It’s not all bad, is it? :p
We’ll start from the start, then.
To be perfectly honest, the cover is a little bland. Okay, so more than a little bland. It’s downright ugly and boring, in my opinion. Compared to past year’s covers, it’s pretty boring. Enough about the cover, though, otherwise we’ll be here all night…
No, the cover wasn’t the worst thing about the Magazine – not even close. Nor it is the fact that there is no spine design, just an inky blackness. Rather, it’s the brutal inconsistency that runs like a plague throughout the entire 128 pages.
Consistency is the key factor here, folks. Without it, there is no sense of “yeah, this all reads like the same book”, or, “yeah, this magazine looks and feels the same throughout”. Consistency in any publication is what will make it have a sense of balance, and without it, that balance just isn’t there.
Sure, some factors of the magazine display some semblance of consistency – the gold stripes adorning the top and bottom of each page are fantastic examples of this, as are the page numbers (something that should damned well be consistent anyway).
It’s the non-consistencies that break it – the different font sizes, different fonts themselves, the rounding/non-rounding of photos, the different placements of photos, etc, etc. The list goes on! At some points, it’s like the pages themselves have markedly different designs – from where the pictures are placed, where the text is, and to how the page is “styled” – from page to page, it’s remarkably different – and not in a good way, either.
So, who to blame? I suppose part of the problem (and definitely the cause of each page looking different) is that each page is “done” individually – while there’s a “page template” (using the loosest definition of the word), there is no “style guide”, or at least not one that is strictly adhered to. Someone works on a page without any input from anyone else, and then declares the page “finished” when he/she is satisfied that it looks okay. Then, they proceed to work on another page – without referring back to the previous page for what that looked like, and so on and so forth. It’s no surprise that each page looks different…
I suppose the “doing each page individually” methodology would work if there was just one person working on the magazine as a whole – that way, that person would know how each page was styled, and could stick to a “routine” when doing the pages. But damn, I’d hate to be that one person – talk about a lot of work! 
I suppose it would be okay if all the content was provided for you – all pictures greyed and named, etc.
What also doesn’t help is the fact that the “editing” process mucks around with the page itself – removing photos when all the other photos are of lesser quality doesn’t help.
Ah, whatever. Hopefully all those days are behind me now – time for some fresh faces to step up to the plate.
You’ll notice that I used a lot of quote marks in this post – what I’ve said inside them doesn’t necessarily reflect what their actual meanings are. By this, I mean that the “editing” process isn’t necessarily just fixing typos.
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