Creative Critical Reflection

Here is my CCR !

Final Product

The final product of Seeker magazine

Click here to take a more in-depth look!

Magazine Reflection

The time has come... I finally finished the magazine! Before revealing the final product and my CCR, I am going to reflect on the hard work done this month and a half.

These past weeks of research, planning, and production, I have learned so much. I did not know anything about magazine conventions, editing, and the hard work it takes to make one. I have learned to appreciate the magazine world more and I can not wait to read other magazines. I am thankful to have chosen this area as my portfolio since I learned so much about a concept I did not know much about. In addition, I was lucky enough not to face any scheduling conflicts as I believe I could have, if I chose to do a film opening. I had fun creating a travel magazine, a concept that I love to do and talk about. I would like to thank everyone that has helped me along the way who helped me with feedback and ways I could improve my project.

It is time to say farewell to this project and I still can not believe how time flew by so quickly! I hope you all enjoy my magazine as I enjoyed creating it.

- EN

Magazine Progress- Double page spread

So far for my double-page spread, I have created the layout on how these pages will look like, and later this week I will be finishing it up by writing the article.



Here is how it looks so far:

From my previous research on the double page spread's of travel magazines, I am using the technique that many of them use, which is including several pictures. This is done to entice the viewer to what is being presented and encourage them to visit the destination. In the first page, I will be including a brief explanation about Miami to introduce the reader about the place that they will be seeing. I did not want to start suddenly on the main places I will be talking about, since I believe it does not create a "flow" through the article. In the other blank spaces I will be writing a summary about these attractions explaining the activities they can enjoy doing.

I started off by creating the layout first before writing the article because I believe that it allowed me to have everything organized and allowed me to have a preview on how my pages would look like. This rough draft of my double page spread may change after having my article, but the only thing I would change is perhaps taking out some pictures, but still have enough to attract the target audience.

Moreover, one thing that I found difficult when setting up the spread is editing my pages. This is because I wanted to have the pages side by side and edit them, but Canva (the platform where I edit the magazine) does not let me have the pages side by side. Creating these pages have been a little bit of a struggle, but hopefully it will get easier once I work on my article.

Magazine progress- Table of Contents

Since the cover page is practically finished, this week I worked on and finished my table of contents. 

Previously when doing research for my table of contents, I saw several types of formats to set up this page in the magazine. I preferred using the columns format, where the list of page numbers and their descriptions are in columns underneath pictures that will be later seen. I also preferred the preview format where many pictures that will be featured in the magazine are place throughout the contents page. When making this page, I realized that using these formats was difficult to make. Therefore, I incorporated some ideas of both layouts and made my own. Since my magazine is about travel, I wanted to include a few pictures of different places my magazine is going to cover.  So I included pictures that I took from past trips.

When creating page numbers for the magazine, I spaced out the number range since I believe the articles an the advertisements would take up that many number of pages . My double page spread which will be about Miami, will probably be around 3 pages, however the page numbers are subject to change since I am not completely finished with the whole magazine.  I decided that my overall magazine will not have many pages in general since it will be relatively new and this will be one of the firsts issues to entice viewers.

For the articles that will be discussed on the magazine, I got my inspiration from the photos I took and also travel magazines in the website issuu. This website allows others to access magazines digitally for free. I would browse the articles in the magazines to get inspiration on what I could talk about in my magazine. I wanted to feature in my magazine tips for traveling and traveling inspirations. 

Lastly, for my contents page font, I wanted to use a sophisticated and elegant font to invite the reader to look more into the magazine. I believe that they type of font that I used  appeals to my mature target audience which is from years 18-34.

Cover page process!

I have finally begun the process of editing my magazine!

I am using the graphic design website "Canva" to create the magazine since I have done projects with it before and finally know how to manage it.  This website also has several templates to use and choose from which has also influenced me in creating my magazine styles.

So far I have created the cover page of the magazine. I made two different versions so I could decide in the end which style I preferred to continue my magazine with.

I chose to use an image of the lighthouse in Key Biscayne in my cover page since it is one of the places that will be mentioned in the article. I felt that the beach atmosphere fit with what I will be talking about which is Miami.

Moreover, I chose these fonts for the magazine because I wanted to portray a sophisticated and elegant mood to my magazine. My target audience is from ages 18-34 which is why I did not want to use anything that seemed immature or informal. The fonts are a key feature to any magazine, it gives the first impression.

I wanted to create a simple look in the cover page to invite readers to not overwhelm the reader with so many things happening at once. Overall, I believe I am going to choose the second cover page because I believe that the first cover page may not appeal to many viewers of my target audience since it does not look as inviting as the second one.

Photo editing

Yesterday I transferred all of the images from my camera to my phone and finally started editing the pictures I took in Miami last week. With the help of tutorials on Adobe Lightroom CC I was able to understand how to use the features on it and make my pictures look nice and vibrant for the magazine.

When looking at all the photos that I took, I noticed that a few images came out dull, not as I expected them to be. As I played around and tested a few tools recommended by the app I was able to make the images look brighter. Making the images bright is important for my magazine because I want to express the sunny and luminous nature of Miami. Images in travel magazines are most of the time vivid to spark interest in the viewers. Also, I will be editing most of my pictures to create a sense of consistency throughout my magazine, but I will make sure something in every picture something stands out. For example, in this picture I made sure the sky colors stood out and in another picture I would make another element stand out.

Before

After

Overall, I am glad that I chose Adobe Lightroom cc since it has helped improve the quality of my images.