I'm an (amateur) magazine designer. Help me improve.

[Intel Inside]

Hi Everyone.

About a year ago i signed up to our school magazine (ages 12-16) as the sole designer. After 4 Issues i had to leave to take some classes after school, and now that they have finished i have been asked to go back to the magazine.

As the designer, of our magazine called "Inspire" I was responsible of putting all of the plain text into an attractive design, deciding the ordering or the articles, and i got to design the logo (as we were just starting out).

Please take a couple minutes to look at the samples of the magazines i designed and tell me how i can improve this time round! Thanks ^^

Here are the links to the pdf files

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22673752/Issue 3 Sampler.pdf
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22673752/Issue 1 Sampler.pdf

And here is the logo i designed for the magazine, What do you think?

Thanks a bunch everyone!!

 

[YESimBLUNTED]

This actually looks pretty good for a high school paper. Nice job! A few bits of advice for you:

1. Always guide your reader visually. This being said, on your contents page, the word Contents is nice and large, but after reading that there is not really anything pulling my eye to the next thing. I see you have the bold numbers, which helps a bit, by why not make them a larger font to accentuate where I should be reading next. You almost have to act is if your reader is dumb and needs help being guided through your pages. This can be done with color, size, etc.

2. Another thing that kind of gets me is on your 3-4 pages, my eye has no idea where to go. Too much is emphasized. The words School News in the middle, on the other side of the spread 2012..., and opposite that Vertical Tutor... I like how you tried different sizes and even vertical type, but it is too much and it is all fighting with each other on the spread. Emphasize what you feel is the most important, then with a bit less emphasis show me what you feel is second, and so on.

Overall it is an excellent job, especially for an "amateur." As you grow and learn more you will find more things that could be improved, as you will the rest of your life. Good job none-the-less!

 

[Unpleasant]

2nd PDF,

page 2, The paint splatters are nice but distracting, You don't notice to text as well with them there. Also with the crumpled background. Other then that its pretty professional looking.

 

[citizenzen]

Check out these terms: widows and orphans.

And then vow to never, ever, let them happen again.

 

[chrfr]

Two more terms to learn: grid and hierarchy.
You have elements all over the page and as someone else mentioned, it's hard for the viewer to find a path through the information.

Give some attention to placement of your headers, and everything else on your pages. Some are right justified, some are centered (centering rarely ever is the right design decision) on the page, and there's a lack of consistency in the section headers typographically.

Consider using standardized headers and putting them all in the same orientation to help build a cohesive foundation for your magazine.

Issue 1 sampler, page 3: you have a header ("School News") interrupting an article; it's extremely confusing.

Finally, yes, the widows and orphans are like nails on a chalkboard.

 

[BBrandDesign]

attractive design

As the designer, of our magazine" I was responsible of putting all of the plain text into an attractive design, deciding the ordering or the articles, and I got to design the logo (as we were just starting out). So it’s very important to design its logo in a very different and attractive way so everybody likes it and really get attracted to it. Have a design as a simple and a descent way.

 

[definitive]

Two things that stand out to me the most are: 1) use of many fonts. try to limit your fonts to 2 (this doesn't include bold/italic). and 2) try to implement a grid system. it will help sort out the large chunks of text so it will be easier to follow.

 

[DesignerOnMac]

Check out these terms: widows and orphans.

And then vow to never, ever, let them happen again.

I would also add that on your table of contents, you either need to add a space between the next to last paragraph and the last paragraph in the first column, or do an indent. Right now it looks like the last sentence was supposed to come after the previous sentence.