Feedback and Revisions

Based of my feedback I plan to make a few revisions throughout my project to make it better. To start off with my cover I was told to move my text near the top so it doesn't cover the horses ears as much. Besides the top text i'm pretty happy with how the cover came out as a whole. As for the table of contents i'm happy with the pictures and how the formatting turned out. I would change a lot from the table of context starting with adding some design around to make it less plain and then I will make everything a bit simpler and nicer and more pleasing to see. For my main article I would like to have around three pictures spread nicely around the page with one long picture spread across the page horizontally. Overall these changes will make my project better because they will be more pleasing to see and have a better format.

Use of conventions

My magazine uses conventions similar to other magazines seen today because it keeps the title on the top and makes it the biggest thing on the cover. I also had the titles of other big articles on the cover and had some words different colors to draw attention. I made my magazine similar to a Practical Horseman magazine. The social groups I represent are people that love animals and probably own a farm or own a few pets. The purpose of my magazine is to help people take better care of their animals and to train them better and to give them activities to do with their pets.

Interview

For my main article that’s also an interview I’ll be doing an interview with an employee from Prospect riding center. For the first half of the page I’ll write about the farm and what they’re all about. Prospect is a farm that teaches horseback riding for special children so I’ll definitely be writing about that. For the interview with the employee I will be asking a few questions. For my first question I’ll ask about the farm and what they’re all about so we’ll have an opinion from and someone that actually works there. For my second question I’ll ask about what they do different to teach horseback riding to theses special children as opposed to teaching horseback riding to other kids. For my third question I’ll ask what makes Prospect different to other farms that have a similar mission. Finally I’ll end the interview and go over a brief description of the farm and their goals. I’ll also add around three or four small pictures that won’t get in the way of the interview but will also make the page look better.

Mid Term Submission

For my magazine cover I choose this picture because of the positioning of the horse made it easy to position my article samples on the sides and I liked how this picture came out overall. I made the first part of my titles yellow to get  the attention of the reader. I also made the main title above bold and with a bit of shadow under the letters to help it stand out from the white clouds in the background. I wanted to keep the horses face visible and still have room for my title samples around the cover which was a big reason as to why I choose this picture over the others that I had.

                                               

For my table of contents I made the background a different color because I tried with a white background but it made the page seem empty and bad and made the pictures look worse. I made the color a soft red because it made the text on the page look better with the red "contents" and the yellow titles. One of  the magazines I saw had the page numbers on the side of the titles and I thought it looked really good and I tried my best to do something similar. For my main titles I decided to make them yellow just to give them a bit more color and make them stand out more and I added a brief descriptions of the articles next to the titles similar to how the magazine I saw earlier looked for the photos I chose some of my best pictures and pictures that would best fit one of the main articles. For my other articles I put them on the bottom those are less important articles that aren't as big as the main three but are still big enough to get onto the page. Overall I tried my best to make my table of contents page look similar to the original magazine I saw but I was pretty limited the only changes I would make though is adding a bit of design around the page. 

Photo Shoot Schedule

For my photos I decided to take most of them at the farm and I chose to take most of them during the sunset because it made the pictures look a lot better with the lighting and everything. All my photos were of animals like horses, dogs, turkeys and more again fitting with my type of magazine. Taking the photos was a bit of a challenge because animals are kinda hard to work with but I think I got a lot of really good pictures and i'm very happy with how they turned out. My process to take these photos was mostly walking around the farm and finding a good angle to work with and trying to get good timing when the animals aren't moving around to much. The cat and the cows were incredibly difficult to get pictures of due to them moving around the most and just overall bad settings so I don't think i'll use most of those pictures. Overall i'm pretty happy with how these photos turned out with the lighting really making some of them look good.

 

Flat Plan

For my magazine I tried to make it so that its really easy to read and enjoyable for the reader. One way I tried to make it easy to read was making everything fit on two pages next to each other like the table of contents are right next to each other and there's no ad in between so the reader can simply read through the table and not have anything in the way. Most of my articles are 2 page articles with a few exceptions and like the table of contents I tried to keep most of the articles on the same two pages so you have everything right in front of you and you don't need to change pages to get the full story and so that there's no ads in the way. In the smaller one page articles I kept most of them on the left page so that the ads on the right side of the page are the first things you see and get your attention which is good for the products the ads are about because that's the first thing you see. Another thing I did was keep my articles brief the majority of them are one or two pages which makes for a nice quick read. I also didn't want to go all out with the ads, for the majority of my magazine there's usually two or three ads in between articles and they are also placed in the same two pages next to each other so that the viewer sees them alone better than next to an article which would probably make then skip over the ad since they're here for the articles anyway. All of my articles are animal related again fitting my type of magazine and they're fairly quick and simple something that people would find themselves clicking on if they were online. My magazine is also made for the area in which it would be sold and there's articles about nearby locations for your pet and and most of the locations are fairly local.

