough information about who Corrie is or what the magazine will entail.

I do generally agree with this feedback as the cover isn't the same style as I originally wanted. I wanted something more colourful and artistic but didn't have the skills to achieve this. On reflection it perhaps would've been best to find an illustrator to collaborate with.

As for it not having enough detail, I think I was too focused on it being minimal and also assumed that most people would know who Corrie is however from the responses, half of the respondents said they only recognised some of the bloggers featured. This isn't a huge issue as I wanted to involve everyday bloggers and also present some new and lesser known bloggers to the community, however I could've made more of an effort to explain who Corrie was on the cover.

The editor's letter does go into more detail but I suppose it's the cover that helps the reader decide whether or not they want to purchase and I think it needs to be improved in order to persuade them to purchase.


There were a couple of other things that people suggested I approve such as minor details in the layout.

One respondent suggested a few more article ideas which I thought were great and would be excellent to feature in future issues, and when I have more of a team to help me with the work load.

You can view all of the survey responses here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cyhNqyHwJB9k-LoJoSoud65copLSDCHBgLU3e9Tst7M/edit?usp=sharing

Section Six: Printing the Magazine

I have just got back from my meeting with the printing service. The man I spoke to was really helpful and discussed a lot of my options with me, showing me physical examples which made me happy I ended up deciding against Blurb as I wouldn't have been able to do that with them.

I was shown paper samples and after much deliberation I went for 150gsm silk paper for the pages of the magazine and 300gsm silk paper for the cover. I was mainly deliberating about whether or not I should have the same gsm for the cover and the pages however after being shown a perfectly bound magazine, a thicker cover seemed to look better. I went for perfect binding as I had original wanted to.

Normally the printing takes around 2 working days but their printers are currently down and probably won't be back up and running until Friday, so I probably won't get my print until Monday. That doesn't leave me with much time to correct any major errors and reprint so I am just hoping there isn't any.

This is something that wouldn't have been a problem had I not fallen ill during the middle of project however there is not much I can do now and will have to use this as a lesson for future projects.

Section Six: Final Magazine (Digital Version)

Here is the layout of the final magazine! I think it works extremely well digitally. I'm going to the printers today to submit it for print and I'm hoping it works just as well on paper.

Section Six: Creating the Magazine

To start putting together Blogette magazine, I decided to still use the Blurb Plug In as it was already set up to accommodate a magazine layout and I liked the unusual dimensions (22x28cm). I set the guides for the document, opting for generous sized margins to avoid content being cut off during the print stage. I went for 6 columns as most of the articles have a lot of text so 3 columns would be too wide and 9 would be far too small. These are just a guide and I can I have text spanning across two columns if I so wish etc. I also created quite a wide gutter of 10pt. 

A guide is essential for typographic layout as elements need to be lined up and spaced out properly in order to work well on a page. 

Next I played around with putting elements on the pages to get a general idea of how I want them to be laid out (examples below). The Girl Gang article was where I experimented with the margins/columns etc before deciding on the above dimensions. As you can see, the margins were not originally big enough and the large columns meant that text was spanning onto too many pages. 

Editor's Letter 

The first page I worked on was the editor's letter as this would then set the tone for the rest of the magazine. 

As shown below I experimented with using dripping watercolour in the background. I wasn't sure on it but I carried on with the layout to see where I could take it. To help the image of me stand out from the background and to give it a scrapbook feel, I placed it over the top of a polaroid film and added some free (copyright free) digital washi tape to "stick it" to the page. I really liked the effect of this and ended up using digital wash tapes throughout the rest of the magazine. 

After laying the text over the watercolour background I realised it just wasn't working and got rid of it. I also reduced the size of the image and eventually worked the text so that it wasn't spanning across so much of the width of the page; I still needed to add the picture of the birthday cupcake and didn't want the page to look too cramped. . 

Below is the final page. 

I much prefer this simpler layout with pops of colour (used from the accents in the Taylor Swift advert). Having more white space makes the layout a lot clearer and more professional looking. 

The Blog Space 

The first double page spread I worked on was The Blog Space as I had already got a base layout that I created in Section 5 of this project . 

The article spans across two double page spreads and I am really happy with the overall design. Here the design process for it:

I placed the introduction paragraphs on the title page, choosing to have the text spanning across all six columns. I enjoyed the way drop caps looked in some of the other magazines I looked at so I included a drop cap in the first paragraph, using the Century Gothic font. 

