Changes!

After looking over all that I've worked on so far, I decided to change my table of contents as it didn't turn out as good as I thought it had the potential of. 

The first issue I noticed was the picture. The content in the picture was only a small portion of it. To solve this problem, I cropped the picture I originally used into a square. The square picture contained all of the content and looked better with the layout I changed it to. I also added a page number to go along with the picture so that if the reader likes the picture and wants to know where it came from they can go to that page.

Since there wasn't a lot of information in my original table of contents other than the main articles, I knew I needed to add more information as the table of contents should be informative and allow the reader to easily navigate throughout the entire magazine. I did this by adding sections to help organize all of the information I wanted to present in the table of contents. The first section is called "The Latest." This is the main articles that will be presented and change every issue. I called the second section  "On The Menu" to show the reader all of the recopies in the magazine. Since this is a healthy cooking magazines, recipes to make are very important and should be able to be sound without difficulty. The third and last section is entitled "Always Included." This section will be in every issue and include what's in every issue that's the same as other issues. I added lines in between each section to show the distinction between each one and separate them with organization.

The last thing I did was add pictures that I had previously taken of food that I have made in the past to the "On The Menu" and "Always Included" sections. These will show other pictures of various things that will be included in the magazine. I also put page numbers on the pictures so the reader can easily identify where the pictures and information to go along with it are. 

When first viewing a magazine, my target audience is looking for the best variety of information they can get. Since this is a new magazine, I thought the best way to do this was by making a long magazine for them.  

Working on the Double Page Spread

When working on my double page spread, I chose to put the ingredients and directions to make the recipes in a different font that would allow me to bold the title. 

I decided to add an explanation point to emphasize the title of the main article. I made sure to change it on my cover and in my table of contents as well. 

For the title of each of the ingredients, I chose to highlight the name of the recipe with a color that related to it. I used navy blue for the acaí bowl to highlight the blueberries, a cream-yellowish color for the peanut butter granola apple bites to highlight the granola on the apples, and green for the avocado toast to highlight the avocado. 

I chose to use three columns when writing my article with information on the health benefits of eating breakfast. I used the research I previously did to write the article. I included a little description under the title of what the article was going to be about. I also put the name of the author who write the article under the description.

I decided to add a star to each of the recipes to show how healthy each of the recipes I decided to include are. I made the star in the same color that I highlighted the title of each of the recipes with.

Once again, I made this as well as the rest of my magazine on Canva. I am happy with how it has been working for me. I really like how there are grids and alignments when I am placing texts and objects onto a page.

For the ingredients and how to make each recipe, I made the title of each bold so the reader can see where one starts. I also put them shaped around the main image. For example, for the acaí bowl, I put it on the counter top where there was white space. For the peanut butter granola apple bites, I put it on the cutting board where there was plain red space. For the avocado toast, I also put it on the counter top where there was once again white space. I made sure that the font was easily legible so anyone can read and remake the recipe. I also made sure my directions were in the step-by-step format(best way according to my previous research) and thorough so they're easy to follow. I also had the text of the avocado toast wrap around the image to create a stylistic look. 

Here's what I have so far.

Working on the Table of Contents

I decided to make my table of contents one page because I felt as though I only needed to include the main articles. If the reader wanted to see what else the magazine had to offer, they can flip though and look if they had time to browse. If not, they can look at the main articles and see where they are from the table of contents. 

When previously looking at layouts for table of contents' on Canva, I liked one (picture below) that had the left side with information and the right with little things that together made one great picture. When making my big picture, I didn't spread out all of the little things as well as I should have, hence why the top and bottom is plain countertop. Even though it could have looked better, it still works. 

I kept as well as changed some things from the layout I chose to use. I liked how it said "your guide to issue No. 1" so I added that to my table of contents. I also liked how the page numbers were big and then the title of the article was below with a little description telling the reader what it will be about when they flipped to the page it was on. I didn't include the website of the magazine as it would be too cluttered in the bottom corner of the page with the font thatI chose to use. I changed the font to go with the same one I'm using throughout the magazine, except the one used for the masthead. Lastly, I changed the articles and made my own descriptions for each of them. 

Here's what I have so far. 

