Final Magazine

Creative Critical Reflection

The End

As I finish my double page spread, I am so relieved. Probably, more than I should be. But I was just dreading this project so much that finishing it seems like such a dream. After my little crisis of having to change all of my pictures, it went pretty smoothly afterwards. The day I was planning to use the pictures but couldn't, I took advantage of the time and worked with what I had. So, I did my layout for my double page spread and set it up on Joomag, so when I had all of the information and pictures ready from Erin, I could just write them in. I decided to take up about a quarter of the first page just for the title and a picture. After that, the beginning of my article will be just a basic introduction about Erin Imhof and who she is, and what she does. That will just be the first page. Then, the second page will include one column that will have the text from my interview with Erin, with the questions and answers displayed. My questions will be italicized to make it easy to follow. I have 5 full fledged responses from Erin, but I will probably cut them down or take out some of the questions because of space. On the left side of the column, I will include some of Erin's photography. This is to give a visual to Erin's as she talks about it in the article. All in all, I'm happy to finally be finishing this project, and now I have to move on to the CCR, and figure out how to do a voice over. 
Photos of my layout: 

-Iggy

Crisis

While working on my double page spread, I was getting the photos that I had taken of Erin's pictures to put on my double page spread. However, being friends with Erin and knowing she's in AP Photo, I noticed that some of the pictures I had were for her concentration, the assignment that AP art students do all year in which they submit a variety of artworks following the same theme. So, I knew I couldn't use those because if they were to be posted online, she could be accused of plagiarism. I texted her about it and turns out all of the pictures I was planning to use were for her portfolio. Meaning, I couldn't use any of them. I had to redo my entire pictures, and at this late in the process I was kind of freaking out. All in all, it's somewhat resolved, she emailed me some other pictures that she had taken so I have to go print those out in order to take pictures of them and then put them in my magazine. It probably wasn't as big of a deal as I thought it was, but this late into the project, any kind of inconvenience can seem like a huge deal. On to finishing!

Table of Contents

Joomag is so much harder to use than expected. It was SO many different settings and tools and options it can get a little overwhelming while working.  Just doing the table of contents was such a hassle. Getting the text box placement just to even have the word "contents" in the right place took more time than should ever be spent on a single text box. Thank god I had Sandra to help me out, I don't know what I would do without her. After about a class period of work, I finally got everything just in the place it needed to be and I'm pretty satisfied. I decided to keep it in the black and white theme, because I really do want my issue to be cohesive with colors and not have random placement willy-nilly. All I have to do now is add pictures to it and it will be all set. I think I'll have to add some pictures behind the roman numerals just like Sandra and Nikki's, but I will make the big page next to it one big black and white picture of pretty much anything. This project is finally moving into it's final stages and I am so excited.

-Iggy

Cover done!

Yesterday I went over to Sandra's house to work on my cover for my magazine. It was such a longer process than I expected it to be. I don't have photoshop or any fancy editing programs, so I resorted to using MS paint. Which wasn't bad, it was actually more resourceful than I expected it to be. I was successfully able to crop out Erin's face and hair out of the picture after many, many tries. It was hard to crop out her hair without making it seem choppy. I had to make it look somewhat natural and actually magazine quality. After I was done with that, I had to move the picture down because since she was wearing a regular t-shirt in the original, I didn't want that to show so her face was moved down for the actual cover. Another thing that came up that I didn't think of was that Erin's hair isn't perfectly symmetrical. As my sketches in my other post show, I planned for it to cut down the middle. However, the cutoff of the hair was more diagonal. This wasn't exactly a huge bump in the road, but I did have to work around it. I just made the cutoff of the color diagonal, and honestly I think it looks better than it would have before. It also let me do something cool with the title, as I made it contrast with the background too. 

This is the final product, I kind of wish that the quality would have come out a little clearer. However I am more than happy anyways with how it came out. I also started working on my table of contents but I need to take the pictures for the rest of it. I'm really happy with how my project is coming along and I'm motivated and excited to finish the rest of it

-Iggy

Pictures! (finally)

This Wednesday I took advantage that I had to stay after school to wait for my friend and decided to head over to the weekly Photo Club meeting to snap some pictures of Erin in the zone for my magazine. Since my double page spread will be all about her, I thought it would be nice to take some candid pictures of her in her natural element. Also, for my cover picture I just asked her to put her hair down and I took a picture of her face, since it was going to be edited anyways the background of the picture didn't matter. I went into the room and took a variety of pictures from different angles so I could later choose the best one. I still need to take my pictures for the table of contents, which will can be pretty much anything, just a filler picture, I need to talk to Sandra and Camila whether it should be cohesive with their magazines. Apart from all of this, the only thing I need is to again stop by the photo room at school and take pictures of physical copies of her photos, as I would love to include her art in the article but all pictures need to be original. Anyways, now I can finally actually start working on my cover, on to editing!

