Peer Review

     After presenting Marigold to the class, I received a lot of praise, as well as some valuable feedback from my peers. 

    The visual aspects of the cover and feature article were very well received. My teacher mentioned she loved the mise-en-scene of the front cover, and how the colors all pulled together. A few people said they enjoyed how organized the feature article looked, and one said it looked "professionally made." Another compliment I received was that my theme was consistent and easy to recognize, which was great because it was one of the things I was worried about.

    I also got some tips to improve my magazine. Most feedback was focused on minor details of the cover, and the table of contents. I was told by a couple of people that my selling line was hard to read since the stroke weight (outline) was too thick; this should be an easy fix, as I can just reduce the stroke weight and increase the font size to make it easier to see. One person mentioned some text on the cover blended in a bit too much with the image, so I might make slight changes to the colors of the text. Others said it was fine and they could read it well. 

The biggest criticisms had to do with my table of contents (although they weren't too big at all). Some of the text in my article lines spilled over into the image I had placed, making it look inconsistent and out of place. I'll move the image/reduce font size to solve this. ]One peer pointed out that there was a lot of yellow on my table of contents--too much yellow. To quote her directly, "I get the style and theme is 'Marigold', but it's a lot of yellow, so maybe use other colors." I'm planning on changing the color of the marigolds I drew (in Photoshop) to something else, to add some variety. I think some more colors from the cover, like greens and blues, would offset the yellowness. Although this wasn't a criticism I got, I don't like the layout of my table of contents; to me it looks messy and too busy. If I still don't like how it looks after making the fixes listed here, I'll most likely put all the selling lines and page numbers in a straight line, with the images and marigolds off to the side. I'll also space out the page numbers more, to allow for ad space between articles.

    I'm honestly really excited to see how the pages look after I make these fixes, I think they'll look even more polished with the details changed. I was happy with the state of my portfolio before I presented, and I think that after I'm done, I'll have done the best I could.