f15teen
Tuesday, 5 February 2008 @ 12:09
I (finally) finished the first issue of an online BMX/art zine I’ve been working on and I’d love to get some brutal, ego-crushing, tear-inducing, critique. Fire away.
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First of all I’m no old pro, I’m a complete newbie, so take my comments for what you will.
Hmm, the internet at our office may be a bit slow but the load time was long enough I switched tabs to register here (yea I have been lurking but haven’t done it yet)…
First the good things: It was pretty much worth the wait, I liked how you literally highlighted the interesting bits of each article, that’s something I haven’t seen before and really caught your eye, I also liked how each article had a different feel to it, but overall it all fits together. I also liked how you decided to include videos (yea an obvious choice with some of the guys you interviewed but it definitely shows one advantage of an online zine). And this is probably default flash knowledge (which I’m terrible at by the way) but I liked how the previous and next page navigation worked…
critique things: This may be because I know nothing of the people you interviewed (did I mention I’m a newbie?) but I had a bit of a hard time differentiating what the interviewee had actually designed in the first article, I couldn’t tell if some of the things (such as the white text things) were your designs or his, if that’s what you were going for though, nice job. Some captions on some of the videos/whatever might have been nice, yea it’s pretty obvious what they are but I’m one that loves the ‘inside’ info; like the designer/photographer’s comments about the pieces you featured. I would also have liked to actually click on the section to go to it, clicking through each page, while not unlike reading a real magazine (flipping through all the pages to find a certain one), it’s just a nice little convenience to be able to do that. Although not really too crucial I guess. A few of the pages felt a bit over-filtered if you know what I mean, yea it’s the grunge look, but I noticed a page here and there that just felt like it had a bit much. I was also kind of wanting some anti-aliased text here and there, it had a bit too much of a default system font feel…but that’s just me perhaps
I don’t know if that was tear inducing, probably not, perhaps slightly subdued whimpering maybe? Or maybe just slight frown of disagreement inducing…I actually thought the whole thing was pretty darn good. Nice job.
Welcome to the group, Alisa. Glad we pulled you out of the shadows. You gave a great review of Micah’s project and covered many of my same thoughts. I’ll try to contribute some without being redundant.
I would definitely fix your loader. You should never make your users sit and watch a progress bar. Are you loading the entire magazine at once? Perhaps you can break each chapter into separate files or even each page and then only load then as needed (pre-loading the before and after as the user navigates so that there is no lag). Also, if there is absolutely no way to pair down the initial screen and there must be some loading (for users on slow connections for example), give them something low bandwidth to do and make it worth their while, such as a photo to look at or some text to read… some teasers of what is to come.
I liked the navigation as well in that you could click anywhere on fifty-percent of the page; it made it very easy to browse. I also was disappointed that the line items in the contents page were not links though. A way to get back to the contents or to jump chapters from anywhere would be nice as well.
The very next thing that was on my mind as I browsed the magazine was the text. It really bothered me. I love pixel type, but I don’t like reading paragraphs of it. I would also recommend making the sections and articles more obvious. As I browse through the magazine, I don’t encounter an obvious enough beginning or end to each pieces and it all becomes a wash (with the exception of The Harrison Boyce Interview, although that still could be missed). Try defining these transitions with some large headlines or color and using some sort of a common treatment that the reader can recognize. There are a few widows and orphans in your text as well that could be tightened up to make it even more solid.
Great work. It looks like you have put a lot of time and energy into this. Are you the producer as well as the artist?
Thanks for the feedback Alisa and Wade, it’s all been good so far. You’ve pointed out some things that I didn’t realize I needed to work on.
In answer to your question, the entire magazine is basically a one-man-show.
If anyone else has feedback I’d love to hear it.
The load time is a definite interest-killer. I’d follow Wade’s suggestion of breaking it up into smaller components that load independently (or as needed). Nice use of Flash though. You may want to up the body copy size just a tad as it’s pretty small. The font is, as Wade notes, irksome to read over the length of the publication. So think about an easier to read type-face. And finally, since it’s a one-man show, you may want to thing about the logistics of how often and how in-depth per issue you want to go (not exactly design related but I don’t want you getting burned out on something that should be fun!)
Hey Micah. The white font on pink was simply too difficult to read. I’m viewing on a PC and maybe that is part of the problem not sure. I also think it might be more user friendly to add a ’start from beginning’ button and a ’skip to end’ button so you can browse more quickly. Beautiful artwork and love the design. I also enjoyed the videos that were featured.