P.S

Great pictures of Erin

-Iggy

Cover Outline

I took a little more time in class to do my cover outline today. I needed to work out what I wanted my magazine to look like. I didn't want to just start and put something together willy-nilly. Because it would have been a mess. I already had a quick drawing of what I wanted my cover to look like, which was Erin, with her black and white hair parted, and then the background would be black and white but in contrast to her hair.

This was my original drawing that I did probably in less then 20 minutes

I spent a class period drawing my cover out in a way more detailed way. I used the drawing tool on the school's iPad's and used a stylus to draw everything out. I would have liked to draw facial features on it but sadly I do not have the artistic talent to do so. Either way, I'm proud of it since I spent so much focused time on it and now I know exactly what I want. 

Nikki was even generous enough to document my concentration of my sketching while using a picture of Erin as reference. For now,

-Iggy

Filler

So far, everything is going smoothly. My group members and I are progressing on our projects. I have my basic color scheme and style figured out for my issue so that's good. I still have to take pictures of Erin for the actual magazine as the pictures we use should be original. I totally forgot to take pictures of some of her work which was on display at a school event so that was bad on my part. I have to stop by the school's photo room and do that. I think I'm gonna have pictures of her, her art, the school, and probably her house, but I haven't decided on the last one, depends on her schedule.I would just like to have everything necessary for readers to "get to know" Erin. Since my double page spread is interview based, I've been thinking of also interviewing some of Erin's models and peers to get outside opinions on her. I would include those in little side notes but not as part of the main focus. Also, I know my group has set up a date to get together and talk about our magazine and set up the basic outline of it through our Joomag account. This is set to be on April 1st but everything will have to be figured out. I will keep updating on everything throughout the next week, as the actual magazine is slowly coming to life, with a lot of work to be done. 

-Iggy

Cover Design

Since we have the art magazine, I've mentioned before that we want our cover to be plain and simple. With a model's profile, a mono-color background, the title, and name of issue. However, I started thinking a little more about it and I decided I can switch it up a little. Since my model, Erin, has such a unique hair style, with her hair being half white/platinum blonde and half black, I thought that it would look really cool if  for the cover I would have Erin's frontal profile and have the background be half black and half white, contrasting her hair. 

This is an extremely (I can't emphasize it enough) crude sketch of what I would want my front cover to look like. I've gotten some feedback from friends and they really love the idea. I plan to center the issue around a black and white theme, I haven't fully committed to the idea yet but it would work. I've been using the drawing tool on the Notes app on my phone to do the sketch with a pen stylus and it's surprisingly very useful. I will keep editing the cover and I'm gonna try to plan out the rest of my magazine on it.

-Iggy

First Outside Feedback

Today in class we did our first feedback session for our portfolio. We went to the media center at school and we were put into groups specifically designed so we wouldn't be with members of our own group. This was just to get critiques on how we were doing from unbiased opinions. It also helped that I didn't really know any of the other people in my group. When I went up the group seemed to really like the direction I was going in so it made me feel really good about my project and not so dull about it. I got some good feedback from Ms. Marchetti about how my issue should be more cohesive with my group members but apart from that I think I was pretty good. This was a really good and helpful activity for myself and others and I think it would be necessary to do it again,

-Iggy

Youth

In my magazine, since I'm working in a group, it's important for our issues to be different while still remaining the same (since they're supposed to be from the same line). Everyone in the group has chosen to do a different theme for their issue depending on their double page spread. This will be the only other thing that will be on the front cover apart from the title and date. For example: Since Camila's piece is about Instagram and emerging technology, hers is aesthetic. After some thinking and a little help from Sandra, I decided to name my issue Youth. I did this because it correlates to how my double page spread is about up-and-coming photographer, 17 year old Erin Imhof. Apart from this I'm thinking about including some other youth related things in the table of contents of my magazine. Right now I don't have anything concrete, but I was thinking including something about a local art festival/showcase or some kind of school program. But I'll figure it out when I get there. 

-Iggy

Generation Z

A big part of any magazine is knowing your target audience. Since we have decided to go with an arts magazine, it has to appeal to I guess the "hip" community. It needs to be appealing to the youth demographic. Meaning preteens to about 20 year olds. Because we have these people as our target audience, I'm not really scared of going a little "out there". This group of people are referred to as Generation Z. A new and more accepting generation. 

Some of the characteristics of people from Generation Z are:

1. Cynical
2. Multi-tasking
3. Entrepreneurial 
4. Reliant on technology
5. Private
6. Hyper-aware

With the access to anything at the swipe of a screen, it's easier for us to be more connected about current events and things happening around the world. Therefore, it leads to people being more open minded and cultured about other's point of views.

Overall, it's going to be particularly easy to please our target audience because they are attracted to the "hipster", pop culture theme and I'm not scared that they'll disapprove of it. 

