Two months after the launch of This Is Indie Evan McClane has released the second issue of his Indie Gaming Magazine. Download 5.8MB PDF (left click only)
The PDF opens in an annoyingly secured format and tries to take over my screen but by the time I have scrolled through a couple of pages the design has me on side. The first issue was a bound above the designs normally seen in first issues of Game Maker magazines, though the file size suffered as a result, but the second issue is beautiful. It clearly has had a lot of time spent on it and manages to fit in at under 6MB.
Sadly the textual content was a little short on the ground. The pages are divided between brief spotlights of YoYo Games and community news, some none-GM stuff and a couple of full page ads – one for Adobe!?
Despite the lack of up-to-date reading material I enjoyed this second issue of This is Indie. Hopefully for the next issue Evan will have some contributors to help increase the wordy content.
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xot is spot on with both of his comments.
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.
Though my comment in the GMC topic (that I generally liked the magazine) stands, I do just want to pick out one thing:
“I had less than 5 days to work on it due to my job.”
I spent 2-3 days on Rekame Mag Issue 1, which wasn’t solid working on it, and I managed to get the majority of its pages (about the same as TII 2) near enough filled with text. It shouldn’t take much time to write a nice, long article.
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.
If I may defend my magazine:
Issue 2 was definitely rushed – I had less than 5 days to work on it due to my job. I also didn’t have anyone writing content, so I had to do it myself. It is not my best writing, but issue 1 hopefully reflects this magazine’s potential, and this is just a small bump in the road I never hope to encounter again. Though I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was a “turd,” I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece.
Also, the ads are there because I need to make money. Full page ads bring the most income and cost only $5 (this isn’t a big magazine, so I don’t really expect that much money). They are also a good incentive to get people to write for us(if you write an article, you get a free full page ad).
Hopefully, the next issue in October will be much better. It’s a special issue for Halloween, so I’m spending as much time as possible on it.
Also, This is Indie now has a website at http://thisisindie.zzl.org/ (don’t mind the subdomain, I’m planning on purchasing http://thisisindie.com/.
Did anybody hear that noise?
It sure sounded like Phil rushing out to purchase the thisisindie.com name.
@NPT. Nope.
@Evan – interesting site design!
@Phil – Thanks, but I can’t take credit for it. I bought it from Themeforest.net.
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.
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)
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.
@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.
There wasn’t very much content throughout the entire thing, each article was only a paragraph or two long, and I really disliked how each page seemed to have a different design (the content was of different widths, different colours and backgrounds were used, etc). It also had a lot of ads, and I actually happened to miss some pages because they looked like ads (such as the Firefox page).
So, in summary: Half of the content was ads, and the rest wasn’t consistent design-wise, and was only a paragraph long per article. Generally, I can’t say I liked it.
That was the most highly polished turd I’ve ever seen.
5/13 Pages didn’t contain any worthwhile content (Ads, end page). It makes the whole thing feel like it has a very low density, and that you didn’t get much after reading it all. The design is great, he just needs to work on getting more content in there.
Simply said, the design was great!
I only had two problems with the second issue of This Is Indie.
First, more content was necessary. There just wasn’t enough information per page.
Second, the full page ads were useless. They may make the magazine look more “professional”, but in the end, they’re just a waste of space and memory.
Overall, this was a pretty good Game Maker magazine issue.