After making my final decisions for my feature articles layout and design last week, it was time to start evaluating the whole process of our magazine.

At the beginning of the module we researched various magazines and their success in the industry to gives us an indication of what it takes to create a good magazine. This gave us inspiration to what we wanted The Yorkie magazine to be and who we would be aiming it towards. This led us on to creating our vision for the magazine which influenced every decision we made throughout the whole process. We decided that our intended demographics would be people aged between 18- 30 with a 50/50 gender split so that we could have something for everyone in our age group.

When deciding to write my feature article about a World War 2 veterans constant battle from his experiences I did have a slight concern that the story wouldn’t appeal greatly to a younger audience. However, once I had gathered my interviews and started to write the piece, it became clear that the idea was powerful and could become a nice person of interest story. I felt that it is quite important that the younger generation understand about the war and how it still affects veterans (who they may see around in their local area) despite it been over 70 years ago. To get this point across I ended my piece with a little message. “So, if you a veteran in your local area or working in the community, take a minute to say hello and a thank you for what they did and continue to do for us.”

In terms of the aesthetics and style of the magazine, we wanted to take a minimalistic approach in which we had lots of images to coincide with the writing. We also decided that we would have colour – muted with a pop of colour. This is something I tried to achieve in my design by researching how other magazines do this and how I could use Indesign to my advantage. (https://visualizingarchitecture.com/indesign-why-use-it/) I stuck with a poppy field theme to further encourage my message of remembrance, however, the images were quite bright at first. Therefore, I used my skills on Indesign to play around with colour levels and the opacity. In the end, I believe I was able to create a design that fit into the style of our magazine.

This was the developments of my design.

First.

Final.

My Role

I was given the role of the people desk editor which I was happy with as it allowed me to take on the responsibility of organising a section. In this role I was in charge of making sure people were progressing with their stories and offering assistance if they needed me to sub-edit their work. Overseeing class mates who you see every day does have the potential to become tricky as constantly nagging them would become annoying for the both of you. Therefore, I kept it informal out of class by sending them messages and asking them if they needed any help rather than demanding that they send me something. Then, in lectures I would be able to see where they were at in person.

I was also given the role of sub-editor which was a great opportunity because it helped me develop skills such as paying close attention to detail when reading my colleagues work which is extremely important when publishing a magazine. It also benefited those whose work I had sub-edited as it allowed them to eradicate any mistakes they may have missed which would allow them to publish a complete piece with no errors. Overall, I was happy with the roles I was given, and I feel like I executed them successfully.

Working as a team

To successfully create this magazine, it was vital that we all worked as a part of a team and communicated effectively. I believe that I was able to achieve this as I regularly attended both sessions during the day and contributed to some of the decision early on when voting for what we wanted the magazine to be. Throughout this whole process I have gained an understanding and knowledge of what it takes to produce a magazine successfully. I learned that communication is a big factor as it is crucial to know where everybody is at so that others can help them if they are in need.