-Iggy

 Williams, Alex. "How to Spot a Member of Generation Z." The New York Times. The New York Times, 18 Sept. 2015. 

"Six Defining Characteristics of Generation Z." Growing Leaders. N.p., 14 Feb. 2017. Web. 

My Piece

I realized that doing a location feature for a photography magazine doesn't really make a lot of sense. Especially since everyday my group members tend to work more and more towards an artsy approach. So if we're doing more of an artsy magazine, doing a feature on location wouldn't really make the much sense apart from it being an advertisement. 

I started to ask my group members exactly what their topics were because obviously I didn't want to do the same thing as them because that's just uncreative. I decided to branch off Sandra's topic because it's convenient. She is doing her piece on one of her friends' who models and has a  lot of experience with photography. So, I decided to do an article on "Up and Coming Photographers". Since we have such a vast arts program here at Cypress Bay, it's not hard to know people that specialize in photography. And, I do have close friends who are going into professional photography business. 

 I decided to do my piece on my friend Erin Imhof.

Erin ^

 She is a senior about to graduate and she's the president of our school's photo club. She actually just got a $70,000 scholarship to Savanna College of Art and Design for her portfolio. I plan to do an interview and showcase of her art in my article. I decided to do my piece on her because it is convenient as I see her everyday. I already asked for her permission to do it on her and she agreed. I'm pretty excited to do it. The only thing I have to figure out now is the contrast between my original pictures and her pictures, but that isn't really a problem. 

-Iggy

Getting into it

I don't know anything about photography.
  I've accepted it. Next class we talked about the photography magazine. As Sandra and Camila passionately talked about their ideas I just stood there wondering what to even do. After some I still don't know exactly how we're splitting the magazine up, but after some discussion ( and a brief argument with Nikki) I know I will be doing a feature location piece. Doesn't have to do with photography itself but it does provide a nice visual stimulus for the audience.

   I think I'm gonna do my feature location on a village in the amazon rain forest. Nikki says she stayed there and has beautiful pictures of the people and animals. For content itself I don't expect to have any trouble. As long as I do my research I know I'll be fine. And I'm also genuinely interested in the topic I've always been curious about other cultures and just their environment. 

   I'm not exactly sure about how we're gonna make the magazine come off. I know we want a simplistic design for the cover since it's an artsy-type magazine. More on that later. I also have to figure out the other thing to include in the table of contents. All that matters for now is that we have the topic and our pieces figured out. Anyways, it's almost midnight and I've procrastinated enough so more on that later. 

-Iggy

A Mess.

Finding a topic is no easy task.

  Oh. my. god. What a mess. I spoke out about my dislike for the Men's fashion magazine and I had some skepticism from one of our group members, Camila, but also support from Nikki and Sandra. We decided that it would be too complicated and not creative enough when we know we have more potential than that. We spent most of that period focusing on pros and cons of other topics like: cooking, dogs (highly supported by Nikki), and art. However none stuck with us that well.

   After some time, I thought of why not do an anthropology magazine? Kind of like National Geographic. It seemed great because it can talk about very vast topics like animals, people, places. It wouldn't be hard to think of something to write about for a magazine. For pictures, since they had to be original, we had the benefit the Nikki travels a lot with her family all over the world. So, we did have a lot of original pictures from every continent. We all loved it, but we still had to check in with Camila, who had left at the beginning of class due to a lacrosse game. 

  Later that night in our groupchat, we told Camila about our idea and she liked it but then brought up a photography magazine instead. Sandra was instantly hooked since she has a lot of photographer friends and could do a piece about it, and Nikki was cool with anything since she had her pictures from her travels. I have to admit I was a little upset because my idea had been shot down but whatever. We would figure it out later.

-Iggy

  

  

Intro to Foundation

*started earlier than posted*
  We are finally starting the dreadful foundation project for this class!
  My group for the magazine was so well figured out, my three partners from the entire were together. When this project was first discussed in class, we immediately decided to do a magazine in the blink of an eye. Mostly because we didn't know anything about film. Do I regret not picking a film? Maybe a little. But at the same time two of my group members are very good at photography, and since all of the pictures had to be completely original we figured why not?".

   We also instantly started brainstorming topics on what we could do because whatever it was it would have to be something actually acquirable. We decided somewhere in between a men's fashion/lifestyle magazine. It seemed easy enough (even though I'm the only guy in the group). But we all knew other guys with very distinct fashion senses we though it might be interesting but didn't give it much thought apart from that. That was all we knew about the project, we focused on learning other things for the class rather than focusing on this project.

   Since this is my first post I don't have much to say. I'm not completely sure about the men's life magazine, it seems to hard and the fact that a main part of the magazine requires having models, it's not fun to have to depend on other people for a grade, which I have learned from past experiences. I'll have to talk to my friends about what I think and then decide what we want to do. For now, I enjoy this blogging thing, it's a nice release of everything and stress about the project. More on our topic later

-Iggy