Strengths

• Large amount of work produced in a limited amount of time

• Focuses well on the target audience with the general aesthetic

• The advert designs are intriguing and captivating to any audience

• Great consistent website layout, everything is clear and makes sense.

Improvements

• Use more of the style used for the adverts

• Do a few more pages in the magazine

• Some of the image quality was a bit low

These skills will definitely help in future projects, whether it be at university or in a workplace. The project is really effective when it comes to reaching its target audience which is one of the most important skills with design and marketing. You can see the progress of Chloe’s design practical skills, throughout the project and how they got better. 

Written by Leyton Taylor 

 

My Response

After receiving peer feedback, I agree that I could have really used my true design skills throughout the whole of the magazine instead of just the adverts. It has given me confidence that maybe that design style is my strong point when designing. It has made me feel more relaxed that they think I have produced a lot of work in the amount of time we had, because when you look at the same work day in day out you feel as if you haven't done enough, so knowing they think I have has helped. I will definitely take their peer feedback into consideration in the future.

Evaluation

For my final major project, I intended to create a teenager based magazine that could help inspire teenagers to be a better and healthier version. I felt like if there is a gap in the market that was an on trend magazine that supported teenagers. I then had the idea of creating a female based magazine so I could create a safe space that the readers could send in any personal questions that they want answering from people they don’t know. I had controversial thoughts on whether I thought I should have a magazine for both genders, but then I thought I could get on a personal level with the audience as I am a female myself. I usually stay in the cosmetics/packaging area of design and marketing so I wanted to go out of my comfort zone with my final project to see how I could manage it and see what other abilities I have within different project areas. I created the name ‘Femora’ because I merged two words together that I played about with for a while before finding a combination that I liked the sound of. The first word I used was ‘feminine’ and I initially knew that I wanted to incorporate that into the name because of the meaning of the word. The word feminine means all things related to being graceful, nurturing and empathetic. All 2 words of which align with the brand ethos, I knew this would be perfect for me to use as a part of the brand name. The other word I used the overall name was ‘aura’. I played around with different words until I found a word that worked well and found aura. The idea of using this word is so that it makes women feel stronger and powerful which is what my brand aims to achieve to give their readers. The meaning of ‘aura’ is “You may have heard the noun aura used to describe the atmosphere surrounding something magical, like a fairy, or around a living being, like the calm vibes emanating from a meditating yogi.” [@vocabulary.com 2026].  I wanted to show teenage girls that they could have this sense of aura and feeling confident with it. This is so they could help themselves feel like a better person, if someone sees them reading the magazine they could recognise what the brand was created for and think positive of them in a way. When we first started the project, I knew I wanted to mix two words together to create a name because then it would be an original name but with meaning. This method is called a portmanteau. What is it? Well, a portmanteau is a linguistic blend where two or more words are merged into a new word. Looking from an industry point of view, there are many brands that use this technique for example FedEx. FedEx stands for federal and express, or Netflix stands for Internet and flicks. Both company’s use two words to create their own original one, that is where I took inspiration from.

I would say I managed to achieve my initial aims for this project based on what I said in the proposal. For the research part, I said I would email magazine editors and other professionals in the industry with a small questionnaire to see if I could expand my overall knowledge within the magazine industry. I did this for my project in the first year in college where I emailed cosmetic brands asking questions to which I got all replies, I knew I wanted to do it again for this year as it did really help my knowledge on the target audience or any other things. However, this year I emailed people and didn’t get any responses. This is okay and didn’t impact me massively as it gave me more motivation to do more research and figure out the answers to the research questions myself. To do this, I went onto loads of different websites that I referenced in my bibliography and found lots of information that can back up my plans for production. Another aim I said in my proposal was creating UGC. UGC stands for User Generated Content, and it is a crucial part in the world of marketing because it can drive the engagement levels higher as consumers will truly believe your brand is authentic. Once I created the hoodie for the merch for the magazine, I planned with my classmates to go to the park opposite college to do a photoshoot whilst wearing the hoodie. This was so I could create some content where I would be able to edit the photos into advertisements or just content to post on social media. Overall, I exceeded my expectations for this project as I ended up creating an app, designed a hoodie and designed a whole magazine then printing it out.

When talking about the research, I conducted many ways of research to help with my production. I carried out quantitative and qualitive research so I could get a good overview on the data and analytics when it comes to consumers. For example, quantitative data consists of a research strategy for numbered answers things such as surveys being answered. Whereas qualitative data consist of worded answers, things like focus groups. These are really important to do as it gives you other people’s opinions and preferences in both forms of answers. What I found effective was the market research. Market research helped me because it gave me information so I could make better decisions instead of just guessing their preferences and answers. One way was that I could spot trends in the media that I could use within my magazine, or I could spot what was missing in the market. For example, I found an extract that backed up my point of that I believe young girls were built to fit society’s standards and not built to create their own standards. This helped me create an opinion of people’s standards back then for girl magazines and how much I could develop it into a more powerful meaning giving the message that girls could be anyone they wanted to be. However, one thing that wasn’t as effective was the questionnaire I did. I am in a class with majority of boys and due to the magazine being for girls, the information I received about opinions and preferences wasn’t as helpful because it was given from the wrong target audience. To try and balance it out, I did send the questionnaire to other girls, but the male gender took over majority of the votes.  The only thing I would do differently, is ask them to take into consideration the target audience for the brand are females. You could argue that wouldn’t change anything; however, it could make them think more about their answers.