Next I had the task of layout out the questions and answers and positioning the photo Anna amongst them. I chose to have text spanning across two columns as it filled the page better. This was when I realised the article would span across two pages and I created the next page and put the remainder of the text on it. 

To clarify which parts of the text were questions, I put the text in bold and used the same orange I used across the other design elements, to tie it all together. It was beginning to look like a real spread!  The main issues I had was positioning the photograph of Anna and the pulled out quote, above the text. As I was using a 'Wrap around bounding box' it was creating some awkward spacing in the text. I played around with different positions, moving the text around etc until I was happy with the spacing. 

I used the yellow shade from the photograph of Anna for the quotation marks as I wanted to have an accent colour but had already used quite a lot of orange. I found that it was too tedious to have the quote as actual text and try to put it in a wrap around bounding box as it was "confusing" the document. Instead I created the quote on Photoshop and input it as an image, to avoid the issue. 

On the second page I only had enough text to fill one page and even then it didn't fill the whole thing. I decided to use an image from Anna's Instagram across the whole right hand page which I actually really liked the look of and ended up using a similar technique in other articles. 

I also used another image on the right which shows some of the planners mentioned in Anna's answers. I used accents of pink across the design elements and used the watercolour illustrations to tie this page and the orange page together as they were starting to look like separate articles. The black watercolour was a little too harsh against the soft pastel tones so I went for a muted lavender shade instead. 

Corrie's Article 

Above is the title page for Corrie's article. When I was experimenting in section 5 I liked the idea of having the title page of the main interview, featuring just a photograph of the blogger (in that example I used Nic from Pixiwoo but obviously that has now changed to Corrie), a large title and a short introduction. 

I ended up having quite along introduction but I think the page works well. The image of Corrie spans across both pages similar to the Kylie Jenner spread in Look magazine and the whole page looks minimal but complete. 

Below is this process for creating the main spread of Corrie's article. By this point I had developed a house style for articles and used similar techniques to The Blog Space article. I used digital washi tapes in muted tones of lavender to compliment the gray tones in the photo of Corrie and her dog. 

Again I noticed that the text was spanning onto two pages so I did what I did for The Blog Space article and used a large image on one side 

I had a lot of photographs that I wanted to include in Corrie's article and I experimented with a few ways of including them in the spread. I didn't want them to take up the whole space and at first I though about having them as a string of polaroids, to fit with the polaroid in the editor's letter. However, during the process of making I wasn't really like the look of it so thought of a different idea. 

I thought about having a strip of photos instead, inspired by Photo Booth pictures. I liked this much better and used pastel pink accented in the main photograph, in between the images. This space also double up as space for captions which worked quite well. 

Fox & Feather 

The article I found the most difficult to put together was the lookbook. I had a lot of images I wanted to include and didn't want to each photograph filling one page or even two. I experimented with different combinations of photographs until I was happy with the pairings. 

The page I've highlighted took a while to get right. The two images were the only ones I had of that particularly outfit so they had to be laid side by side but they didn't really match in their style. Also the one on the right didn't fill the page without cutting off vital parts of the image. I made it smaller and tried different effects to tie the two images together but this didn't work as none of the other images had special effects. In the end I decided to completely zoom in on the fabric of the dress which ended up working really well (shown below). It drew attention to the autumnal detailing in her dress and created a dynamic spread. 

A lot of the images in the lookbook run across two pages so I'm hoping it prints well.


Beauty Survival Kit

Final Page

Above is the final page for the beauty survival kit. I experimented with having the article one one page or across a double page as well as the positioning of the text and images. The final layout strikes a good balance between image and text, with the pink, outlined boxes adding a flash of colour. I placed an example advert next to this page which compliments it well. 

Experimentation

Other Articles

Below are some screenshots of my design process with the other articles. I spent a lot of time experimenting, and trying to get the layout right. I experimented with everything from colours (of the text, background, accents, washi tapes etc), to the title fonts, body text size (most of the text is at 10-12pt), text alignment (most of it is justified left) positioning of elements (images, texts, embellishments) and adverts. 

I ensured that unticked the "hyphenate" box in the 'Paragraph' window so that the text wasn't hyphenated as that is bad practice. I also tried my best not to have any widows and orphans however there are the odd few that I was willing to let slide as changing them created bigger layout problems.

