Creative Critical Reflection

Here is my creative critical reflection in which I talk about the entire process of the making of my magazine. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/WzHJeHB7me4

Final Project

          I've finally finished my magazine! After all of the research and planning that went into it, I am proud of the product that I have created. Finally all those hours of working on it have paid off. Here is the link to my magazine:

https://joom.ag/qstW

          I had a lot of fun making it and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Double - Page Spread Graphic

          For my double - page spread, I decided to to do a chart - like graphic consisting of multiple images rather than just one, large image. Since the topic of my story is color psychology, I thought it would be a good idea to make a chart of what words are associated with each color, with pictures of a prom dress in each color alongside that.  Essentially, the graphic is a quick summary of what is discussed throughout the article.

          Making this seemingly uncomplicated graphic took much longer than expected. This is due to the fact that I had to edit six different pictures of prom dresses (cut out all of the background in each picture). I titled it "Color Psychology" and made each letter a different color to make it more noticeable.

           Pictured below is the completed graphic. I plan on putting this graphic in the upper right hand corner of the second page of my double page spread. It will obviously be smaller than how it looks in this picture; I only made it bigger here so I had more space to work on putting it together.

Cover Page Completed!

          The one thing that was keeping me from finishing my cover page a long time ago was the fact that I didn't have a cover image. This was starting to stress me out, since it is probably the most important part of my entire magazine. So on Friday, I finally went out and took it. It didn't take nearly as long as I had thought it would, surprisingly. I guess I had picked the right day to take the picture, because the lighting outside didn't give me any problems. Below is the picture I have chosen to be my cover image:

          I initially started to cutout the background, but I started to think that maybe the cover page would look more interesting if I included the entire background. I decided that it did look much better, and decided to keep it exactly the same. The light spot at the top of the page would serve as a good place to put the masthead, which is another positive of keeping the background.

          Once I figured out the cover image, laying out the cover lines was easy. I already thought of all the titles and fonts, so all that was left to do was to arrange them in such a way that they all "surrounded" the girl.

          One small challenge that I faced was finding a font color that was a strong enough contrast with the background. Since the background is mostly a dark green, I needed to pick a light color in order for the text to show up well enough. After trying out tons of colors, from different shades of blue, white, yellow, and pink, I finally decided on making the cover lines white. They stood out the most and looked better than all of the other ones that I had tried. I made the text below the cover lines a teal color. I chose teal because it contrasted to the white cover lines but was still visible to read despite the background. Below is what the final cover page looks like:

          I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you are too!

Pictures, Pictures, and More Pictures

          As I approached the completion of the magazine, I realized a little late that my magazine was lacking in the amount of images in it. As I was creating the table of contents, I noticed that there were a lot of blank spots that looked weird. To fix this, a simple solution would be to add images that were representative of some of the articles featured in the table of contents.

          One of these articles, titled "Spring Styles 2017", has a broad topic and therefore it would not be difficult to take a picture for. I asked one of my friends to wear a spring - like dress and model for the picture. At the end of the photoshoot I had taken over 200 pictures in total. This is because I was trying to capture an image with the perfect pose, background, and lighting. Although this image will only consist of a small portion of the table of contents, I still wanted it to be as good and high quality as possible. Shown below is the final image that I chose.

          I added other pictures to my table of contents as well. I have one article titled "Good Reads", so taking a picture for this would not be challenging either - I would simply take a picture of a pile of books. Although not complex or entirely unique, I think this picture will add to the aesthetic of the page.

          I am currently working on editing all of the pictures I have taken over the past couple of days, so I will not post them here yet.

          Hopefully adding these pictures in will make my table of contents look more visually pleasing than before and will help to get rid of all the blank space. We will see how it turns out!

Some Changes

          As you may recall from a few blog posts ago, I decided that I wanted my double-page spread story to be about prom. I planned on creating a guide for finding the perfect dress based on different colors, designs, and lengths. I began writing the portion of my story that focused on color first. When I finished that section (which I wrote on Google Docs), I copy and pasted it on Canva to begin formatting the pages. I was so surprised when I saw that it took up the majority of the two pages! I was still planning on talking about dress designs and lengths within those two pages. I was then stuck in a dilemma: Do I shorten the section on color significantly to be able to fit the design and length sections in there too, or do I change the focus of my story to just one of these three topics?

          I really liked the idea of talking about color psychology and how certain hues give off certain feeling and emotions when looking at them (I got this idea from one of our group meetings). I thought that this idea was unique and not just an everyday topic that you come across. For this reason, I decided to keep the section on color. I had put a ton of planning and research into my writing, so I didn't want to shorten it and therefore reduce the quality of the overall story. So, I decided to slightly change the topic of my double-page spread and put all of the focus on color.

          Making my story focus on one topic rather than three is a change for the better, I think. This way, the story will be more fluid and continuous instead of being broken apart by a bunch of sections. This will make it less confusing and more in-depth and interesting.

          Because of this change, I have also come up with a possible idea for how I want to lay out the images on the page. On the top of the second page, I want to make a visual representation of what i'm talking about through the article; summarizing it. I have plenty of pictures of different colored prom dresses as well, so this could work out. I plan on using pictures of prom dresses that are the same colors as the ones that I mention throughout the article. Under them, I want to add a few adjectives that are associated with each color. This serves as a quick and visually interesting synopsis of the article, for those that may not want to read the entire story associated with it.

Table of Contents Updates

          I began to lay out my table of contents about a week ago, but I haven't posted much about my progress. So in this blog post, I would like to talk about that. The first thing I knew that I wanted to include in my table of contents was a section titled "always included" or "in every issue". I learned from class that this is characteristic of many successful magazine brands, especially those that are in the fashion and style genre. Since my magazine is this genre, I knew that it was necessary that I include this.
          I thought of about five different topics to put in this section. Coming up with these was actually somewhat challenging, because I had to make sure that they were all broad enough topics that could be present in every issue of an ongoing magazine. The ones that I came up with are: "Who wore it better?", "Q&A with the staff", "Homemade outfits", "What's trending", and "Share your story". After coming up with these names, I began figuring out where I wanted this section to go on my table of contents pages. I think I like it on the right hand side of the second page. That way it's not taking up the first page where all of the new and fresh stories will be located. Here is what the section looks like:

          I'm not sure if the text is going to be surrounded by that green circle in the final edit; I think that I can come up with a design more exciting than that. 

          I've also decided that I am going to group my articles together using different subheadings. I've come up with a few, including "Tips & Tricks" and "Celebrities". The majority of the articles will fit into one of those two topics. If necessary, I will add another subheading for a few articles that do not go under the two subheadings previously listed. 

          As i've mentioned before, I will be adding short descriptions of each article under their respective titles on the table of contents. I've done this for all of the articles listed under "Tips & Tricks" already. I don't think adding these descriptions is necessary for the "In Every Issue" section, as the content of these articles varies with every issue, and they are self-explanatory anyway.