Second Peer Review

In class this week, I did another peer review with my classmates Daniela, Mariana, and Elizabeth. They were different than the ones from my last peer review session so we could all share new ideas.

Daniela is doing a film opening about a girl running away with her boyfriend. The beginning of the film is going to start with her planning and packing her escape. After that, there is going to be a school scene of her and her boyfriend talking about where they are going to go. The beginning of the film will end with her and her boyfriend getting into the car and turning it on right before they leave. Daniela asked us how we can help her make the girl look edgy. We told her that she can wear all black and use colored hair extensions to give her the look Daniela wants. She also wanted ideas on how she can put her credits in an artistic way. We suggested that she can put it on a mirror in black sharpie or red lipstick.

Mariana is also doing a film opening will an intense story. It’s going to be about a girl growing up in a low income family. Her dad abused and then killed the girls mother. Following, he abuses her and she ends up killing him. She gets sent to death row and right before she dies, she gets interviewed by people working at the jail. The beginning of the movie will be of the interview and starting the process before death. She started filming but has had some troubles so she’s planning to finish filming this upcoming week. She told us how her dad is an actor and has helped her tremendously.

Elizabeth is doing a travel magazine for Miami. She has visited various places and took pictures at all of them. She showed us the template she is going to use and told us that the name of her magazine is going to be SEEKER. She wants the magazine to be simple in writing with a lot of pictures to look at. She asked us what she should do for her double page spread and we told her that she should show how there’s a lot to do in Miami so it can be for everyone. She can portray this by saying that for the art lovers there’s Wynwood walls, for the nature lovers there’s beaches, for the food lovers there’s many restaurants, etc.

I told my group that I am doing a healthy food magazine entitled Cook It Up. I then explained how my double page spread was going to be about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. I showed them layouts that I’m going to use and they thought it fit my magazine well. I shared mine asked for their thoughts on what I should make and include recipes for. We all agreed that I should keep my three recipes as planned with the açaí bowl as the cover.

This session was very helpful and I’m glad that I had to chance to do it.

Editing

Editing is very important to the magazine making process. It allows me to make sure that what I am making will appeal to my target audience and make them want to keep reading it. 

I edited the pictures once I uploaded them to Canva. When editing, I made sure to look back at my research to remember how to get my pictures to look the best they can. To do this, I played with the brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, vignette, blur, and X-Process. I edited them once I put them onto the page so that I could see what looked best in relation to where the image was placed. 

I also realized that I never added page numbers to my magazine so I did so when editing. I was also planning on putting the website with the page number but decided on not doing so as it would be too much information in one little corner of the page. I put all of the page numbers in the bottom right corner of every page. 

I decided that the order I wanted my recipes to be in for my double-page spreads and main article was the acaí bowl first so the reader could recognize it from the cover page, then the avocado toast, and last the peanut butter and granola apples. When placing the pictures in the order I wanted them in, I had to flip the picture of the apples horizontally so I would have room on the left side of them for the ingredients and directions of the recipe. 

After rethinking the distribution of my magazine, I want it to be featured on websites that have free magazines as well as being on its own website and displayed in supermarkets as it is a food magazine. I think that having it on websites that have free magazines will get a lot of online viewers who may not have seen it otherwise. When browsing magazines online, my target audience looks at many at once to stay up to date on all information. When they look at free magazine websites, they will see my magazine featured and click on it as soon as they see it.

Working on the Cover

After deciding to make my cover image of the acaí bowl that I made, I created and added cover lines to my cover. They include 4 Essential Spices, Guilt-Free Brownies, How To Beat Cravings, and 10 One Skillet Meals. I used numbers to catch the eye of my target audience. I made sure they all had to do with eating healthy before adding them to my cover. I then put the masthead and date of my magazine onto the page. Under that, I put the title of my main article with a little description with the page number that it starts on as well. Between the main article title and the other cover lines I put a little line to show the separation between them. Since I took a picture of the acaí bowl in the right third of the screen, it was perfect for me to put all of my cover lines on the left side of the cover. After that, I played around with fonts and colors of fonts to see which looked best. I decided on mixing white and black fonts throughout the cover. 