Overall I think the pages are visually interesting and also work well together. They each have individuality creating a dynamic magazine but following the same house style.

Getting Back On Track

Unfortunately due to personal reasons I have made very little progress on the project over the past few months. I have been granted an ECF and so my deadline has now moved to April 13th.

There is a lot of making up for loss time to do but I think I can still get back on track with the project and complete it on time. I have considered the time it's going to take me to layout the magazine, send it to print and delivery time and have decided against printing via Blurb. I simply wouldn't have enough time to get it printed or rectify any mistakes.

Instead I am going to print using the university printing service. I have been emailing an advisor there  and have been told turn around time is around 48 hours which is considerably less time than the usual 8-10 days it takes with Blurb (sometimes it's even longer so I can't risk it). It's also a lot cheaper and I have taken a look at some of their past prints and the quality is great.

Although this whole situation has had a negative impact on the project it has taught me a few lessons, the most important is the need to work in a team. I approached this project very independently from the start, choosing not to work for a client (although that probably was a good decision as I wouldn't have wanted to let a client down with this situation) and writing the majority of the articles myself. I was quite ambitious with it and had I not had fallen ill, I would've managed to pull it off. However, I think I need to be more open to the idea of working as a team and not having as much control over a project.

If this was a "real" magazine then it would be better to set up a proper team so that if something like this happens the project can continue in my absence.

Moving forward I'm aiming to get started with physically putting the magazine together and want to build in time to receive feedback from my audience. The end of the project isn't going to be as detailed as the beginning as there is going to be little time for testing etc. But one step at a time!

Section Six: Creating the Front Cover

Today I started working on the front cover of my magazine. The front cover is one of the most important aspects as this is the first thing the customer sees and it could easily influence their purchasing decision. I had already decided to illustrate the main image and attempted to create an illustration of Corrie, as shown in previous blog posts.

I wasn't really happy with the illustration as it didn't turn out quite how I imagined however I tried to edit it with Adobe Photoshop, and make it work. I increased the saturation of colours and used the spot healing tool to alter any mistakes. One of the issues I had was that the drawing wasn't bold enough so I used Adobe Illustrator to add an outline over the top.

I was a bit happier with the drawing at this point so proceeded to add it to the cover. I applied on different colour backgrounds white, black, light, dark, bright, pastel and muted but it just didn't sit right. The truth is the image wasn't strong enough to be used on a front cover and with not much time to recreate the drawing I decided it was best to use a photograph instead.

With Corrie's permission I picked out some of her photos to try instead. I had a go at using the photo that my illustration was based off. I used a combination of the 'Quick Selection' and 'Magic Wand' tool on Adobe Photoshop to erase the background (feathering the edges so it didn't have any harsh edges) and placed in my background. Again, it just wasn't sitting right however I didn't think the background of the photo (her bed) was professional enough for the front cover of a magazine so I looked for other options.

After I experimented with a few options, I eventually settled on the image I was going to use for the contents page. The photo has a neutral background which works really well on the cover and makes it look polished and professional. It isn't as playful as I wanted but I tried add playful fonts to balance it out.

Above you can see I added the logo over the top of the image. Grey seemed to be the best colour option as it stood out from both the background and foreground, and added to the polished look. I used the eye drop tool to pick out accent colours in the photo and experimented with using them on the 'Issue Date' text. The option the looked best was a golden yellow, colour that matched the highlights of her hair.

Next I considered how I wanted to present her name. I liked the idea of having a very minimal front cover with just "Featuring" and then her name. It's a bit risky as I'm assuming most people know who she is however I don't want to overcomplicate the cover and make it look like a tabloid/gossip magazine. Minimalism tends to have a more premium feel.

I found a font on MyFonts.com called Avaline. To find it I searched the term "feminine" and was drawn to this font for it's girliness and informality. It was balanced well against the more geometric Century Gothic and is also similar to the brush calligraphy fonts that bloggers seem to use in their own blog logos.

As you can see I had a little trouble getting the text to stand out against the background. I tried changing the colour of the text, adding a semi transparent box over the top to wash out the background and having an opaque coloured box around it but neither looked right.

Eventually the best balance was white text for her name and gold text for the word 'featuring'. It allowed both to stand out well against the background and also complimented the rest of the colours on the cover.

Here is the final cover.

I think it works much better than the first cover (with the illustration) and looks like something you would really see in a shop.