Overall, the project was successful in both technical and design term due to the final outcome meeting my original aims. The project as a whole was supported by design subject terminology and skills and theoretical ideas.  An example of theoretical ideas is colour theory. I used colour theory a lot throughout my project because it helps designers like me choose colours that work well to communicate the right message to the consumer. Joe Hallock is known for his research project on the colour theory, and it helped me massively due to his research on what colours do well in marketing, or what colours target a female audience. My soft skills throughout the project were highly successful because I completed the main production stages of the project whilst following the schedule I created. I also developed some hard skills throughout that are related to the technical side of it. These are things like using a design software I am not that used to designing on, such as Xd. I have improved my confidence when using this software now because I understand it after using it and building something on it again, in hopes it will now help me in future projects whether that’s for university pf a future career. Whilst some tasks may have taken me shorter than others, it put me at an advantage as it gave me time to focus on the design tasks that could have taken me longer. During the overall project, I developed other skills such as planning. I developed this skill from creating my own mini to do lists throughout so that I knew where I was up to, checking if I was on track or not. However, there were some improvements I could’ve made. On reflection, I feel like I could have planned out the pages in the magazine better, getting more inspiration for them from looking at similar products.

During my FEP, I came across many limitations but all in different areas. Mainly related to time management. Some stages had obstructions like the college Wi-Fi being shutdown or unavailable. However, it was easily fixable as I overcame it by using my own mobile data off my phone, simply because I knew I was on a time limit, and I didn’t want to waste any time. I also found it difficult at times to balance creative ideas whilst figuring out how I could create those ideas with the technical requirements of the project. Another problem I faced was the amount of bank holidays or school term holidays that made it harder to get work done. I got through this by giving myself 1-2 hours per day of the holiday where I could work through my to do lists and try and stay in the mindset of it being my final extended project. There were also some parts I would have liked to develop further, such as creating more variants on the app. The app is a simple way to buy the merch and magazines, but I kept it very minimalistic. If I were to redo it again, I would look into using more colours or create some original icons on adobe illustrator. However, due to time I was unable to do so.

I would say my final extended project links with my progression plans because it has allowed me to further my skills within the creative and design industry. Creating a teenage girl magazine has helped me explore areas such as layout design and visual communication which can be seen as important parts in the creative industry. The project has given me an insight into what I want to do in the future as it showed me, I enjoy working in the lines of creative and design marketing, because of this I am going to university. I am going to University in Liverpool to do digital marketing and media communications. After talking with family and my teachers, I thought it was in my best interest to continue on the route of digital marketing and having a creative pathway. In completion of the FEP, I would say that my confidence has grown, and it has encouraged me to continue on within a similar route.

My final extended projects links with the industry because magazines as a whole are a massive thing in today’s society, it’s the place where people go to keep updated on the trends apart from social media.  They are published to target and engage a specific target audience whether it is related to fashion, beauty, lifestyle or celebrity news. I have seen other similar products to my magazine such as Teen Vogue or Cosmopolitan, which targets the same audience, but I felt as if it isn’t really updated. I felt like they don’t connect with their audience whereas that was a big thing for me to do with my magazine. I wanted to initially close the gap in the market. My project used similar design techniques such as the overall layout design. I did research on things like the masthead, supporting coverlines and the main image. I looked into what would work for my magazine personally and compared a lot of Vogue covers because I really wanted it to look aesthetically correct, I didn’t want the magazine cover to look different to any other magazine covers. You could argue it adds originality, but I feel people pick up on what they know.

To minimise disruption during my FEP, I used organisation and time management skills throughout the project. As I have said previously, I had created a general schedule overall with dates, so I knew if I was on track or falling behind. Each stages included things like designing, researching or doing writeups. I also stayed on track by setting production objectives on Microsoft teams so I knew what I would be for the day so I wouldn’t get distracted by thinking ‘oh I need to do this’. I remained organised by creating to do lists for the week on my notes. This helped me see what I had left to do but also reduced the risk of my repeating the same work, allowing me to improve my time management skills. After getting feedback for my work, it really helps to push me more to see what else I can do. The soft skills have helped me work more independently and remain organised.

If I were to improve the project, I would experiment with more page layouts, colour schemes etc. What I mean by this is that I would look at other magazine pages and what their content is but mainly how they set it out. For instance, where they put their imagery and how they place the text around it. With the colour schemes, I originally planned using neutral tones like beige and white with a bit of black, however I didn’t end up going with that simply because I felt like those colours wouldn’t grab the attention of the readers in comparison to the bright colours. Another improvement would be to add more detail into the pages. For instance, for the healthy eating page, I could have added fun recipes or bit more of a description to what foods are included so that the reader knows how they could make that combination. If I were to continue with this project in the future, I would develop the social media side of the brand as that hits the right target audience whilst promoting the magazine. I would make it similar to other media products but also trying to stand out from them.

I would say I am happy with the overall outcome of the final product because of the effort I put into it. A magazine is something ive always wanted to experiment into designing something along those lines, so creating the magazine physically and then creating an app to back it up, along with creating the hoodie too. I am pleased with how the front cover looked because it looks professional and realistic it looks for a magazine cover. Aswell, the project has allowed me to improve my skills on other software like Xd and InDesign.

The main skills I have learnt that I will take into my future are time management, organisation and creative design skills. I am going to university to continue doing a creative pathway so taking these skills will be beneficial. I also improved my ability to respond to feedback and refine my work which again will be useful in university when improving projects over time. Overall, these skills will help me work more confidently.

Bibliography