Blog Entry - 2

Some may deem my project to be less than creative, as there doesn’t seem to be too much going on-on the page. However, this was my intent, as I wanted to create a simple, yet bold look on my front cover, connoting superiority over other magazines. Red & black are colours that connote some very negative associations, but – again- this was my intent. Red is also a provocative colour that induces feelings of anger, and if my product actually makes my audience feel emotional in some way, then they are more likely to feel attached to it, leading to a subsequent purchase. As previously stated, I am not too pleased about my sell lines, as I believe that they do not fully serve their purpose. Although, I feel reluctant to fully acknowledge this, as I feel that they are still bold and somewhat demanding, therefore serving at least some of their purpose. I believe that the layout is very effective, especially on my front cover, as I have fitted the sell lines around my central image. My image seems to tower over the sell lines, dominating them. This could contribute to achieving my aim, which was to portray alcohol in a negative way as I personified it, making it seem like a tyrant of the liver. I am very pleased with my masthead because it is bold and simple with a black font on a red backdrop. These two colours both complement each other well and both have negative connotations, rendering them perfect together. Although the masthead font isn’t very creative because of its simplicity, I still believe that it serves its purpose well because it creates a dramatic tone, especially with regards to lexical choice in my masthead; I used ‘sublimity’ and this means awe-inspiring. The lengths of the characters on my masthead are long, representing the superiority of my magazine. I believe that the construction of my article was elaborately constructed because I start with a creative anecdote told in various tenses, then I move onto the facts and shock-horrors of drinking alcohol. The anecdote gradually builds the audience up so that the facts can then somewhat relate to the story that they’ve just read because there are consequences in the story, just as there would be in reality.
My peers and assessors liked the layout of my magazine and how the sell lines were laid out across the page. The lines between the sell lines were deemed to be effective in terms of their function. Also, the image on the cover is well placed, I have wrote my sell lines at either side of the page, however the text on the left side seems to stretch more, and the positioning of my image works harmoniously with the text. In addition to that, the sell lines were written in a demanding and aggressive manner so that my audience would be almost shocked by how assertive they seemed to be. I also believe that my font choice helps with this. Although my peers liked the use of exclamatives and interrogatives in the same sentence (along ellipsis and declaratives), my assessor didn’t find the button sell well-placed and well-edited, because the effects I used seemed tacky.