Comments on: This Is Indie – Issue Two

By: ev149

ev149 — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:37:29 +0000

@Phil – Thanks, but I can’t take credit for it. I bought it from Themeforest.net.

By: Coolist

Coolist — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:25:33 +0000

@xot

You’re right, I guess what I was trying to say is that black Arial font on a white page is less of a magazine, and more of an article or book. Magazines do keep a consistent font most of the time and you are able to distinguish an ad from the content, but magazines are much more visual compared to a book or newspaper.

Again, I still can’t compare this to this current issue so this statement is just general.

By: Jack Brockley

Jack Brockley — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:23:51 +0000

xot is spot on with both of his comments.

By: Supermini_man

Supermini_man — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:15:40 +0000

My summarized opinion about this issue:
-The hi-res images are cool.
-The Eve article is well written, but “The Game Maker Community Game” aren’t the people but rather the game itself.
-Even though the magazine has its eye candy it looks disconnected because of the change of fonts and writing zone.
-The hyperlinks are a nice addition.
-The violence article is good but the text background shouldn’t be transparent because of the page’s background and the article would be more readable horizontally rather than vertically.
-The end is unnecessary. I think is pointless and has an “aliased” look. Those type of last pages should be a case of “less is more”.
-Overall the articles are good but they kinda lack substance.
Didn’t read the first issue, so I can’t compare to this one. Some things are well made and has promise but it needs to fix some things to be really good.

By: xot

xot — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:03:50 +0000

Coolist, I think you’ll find that the vast majority of magazines use one font for the bulk of the text and employ a consistent style throughout. I can’t think of a single mainstream magazine that doesn’t. It’s vital for readers to be able to easily distinguish the content from the ads. That was far from the case in this issue of This Is Indie.

Obviously a lot of work went into design, much of it is quite striking, but not nearly enough care went into making the presentation of the content clear. Too many articles looked like ads (their brevity being a contributing factor). The one on violent games looked the least like an ad. Unfortunately it was also the hardest to read.

By: Coolist

Coolist — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:39:02 +0000

I’m going to have to disagree with you there. In my opinion, a magazine should have a good balence between a nice design and content. If you were to have a single font, single-styled header and a lot of content than it would be more of an article than a magazine.

I haven’t got a chance to read this but I enjoyed the first issue. Keep up the effort ev149.

(Typed on a phone, please excuse me if I made any spelling/grammatical errors)

By: Philip Gamble

Philip Gamble — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:12:08 +0000

@NPT. Nope.

@Evan – interesting site design!

By: NakedPaulToast

NakedPaulToast — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:40:58 +0000

Did anybody hear that noise?

It sure sounded like Phil rushing out to purchase the thisisindie.com name.

By: Noel

Noel — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:13:23 +0000

As a suggestion then: Instead of spending a long time designing each page, design a single page, and then use that design for all of the pages (except for the odd case, such as an ad). This way, you can work on perfecting a really nice design, which works throughout the entire magazine. You’re designs and graphics were nice, but the fact that they were different on every page was somewhat annoying.

Generally you seem to focus way too much on the design. Realistically, the design could be white pages, with Arial font and bold text for titles, and as long as the content it good, then it will be worth reading. I read a magazine to find information, and have something to flip through and read in my spare time, not to see what background you used for this page, and what font you used on that page.

By: ev149

ev149 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:45:33 +0000

Everyone’s different, I guess. I spent a lot of time designing the graphics which took up most of the few days. I’ve been working on the next issue for a little while, so it won’t be rushed, and hopefully I’ll be able to redeem myself.