Evaluating Previous Work

This is a previous students music magazine that I analysed in a group with people in my class. We have done this to get a better understanding of what we need to do when it comes to making our own magazine. We gave this magazine a B overall, with individual marks for the front cover, contents page and double page spread.
We gave the front cover a B+. We thought that it was very well suited to its genre (rock), due to the font and colors. This person seems to have taken inspiration from Kerrang Magazine. The effect on the text to give it a worn appearance looks professional and matched the look you would expect 'Dragon Genocide' to have. We also thought the photograph stood out and caught the readers eye. We thought that to improve, more sell lines should have been used, as the three not relating to the cover artist were clumped together and were quite small, making them harder to read. Part of the reason for this may have been the closeness of the image, as there may have been an issue with sell lines covering parts of her head. We thought the image should have been a medium close up instead, so that there was more room for sell lines to be spread out over the page. Overall, though, we thought that this was a good front cover that showed understanding of what would attract the target audience. It also looks professional - the essential information and barcode are displayed as they would be on a real magazine.
We gave the contents page a B. It fit its purpose well - the articles were listed in chronological order with page numbers that were easy to read, and each piece of content was sectioned into one of three three catergories ('News', 'Reviews' and 'Interviews'). The colour scheme was  the same as the front cover - black, red, white, yellow and red - and matched the genre. Despite this, we thought the contents page overall looked slightly rushed, and more cauld have been done to make it look like existing magazines. The contents only lists up to page 43, whereas most magazines have at least 80-90 pages. We thought she could have added more to her contents page to make it appear there were more articles. We also thought she could have used a variety of different fonts for each catergory, as it would have grabbed the reader's attention and drtawn them in to each piece of information. We also thought that the image she used should have been a different person to the front cover, as it there would be something different for the reader to look at and it would show she had gone to the effort of interviewing/photographing more than one artist for her magazine. The contents page overall is suitable for the magazine and shows information clearly, however we thought more could be done in the design to make it look more professional.
We gave the double-page spread an A. For us, this was the best part of her magazine, as it looked professional and in keeping with the rest of the magazine whilst still interesting to the reader. The image of the artist is large and clear, and looks attractive to the reader. The artist's face stands put against the background of the image which catches the reader's eye. The image takes up about half of the double-page spread, which you would expect, as it reduces the amount of text there is to read. The article's title is a quote from the interview, which is clever as it hooks the reader in to read on. The interview is written in the style of an existing magazine. The questions are written in red and the answers in white, which clearly differentiates who is speaking at the time. It has been displayed in columns and it is easy for the reader to see where the next piece of text is. To improve, a pull quote could have been used somewhere on the double page spread, as this may further interest a reader in the article's content and covince them to read on.