Magazine Indesign document:
This week also included the bringing together of some of the articles that were nearing completion into one document. It became clear by the end of the day that it may create more problems than this solves, as having one main document means that next week, everyone will have to do their editing one at a time. This will be time-consuming, even more so as the fonts are only accessible through one person’s login details.
Creating my contribution to the magazine up to this point had been difficult because, while my feature has been complete for the past few weeks, I have struggled to be able to get a hold of the images that I need for my piece. The weekend before this session I was able to get these images which (seen in Fig.1), while this will not be the final iteration of my article it is a starting point for my design which has evolved over the last few weeks.
While I took inspiration from magazines that are available in the newsroom and my own reading, websites also provided some insight into how publications make use of Indesign to the best effect. At this stage, while my design fits well within the perimeters of a minimalist design, I feel that it still is somewhat plain and uninspiring, I intend to develop this in the coming weeks.
Decisions made:
As my piece is now complete I have said that I will write the editors letter for the final version of the magazine, further to this, we made some adjustments to the credits page so that it also includes a tribute to the lecturers involved and have done a preliminary check that all the names that should be are on the list of contributors. The new logo design being used is based on my original idea from week one of the module (Fig.2) and Elisha worked on a new cover design as can be seen below in Fig.3 which for now is set to go ahead as the cover of the magazine.
Self-evaluation
I feel that during the creation of this magazine I have worked well with others and worked hard to complete the work that is required of me. Over the course of the module, I have attended every morning session and all bar one of the evening Indesign sessions and feel that I have shown my reliability and willingness to work hard to ensure the Yorkie comes together. While my contribution has not been that of an actual editor, I will be writing the editors letter and hope to reflect in it the hard work that everyone has put into the publication.
I feel it has helped to build my understanding of how a magazine comes together over the module; understanding the process from story ideas to development and creation, to flat plan and finally to the press has meant that there has been a clear idea for me as to how the whole module would proceed from a production perspective. Having looked at potential marketing and fund-raising strategies and compared them to real businesses, I have been able to assess potential marketing tools for the Yorkie, for a student magazine with a small budget, the most prominent of these was the use of social media marketing.
Teamwork
Over the past few weeks, it has been useful that we have worked together on projects before, I feel that my opinion was valued among the group and that I respected the input of others during discussions. While I was not the full Editor of the magazine, I feel like I helped where I could with the work of others with input to the cover, content ideas, sub-editing and decisions about the style of the magazine. I think that my willingness to work effectively in a team has shown through my input in these areas of the magazine as well as my ability to consistently arrive on time and maintain attendance.