Critique with Phil:

Today Phil, who works and specialises in magazine design, came in to critique the work we had completed so far.

So I showed him my front cover:

Front cover at the time of critique

      I talked him through the intended target audience, and explained my decisions in regards to the design and layout. Then he have me some advice about how to improve it overall. 

He said:

         

    -  I have used too many different typefaces: typically on my genre of magazine there would be maybe 3-4 different fonts only.

        

    - The masthead is also not a very good colour in regards to the background. Either I need to make the background or the masthead a different colour.

      -  Another tip he gave me was that maybe I could add a highlight behind one or two of the cover lines, to make them stand out.

Other than that, the magazine follows all the general codes and conventions of typical music magazines.

To progress: I will experiment more with the masthead design to perfect it, so that it fits well with the main body of the magazine.

After that I will continue with my contents page and double page spread; as I need to make sure that they follow the same house style, and complement each other well.