Front Cover Alterations

Having recently received feedback on my main product during standardisation and some of the things that were highlighted I could improve were:

• that the masthead could be stronger
• try out a 3rd colour to make it 'pop' 
• it was difficult to identify the main sell line (main article)
• unclear what the audience was with combinations of 'omg', doll up' and a sophisticated looking model
• that it is the 'party issue' but doesn't look very partyesque

It was also suggested I link back more to it being a regional magazine

I have taken all of these messages on board but there are some areas I chose not to change, some areas I tried out but did not change and others I changed accordingly.

With my cover I attempted to regionalise it a bit more by adding in the 'Northampton Edition' under the title which can sometimes be seen on newspapers, although uncommon on magazines. I don't think the edition of this disrupts the look too much and I do agree that it could have been more regional originally.

I also tried out a third colour (here you can see that I experimented with blue as it's quite a wintery colour but I also tried several others from my colour scheme plan. However, I didn't feel that any of these colours worked particularly well and so I decided that I would stick with the two font colour for my cover, but I have altered some of the 'internal' pages slightly. 

As for the masthead and sell line, my inspirational texts such as Glamour and Cosmopolitan have fairly flat mastheads and I think by adding a 'deeper' look it makes it look tacky and so I did not incorporate it. As for the comment on not being able to determine the sell line, most magazines do not highlight it in particular but instead just make it in a larger font as I have done with my 'Winter Trends' article. Another thing that was touched upon was the fact my model is hiding part of the masthead and so people may find t hard to read and so not know what it is, however, I am creating this product in the view that it is an already established product (I have labelled it issue 132) and so people will already know about it and know what it is. 

My target audience, as I have previously established, is females aged between 15-25, however, I can see why some may not think this as the model does look quite sophisticated and serious. With this said I am keeping in mind my target audience as members from my target region (the East Midlands) often dress this way themselves around this age and so despite looking as if it is aimed at older women it will actually be hitting my target audience quite well.  

'The Party Issue' article has been removed as I think it is too late to take more pictures to make it look more like a party, instead I have changed it to an article about relationships which I think connects more to my target audience anyway and I think will make it more obvious I am aiming at a younger generation.