AICE Media Studies magazine project

How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware, and online- in this project? https://www.scribd.com/presentation/440517271/Question-4

How did your production skills develop throughout  this project? https://www.scribd.com/presentation/440513402/Creative-Critical-Reflection-Question-3   

How does your product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues? https://www.scribd.com/presentation/440518180/Question-1

These are the finished products of the headline article of my magazine. For the page, I did not use a two page spread I just stretched out the text horizontally to match the layout of the picture. I felt like since the picture was going horizontal, the text should go horizontal too. I then put the title College study tips directly under the picture so that would be the next thing that caught the attention of the reader. Then underneath I gave a description of the headline story followed my my name, the models name, and the description of what she is doing in the picture, which is studying. I then proceeded to write my headline article. On the next page of the headline, it begins with a picture of model studying again, but in a different location. Next to the picture is a personal quote from my model, who is a college senior. Underneath this is another picture of a Christmas tree to express the theme of winter. Then I proceeded to write the rest of my article in the form of a two pa...

The hardest part for making the table of contents was coming up with the stories that will be featured in my magazine. I got the theme of winter, so I had to make sure I had the stories agree with the genre and theme of my magazine. It was very difficult to come up with enough winter stories to include in my table of contents. After I sat down and thought about it, there was many stories that could be included in my magazine. I thought about what college students have to do before winter break, study for their midterms and finals. I realized that this was a very important part for college students, so I made this my main article. Then I had to come up with the other stories, so decided to make a list on a word document first to organize all my ideas. The first time I organized them I could only come up with six stories to feature in my magazine, but I ended up coming up with twelve all together.  My table of contents features the title in the upper left hand corner, and a pic...

Audience:  The group of people that will be most interested in my magazine are women entering college, or women who are already in college. I tried to make my audience clear based on the stories that I included and the products that were featured such as makeup. Masthead:  The name of the magazine is Dragonfly, because I wanted to try and represent women through a feminine title. The logo of the is a dragonfly, because it is a symbol of what the title is. Mode of Address:  The magazine talks to the reader by, having the model look directly into the camera. When they do this, it draws in the attention of the reader, making them want to read it. Also the fire in the background looks cool, giving the reader another reason to want to read the magazine. House Style: The distinctive style to my magazine is the word dragonfly that is in skinny letters, italisiced, and blue. It does not look like any of the other competitors title. It stands out with its own sense ...

During the process of making my magazine, ran into a few challenges that could have set me back a lot. But, I always found a way to work around them. The first challenge that I faced was, there was not enough laptops for everyone in the class. Because of this I started to have to bring my laptop to school everyday so I could work on my project during class. This actually ended up being a good thing though, because now I enjoy bringing my laptop to school. It is much easier because if I have a free period I can work on my laptop instead of sitting and doing nothing. Another challenge that I faced was not having enough time to finish the project and all of the elements that were required. I had no prior knowledge in magazine making, so I feel like it was harder for me to construct my magazine quickly. If I would of had more of a background to the parts of a magazine, then I probably could have finished it a lot quicker. Also, I had no prior knowledge on blogging, or even how to write...

I had trouble picking out what I wanted to put in the sweet spot, and where it would go. I wanted to put the sweet spot towards the top of my magazine, but because of how the fireplace and stockings were set up, it did not look right. I did not want anything to cover the fireplace or stockings. So I then thought that I would move it down to the middle of the cover, but that still did not look correct because then there was not enough room to put the stories and their descriptions. So, I finally moved the sweet spot down to the bottom right corner of the magazine, to ensure that it would not be covering anything important. Now, I had to decide what I was going to put there. In one of my stories, I was featuring Ariana Grande and her makeup tips. So, I thought it would be perfect if I used one of her perfumes in the sweet spot. So I took a screen shot of her Thank You Next Perfume online, and went to my toolbox so I could crop it down. I then quickly realized that cropping it to the pe...

The slogan of my magazine is, spread your wings. This was also the slogan of the previous magazine I made, which I explained in the previous blog. In my opinion, the meaning of this is to be confident in yourself. When you are spreading your wings, you are letting your true self out, and being yourself. Also, to spread your wings can mean to mature and grow into the person that you are. It can also mean to try new things, which will make you a stronger person. When I think of spreading your things, a butterfly coming out of a cocoon comes to my mind because when they hatch they are spreading their wings. This slogan is perfect for my magazine because when a young woman enters college, she has to become a woman in the real world. I also feel like this slogan is perfect for my magazine because spreading your wings can also mean grow up. As a young woman grows up, she has to spread her wings to the world and show everyone who she truly is.

