New Ideas

        All day, I've been thinking about new concepts and ideas for my magazine. My partner, Juan and I had a discussion and we decide that we would do, drumroll please..... a TEEN CULTURE magazine! We both wanted to keep the title the same, so, Culture will still be the name of our publication but by making it a magazine geared towards teenagers/young adults, instead of minorities, we ensure that there is a specific target audience for every single issue that is published. Our goal is to make the magazine as unisex as possible. We decided to create a publication that was different from most teen magazines, because most of them are directed towards females. In this day and age, most young people don't allow the social construct of gender dictate what they enjoy, so our magazine isn't going to do that either. Our publication will entail what teens, today, are wearing, what music they are listening to, social media, trends, advice columns, and of course, original photographs of cool, trendy teens (aka, my friends). By creating a teen magazine, my partner and I are both able to relate to the topics being discussed in the magazine, and we are both passionate about it. Who better to create a magazine for teens, other than, a couple of teens. My partner and I both decided to have the monthly must-haves section of our magazine, that way, we are able to not only suggest a wide variety of current, popular products, but we could possibly advertise them as well. I think my favorite part of this project will be the photography. Taking photos of my friends, putting together cool outfits, it all seems so exciting. I truly can't wait. Also, it'll be cool to incorporate my favorites into my magazine, especially my favorite styles and music. I may have hit a bump in the road, but now I'm crusin'! (Cheesy, I know, but I had to :) ).

Group Meeting

             Today we had our first group meeting in class to discuss the progression of our portfolio projects. A group meeting is when about 5-6 students sit together and everyone shows their blog and shares ideas for their project to the entire group, and the group gives their critiques and advice to help advance each others' projects. All of the discussions were extremely helpful in pointing out the flaws and strengths of either someone's magazine or movie. When it came to talking about my magazine and blog there were some significant issues that were brought up. Some of which being that, if I did a magazine issue on Black Culture, such a broad and too generalized of a magazine issue,  then our publication Culture would never be able to have an issue on Black culture ever again, only once. Also if I were to do a Black Culture issue and covered how the movie Black Panther covers different aspects of Black culture, it would be best to include a photo of the Black Panther movie that is easily recognizable, however every single photo in my magazine has to be an original photo that I created myself. Also with covering a new culture in every single issue, the target audience for our magazine would constantly be changing, which is not good. My partner, Juan would be creating a Mexican-American issue. The more I think about each issue being aimed towards a new minority group, the more I realize that, this idea is not well thought out, and way too disorganized for what we want, which is a successful publication. I did want to do Black Culture magazine and aim it towards a target audience of mainly Black Americans ages 15-35 but since I am working with a partner, he would have to agree with that idea too, so that his issue could cover another aspect of Black culture, but he doesn't want to do that, which is fair. Today I've experienced a few major setbacks and my partner and I just need to regroup and redesign aspects of our magazines. I'm starting to feel stressed about this project and how it'll turn out. Hopefully conflicting ideas doesn't make this process less of a joy and more of a chore. Positive thinking, strategic thinking, and compromise is what's gonna get me through this project successfully.

Resources

           To take the photos needed for my magazine, I plan on using my iPhone camera, because not only is it very good quality, but it also has many features of a professional camera. To edit the photos for free, since I do not have a very big budget for this project, I plan on using an incredibly amazing website and app called VSCO to edit the pictures to fit my vision of my magazine. I also plan on using an website and app called Canva to create the majority of my magazine. They have a wide selection of tools, text font, as well as millions of other elements that will aid me and my partner, Juan, in creating a successful publication that looks professional, all for free! I use Canva to create the thumbnails for my YouTube videos, and I have already created a sample magazine using their tools, so I am very familiar with the website and how to create my desired project. 

(Sample magazine cover created with Canva, by Canva)


Sources:

VSCO. (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2018, from http://vsco.co/

50 Design Techniques That Made These Magazine Covers Awesome [Epic Case Studies] – Learn. (2015, October 12). Retrieved March 11, 2018, from https://www.canva.com/learn/magazine-cover-design/

Pakarklis, E. (2017, October 30). 10 iPhone Camera Features Every Photographer Should Use. Retrieved March 11, 2018, from https://iphonephotographyschool.com/iphone-camera/