I wanted something unique to be on the cover and what I used for this was a big star. In the star, I wrote "Are you looking for a new way to start your morning?" I made the star navy blue to bring out the blue in the blueberries that are a topping on the acaí bowl. I made my masthead white to show the reader the connection between that and what's in the white bowl. I also made the title of the main article yellow to go with the banana in the bowl as well as the morning color. 

I decided to make the issue date of my magazine in June because that is when berries are in season so the cover photo of the blended berries can be made with the fruit of the season when the magazine is issued. 

When working on my cover, I decided to not include a selling line as it would be cluttered and make it look unorganized. I wanted my cover to be simple and to the point so it wasn't the slightest bit confusing to the reader. Since my target audience is ages 25 to 40, people in that age range want to get their information as clearly and quickly as possible. 

Here's what I have so far. 

Cooking and Taking Pictures

Finally! This week, I got to cook all of the recipes for my main article as well as take pictures of everything that I made. Although I thought about trying new recipes for my magazine, I ended up making breakfast meals that I have made and loved in the past so I knew how to make all of the recipes that I made this week. Before starting to cook, I made sure that each of the recipes had unique health benefits that could set them out from any other breakfast as I am making a healthy food magazine. When taking pictures, I made sure to take more than one so I could see which one looked the best. I also kept a notepad where I was cooking to keep track of everything I did. These were the techniques I used that I learned from my previous research.

The first thing I made was the acaí bowl. I started out by laying all of my ingredients to make it. They included a bowl, a blender, frozen berries, honey, acaí puree, a banana, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and coconut flakes. After that, I started making the masterpiece. I blended the frozen berries, honey, and acaí puree together until it was thick and well blended. The machine that I used to make it was a Nutri Bullet blender but any type of blender would work as well. I used a bowl to put the blend in before putting the toppings on it. The toppings I used were sliced bananas, raspberries, blackberries, coconut flakes, and blueberries. When I took out the coconut flakes, they were a little bigger than I expected so I crushed them up before putting them on top of the acaí blend. I put the toppings in a row to make them pleasing to the human eye and look mouth-watering. I then put berries, coconut flakes, and a spoon outside of the bowl so the background of the picture was not plain. Lastly, I took pictures of the final product.

The second thing that I made was the peanut butter and granola apples. I was planning on putting a chocolate drizzle on top but the chocolate that I was going to use was coming out of the bottle too fast so the drizzle would not have looked like one if I included it. I first took out a cutting board, apples(green-granny smith and red-gala), creamy peanut butter, and plain granola. Crunchy peanut butter could have also worked, it would have just been harder to spread onto the apples. The color of the apples doesn't matter either, the cook can choose whichever they prefer. I chose to include a variety to show that they both work. I sliced the apples, spread creamy peanut butter on it, and sprinkled granola on it. At first, my aim for the sprinkle was off so the granola that went onto the cutting board I ended up picking up with my hands and sticking it to the peanut butter. I then arranged the apples onto the cutting board in a formation that looked neat and organized before taking pictures. 

The third thing that I made was the avocado toast. When I took out all of the ingredients, they included a pan, two pieces of multigrain bread, two eggs, a tomato, an avocado, and everything but the bagel seasoning. Since there was a recall on California avocados, I made sure that the one I bought was not from there. I cooked the two eggs over-easy(one after the other so they didn't get stuck to each other), cut the tomato into slices, and laid out the bread on the plate. I then mushed the avocado onto the bread until it had the consistency of a smear. After that, I put the sliced tomatoes and the egg onto the bread with the egg on top of the tomato. The last thing I did was sprinkle the everything but the bagel seasoning on top. I put the carton of eggs, half of an avocado, and a tomato behind the plate so the background had texture to it. I then took pictures of the final product.

For the table of contents picture, I decided to use healthy things I had in my house to lay out and take a picture of. First, I used a dipping dish to put olive oil and vinegar into and green and black olives around. Next, I cut zucchini and peppers to also be put into the picture. After that, I took triscuit crackers and put them into a cluster. Lastly, I took the picture for my table of contents. I made sure that it was a vertical picture so that it could be on one side of the page if I decided to make my table of contents one page or be split into two pages if I decided to make my table of contents two pages. 

After making all of the recipes and taking pictures of all of them, I have decided that the acaí bowl would be the perfect cover image. It is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and can draw attention to my target audience.