Finished Products with Evaluation

Here are the finished products. I'm relatively happy with the outcome of them. I like the colour scheme as i don't think there are many newspapers that are predominantly black - neither are there many that are green - most of the ones I looked at stuck to colours like red and blue - so this one would hopefully contrast with them - making it more eye-catching!

In my initial design of the front page there was a lot of open space in the top half, surrounding the "WHAT NEXT?" and the "RESULT!" So I had to fill it up. Then I was hit with a brainwave - to make it look more like the band's onstage by drawing a row of coloured spotlights across the top using Photoshop. Not only did this fill up the page, but it brightened it - it's now a lot more visually interesting and attractive to look at. Unfortunately, the shape at the top was made using a square and a black triangle, meaning I had to change it after the background was in place, so I scrapped that idea and made it a bar across the top. I found the green quite difficult to read, but I solved that problem as well, by adding a shadow to it - this gave it a slight outline, stopping it from merging with any background colours. On review, there are still a few creases that need flattening out, like the white glow behind Alex (the blacked out guitarist) being cut off at the top and the fact he's hovering slightly higher than the others (just look between the 'W' and the 'H') and i'm slightly below (far right, with the bass - between "TO" and "GO"). The final mistake is that I say "note pad" at the top and "Note Book" at the bottom - we wouldn't want the readers thinking they're getting TWO free gifts, would we?!

Okay, first problem fist - I used the same photos with the front page and the contents page. This was to do with the fact that my memory stick broke so I couldn't get more photos from home on to the school Macs and of course, the missing editor. Again, broken memory stick - it's bad enough using the same picture on two different pages, but twice on the same page? That would just look stupid and boring. Not that my solution was much better. However, the odd shapes i've used in the page are eye-catching - the strange box at the top with the word "contents" in and the H-shape with the pictures of the cover story in add an absurdity to the page that I like. It makes the entire page a lot more exciting to look at.  The contrast between light and dark creates a juxtaposition of colours that makes it all easier to read and more tidy-looking. The mix red and the greens is good - as they are directly opposing colours, it makes the numbers stand out against everything else - it draws attention to the stories they're advertising.

However, after making these, I was told that apparently people with reading difficulties or dyslexia find reading green more difficult than any other colour, so in the future I will avoid it.