Preliminary Task- Contents Page Evaluation

To create a contents page, we used InDesign as we used InDesign before to create a double page spread. I wanted to use Photoshop to create my contents page however I was told not to because it brings the quality of the texts down. The reason I wanted to use Photoshop was because in InDesign I cannot crop or edit images which means I always have to go back to Photoshop and save the image as a JPEG later on to insert it onto InDesign which I find is time consuming. 

There are many strengths and weaknesses of my contents page. As I did not have enough time to create my contents page, there are many things I could have improved on which I will point out to later on in this evaluation.

"This is really impressive, the colour scheme works really well and it is generally aesthetically pleasing"- Serena B

Firstly, one of the things I liked about my contents page was the fact that I continued the colour scheme on my front cover to my contents page. I think this made my front cover and contents page complete each other because after flicking through the first page, it is not visually disturbing to see same colours being used. The extra colour I added was the colour red which I used on my add as red is an eye-catching colour and it would have caught the audience's attention. 

"However there are too many different colours which make the magazine look messy especially on the puff."- Mark Rivas

However, I also used the colour red on my puff/flash to equal out the colours. One struggle with using the puff was that I was not able to remove the black background because I ran out of time. I could have used the magic wand on photoshop to remove the black background but as I didn't have enough time I places the puff as it is. Also, I created the puff using powerpoint and exported the image of the puff as a JPEG then placed it on indesign. In a real magazine, seeing the puff with the background would have disturbed me as it makes the contents page look crowded and unprofessional. I would have definitely changed it if I had enough time. 

 "I like the ad at the bottom of the page because it is college related and does not look out of place. "- Joshua Michael

I decided to include an ad on my contents page because when I analyses the 2 case studies I worked on few weeks ago, I noticed both of the magazines I looked at had an advert at the bottom. I thought this would make my contents page look realistic and the ad I used was college related as Joshua pointed out. I decided to use the CVPlus ad because many students in college look for jobs and writing a CV is time very time consuming for very people. By having the CVPlus ad on my contents page, more customers would be more likely to check out the ad which means the more money the magazine would make.

This contents page is very professional looking with a consistent font and the layout is neat which fits the style of a college magazine, the images are also nice and the page is easy to read."- Mark Rivas

Another thing that I liked about my contents page was I not only continued the colour scheme but also the fonts used. I thought using the same fonts would have made my magazine look more complete and make both pages suit together. The fonts I used were "Myriod pro" and "Myriod pro bold". I used Myriod Pro font specifically because I really liked how it is bold, but yet also does not look harsh and big. However, for my puff, I used a different font which was Times New Roman which did not look nice. I did not notice this till I was done with the contents page and posted it and the reason for this was because the puff/flash was a last minute addition which meant I had no time to improve.

"One major improvement you could make is aligning the images and making them have the same width."- Kefentse Selah

"Swap the position of either 19 or 21 with 3/5/9/11 so that your text is more balanced because at the moment you have big chunks of text on the right and lots of smaller ones on the left Just my opinion!" - Serena B

One thing I really could have improved on was my layout on my contents page. One mistake that I made that I did not have enough time to fix was not putting equal number of texts on both sides of my contents page. I could have equalled them out however as I ran out of time I had to upload it the way it was. The reason for this unpleasant mistake was because on InDesign, when you place your text you end up with a blue border around the text box which means you cannot necessarily see where you place the text box. I had to save the contents page as a JPEG many times to see if I placed it right however from the comments I received, I clearly didn't. This experience of creating a real college magazine has taught me many things and also taught me the things I must avoid whilst creating my real magazine.

"This is really good, your photography is greaaat :)"- Serena B

" The images are also nice"- Mark Rivas

"I don't like the 3rd image in the middle because it kinda doesnt match"- Elenaor

Furthermore, another thing I liked was that the images that I used. I used photos of my front cover model which meant if people were interested in her, there was even  more to find out about her in the contents page. This also makes both of the pages link and the images does not look out of place. However, an improvement could of been taking more photos. This is because I had to use 2 images of my front cover model as I did not have enough time to take pictures of new people. If I had different variety of images e.g. the enrichment activities, my contents page could have looked more visually busy in a good way. I also could have used an image of an IPAD to make the give-away seem more realistic however I only thought of that after I uploaded my contents page.

Overall, there are many things I could have improved on. As a conclusion, I can say that the biggest struggle for me was the time because I spent a lot of time on my front cover and as a result I did not have enough time for my contents page. This means when I get to create my own magazine, I have to plan out my time and make sure I have enough time to make last minute improvements. Another thing I could have improved on was the images as I could have taken more images in different angles to have a variety. In addition, I could have improved on minor things like the background on the puff/flash and the equal layout which has major affect on the whole of contents page.