My Magazine Front Cover Swede
Billboard Suede
Reflection:
Using InDesign has taught me a lot about all the different aspects of making a magazine and all the things you have to include. I have also learnt how to use the software “in design” as it was my first time using it so I got to play around with all the different components of it whilst putting together my magazine front page. InDesign is great for adding all the key conventions of a magazine.
On my specific magazine that I was re creating their were lots of cover lines that I needed to add on, InDesign allows you to re create it exactly by giving you lots of different font and text options and sizing of the words. Trying to re create the Masthead was a bit harder because I had to add the colors in the wording, but by using the color pipette I was able to get the exact colors of the original magazine and the correct positioning. Getting the main cover star image was one of the first things I did, I did this by importing the copied pictured link onto InDesign by using a jpeg link, once I added the image on I then ‘locked’ it in place which then allowed me to play around with words and different designs on top of that picture without it moving around which was really useful.
Strengths:
- I feel I managed to portray the original cover magazine quite well. My main strength doing this I feel, was definitely getting the font of the wording almost the exact same. I did this by continuously checking the font on the original to the font I was putting on my copied one. I used several different fonts to find the one I thought best matched the original one, it was important to get them the same as if not the wordings and fonts would have looked out of place. To make them
- Another thing I did well was including all the little conventions of the magazine, I managed to add in the date at the top of the page and the website links at the bottom of the pages and place them in the correct part which made the finishing product look more professional.
- Another strength was me making sure that all the wording was in the correct spacing and the same distance apart to make it look cleaner and neater.
Weaknesses:
- Some of the word placings I could improve on would be the “Billboard” Master head, on the original magazine the word placing is placed just above her eyebrows where as mine is a lot higher, so I could have taken more notice of that and changed it to make it how it should look.
- Another thing I could have improved on was making the cover lines closer together like the original and maybe adjusting the font to make it more bold to stand out.
- When doing the word “Beyoncé” I could have tried to adjust it to be closer to her face like it was in the original but because of my other word placements I wasn’t able to.
Moving Forward:
Using InDesign has allowed me to explore different software’s and what it is capable off doing. Going forward knowing about this specific software is going to help me massively when it comes to making my own magazine as I am now able to use InDesign confidently. If I had the chance to do it again I would be choosing a magazine front cover that had more aspects on it such as pugs and plugs so I could try them out on InDesign to see how they would work and what tools would be necessary. As it was my first time I chose the most simple looking one as I didn’t know what the software would be like and how hard it would be.