Scouting Photo Locations

The locations i'm choosing for my photos is a farm called Prospect and the other location will be in my neighborhood. I'm choosing Prospect because they have a large variety of animals like horses, turkeys, cows, cats, and chickens. I choose my neighborhood because there's places with a lot of grass and trees so it will look like its in a more natural setting. Another area i'm thinking about is Nathan Benderson Park because there are areas that are good settings for photos. The last potential location would be Urfer park because there's a large trail with many open areas and nice visuals to take photos. I think the main location would be the farm just because there will be a larger variety of subjects to take photos of whereas the other locations would mostly have pictures of my dog. My second location would be in my neighborhood and although the pictures will be mostly my dog there's a larger variety in setting then there would be at the farm. Overall my neighborhood and the farm will be my main locations for the pictures but there will be a few pictures from different locations as well.

Table of Contents

In my table of contents I will have my main stories on the top of the page and make it go through the center and there will be brief descriptions of the stories. On the bottom of the page i'll have the smaller stories all together and there will not be any descriptions for the smaller stories. For the main stories I will have the page numbers and titles in larger and in bold text. The descriptions will be in the standard font and size and will be very brief  no more than two or three sentences and off to the side will be the authors name. For the pictures I will have pictures from the big main stories near the center of the page in between some of the contents listings and these will be sized down a bit to fit the rest of the contents on the page while on their respective article pages their sizes will be enlarged.

Cover Template

The title for my magazine will be Ark because its mainly focused on animals and wildlife. I chose this title because its a nice and simple title but also tells you that its an animal related magazine. The font i'm choosing for the cover is Bebas neue because its similar to other magazines with the same idea of animals/nature. Although its similar to the fonts used in other magazines it still is different and another reason I chose it was because its fairly big and bold which would make it stand out compared to other magazines. Inside the magazine for the articles I will be using a standard font.

Magazine - Genre Research 3 - NATIONAL WILDLIFE

The cover of this magazine has a great picture of a fox standing in a field looking into the distance during the sunset with a blurry background to add focus on the fox. The top of the cover has the titles of articles within the magazine as well as the page number for each article. The whole cover has the same font and most of the words are white besides the top talking about the articles. All the pictures used in the magazine are all great with great lighting and they just look really good overall. The magazine has an article that shows off some art from an artist that does mostly animal related art work like a shark built from washed up trash and more. The types of articles used in this magazine are nature related and help nature like one talking about solutions to algal blooms and another talking about taking care of the wildlife and another one talking about invasive species. This magazine is the first to have articles that also talk about sea animals and what they do. Overall the magazine is made as a mixture of art and nature and it makes for a really good looking magazine with beautiful pictures and great articles.

Magazine - Genre Research 2 - LWR LIFE

From here on out I decided to change the genre of my magazine from a movie/TV related magazine to a more animal focused magazine. The new magazine I chose is more animal and nature related and the cover has a man feeding his bear in a fenced in field with a small pond that also seems to have more bears out of focus in the background and a forest in the background. The colors used are very natural and simple colors mostly green and brown and the title of the magazine is also green and white and the other text used is all white. Most of the ads used are for housing out in the country and for furniture and a few pages with multiple ads. Most of the articles on the magazine are animal related one talks about a man who owns a bear and includes some facts on the bottom of the page about the type of bear and the family. Another article talks about a bird sanctuary and what they do and information on tours as well as some more bullet point facts on the sanctuary. The types of photos used are of animals or drone shots of the land overall most of the pictures are fairly colorful. Overall I like the way they made the magazine and the types of articles used in the magazine the pictures specifically are very nice visually and really well done overall.

Magazine - Genre Research

The first magazine I picked out to go over was an Entertainment Weekly magazine because it fits the genre i'm looking at right now. The cover has Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon together and they take up a majority of the cover. The top of the magazine it shows some stuff about that the magazine will cover like The Mandalorian and The Good Place along with other shows. Most of the advertisements on this magazine are for TV shows with new seasons coming soon or new shows coming soon. The types of articles you'll find on this magazine are for TV shows mostly and a few early looks for TV shows. Although TV and movies are this magazines main priority they also have a few ads towards games and even some books. besides ads and early news for movies and TV shows they also have some celebrity interviews and news. Overall the magazine is good and goes over a lot of topics that would be interesting towards their target audience.

Project Selection - My Decision

Between the two choices I think the magazine project would be the best fit for me. I chose the magazine project because think I am more prepared for it with all the journalism related stuff we've done this year as well as the magazine analysis. Although the film project was intriguing I don't know exactly what I would do for it and how I would do it. For my magazine project I was thinking of doing a movie or TV related  newspaper that way I can still have something related to movies in my project. As of right now I don't have any plans to work with anyone else but that may change sometime later. The type of magazines I want do are movie or TV related magazines like The Hollywood reporter or Empire. The magazine will cover stuff like upcoming movies or TV shows as well as interviews and early looks towards upcoming shows like my magazine did during the magazine analysis project. Overall I would feel more confident working on the magazine project because I already have an idea of what I want to do and I feel a little more experienced in writing.