The template that I used already had a set color, size, and font style. I did not like the color because it was yellow, and my theme was winter. I felt that the color that looked best was a shade of blue. I decided that I would unbold the title too, as bolding it made it too big. I then shrunk down the thickness of the sizes of the letters to make them skinnier. This is the comparison between the two. The one on the left is the one that I designed, versus the one on the right which Canva had designed. I feel like mine better suits my magazine, the letters are not as bold.  The next font that I adjusted was the main word contents on the table of contents. The one on the top is the the one that I designed, and the one on the bottom is the one Canva designed. The only thing that I edited was the color of the word contents. I felt that grey did not fit right with the red noel. The white matches better with the red than the grey did.

The main cover photo is one of the most important photos on the magazine. You want to have a good mode of address, so the reader is pulled into your magazine. If the front cover has no model on the front and is just a blank page, it will not interest the readers. For my magazine, I thought it would be cool to put model in front of an original and not seen very much spot. I started by putting the picture on the magazine, but then I realized that it was too dark. I then had to take the picture off of the magazine and go into my photo app and brighten the photo. Once I brightened it, I realized that her face was a lot more visible and everything looked better. This is the photo that I used for my main cover. Around the logs on the fire and on her face was where it was too dark. I felt that this spot was unique for winter, because we do not see fireplaces and stockings year round. The blanket adds the effect of winter time, and how it was chilly outside. With the template that I...

I had designed a table of contents and a cover, but I decided that I did not like either of them. So I decided that I was going to switch around the layouts and pictures again. This is the table of contents that I was going to use. I did not type any of my own information in there yet, I only added my own photos. But when I looked at it I felt that the tree was too dark and did not fit in well. All of the open background the tree also did not look great. I had taken many more pictures so I decided that I would choose another photo to make it look right. But, in my opinion, I though that the noel sign was very pretty, looked nice, and fit in with the theme of winter. I was going to change the christmas tree, but leave the noel sign. The next table of contents that I added pictures too was this one. With changing the dark tree to this more bright and cheery tree, I feel that it catches the attention of the reader more. The colors of the ornaments on the tree match the noe...

Now that I knew what I was going to write for my main article, I had to figure out what study tips I was going to produce. I first thought about how I like to study, when I study I enjoy finding a nice quiet spot and to listen to music. If there is a lot of noise going on around me, I cannot focus. The first tip that came to my mind was add some tunes to your study session. What I mean by this is, In my opinion, music can help someone focus on the assignment that they re supposed to complete. I don't men like rap music or pop music, I mean classical music without lyrics. This will help drown out all the background noise so you can focus on studying. The next tip that came to my mind was to take short breaks. What this meant was, do not sit and study a lot of information at once for a long period of time. Set a time for a specific time, study for that time, then take a short break. Keep repeating this for as long as you would like. The next tip that came to my mind was to...

When I was planning which stories that I wanted to do I had to make sure they all stayed in the genre of college, and the theme of Winter. I had a few ideas in mind such as fashion, food,and study tips. My idea with fashion was going to be to go to a store and purchase a few outfits that were in winter colors, and had the winter style. I would photograph the model in a wintery location to stay in the winter theme. For the article, I would write about where to find the trendiest winter clothes, and where to get christmas sweaters from. I then realized that one of the most important things about college is not fashion. The image is an example of what the model could have worn to make her look wintery. My idea with food was going to be to go to the store and buy a whole bunch of cookie, cake, and dessert mixes. I would photograph somebody baking them, and use that as the image for the main article. When the desserts are done cooking, I would decorate them to look all wintery and f...

After I decided the templates of all of the pages of my magazines, I now needed to decide where I was going to put all of my photos on each page. The templates each had room for photos on them, so I mostly just placed my photos where the previous ones were. I ran into problems because some of the photos were not faced the same way as how they were set up on the magazine. Also, some of the photos were not in the spot that I wanted them to be, so I had to move them around on the page.                                           These are examples of what two different templates look like on Canva. The one on the left is horizontal, and the one on the right is for vertical photos. It is a challenge to put a horizontal photo in a vertical photo spot, because some of the photo will be cut off. It was hard to choose a photo to use because I had to make sure that it was facing the ri...

Figuring out which layout that I wanted to use was one of the challenging parts of this project because there was so many on the website we used, which is Canva. Canva included so many covers, table of contents, and main article templates. I changed each layout at least four times, because I could not find one that looked the best. The first layout that I used for my cover page did not look right when I put all of the images and information on it. It was too crowded, and did not match right with the photo. So I decided I was going to try and find a layout that worked better for my magazine. I then found the one that would work best for my photos and information. It was a template called thirteen, but I edited it with all of my information. I had to make sure there was enough room for the masthead, sweet spot, and all of the other information needed on the cover. For the table of contents, I originally had a template picked out, but when I added some pictures, I realized there...