Today we
worked on peer assessment, and I had my front cover marked by the other group
working on print.
 |
| Current magazine front cover |
We found
that there were quite a few things I could tweak to improve my front cover as a
whole, to therefore improve my grade.
The
masthead was well received, and it was stated that it fitted in well with the
overall feminine design of the magazine, however it was mentioned that the
colour of the masthead didn't really stand out, and maybe I should try using a
bolder colour to fully define it and grab peoples attention.
Another
thing we found was that the cover image didn’t match the genre of the magazine
(pop) so I would either need to change the genre of the magazine, or change the
cover image, as the model I used looks too old to portray a pop artist. It was
suggested to me that I changed the genre of my magazine to Easy Listening, as
this would cater for older people, therefore the model would be more fitting.
Another
point was that I don’t have a clear colour scheme, and maybe I should make it
more prominent, however I was just following the colour scheme palette that I
found on the colour lovers website. I also thought that the colour scheme
fitted in well with the vintage feel of the magazine. But I have decided to
reduce the amount of colours I am using, so that the colour scheme is more
obvious.
Now to
correct these faults I am going to:
-
Change
the genre of the magazine to folk, as easy listening is a bit obscure, so I thought
folk would be a good compromise. Especially as the folk genre is quite delicate
and soft, and typically enjoyed a lot by females recently, I thought it would
fit well with the vintage feminine feel of my magazine.
-
I
am also still going to change the cover image of the magazine, as use a
different model, so that I can feature the model currently on the front cover
on the double page spread.
-
I
am going to tweak the masthead, and change the colour to make it stand out from
the page a bit more.
I'm on the fence about this, while more customization is good, I have a feeling this is a "in-progress" update, it just feels incomplete and half-way there.
ReplyDeleteWe use badge layout for apps on design approvals (visual projects), so the image being displayed is important. Old layout "feels like" it had larger images,
maybe because the images were cropped more loosely so it's easier to tell which project it was at quick glance. Now the image is cropped closer, making it
harder to scan thru at quick glance. I find myself needing to click into the project more often than usual. Which makes the whole user experience less
efficient.
I have a couple suggestions that might make it work better:
1. Increase the height of the window the cover image is being displayed.
2. Let us to choose which image to be displayed as "cover" (like how Pinterest handles cover images of each board, was hoping for this for a long time)
3. Let us adjust which part of the image to show and how tight or loose the crop is (with a fixed window, let us move the image around and maybe enlarge or
shrink it to control what shows thru the window. Pinterest does a limited form of this, which is very useful in making the cover image relevant)
4. Allow Cover Image to be ordered in different hierarchy (currently every element can be ordered differently except the Cover Image, it seems to be stuck
in the 2nd spot, would like the option to set it on another spot in the layout. This one seems like an easy fix, since you guys allow that for every other
element already)