Reflection + CCR Script!

I feel like there's so much to say about this experience and I don't know where to start. This past month has been stressful, but I'm very glad I got to take part in this project. This project was very beneficial to me, but I didn't always think this. Going back to the very beginning of this process, I had so many ideas and I wanted to attempt crazy layouts. For example, for one of my very first blog posts I thought it would be a great idea to have Big Ben surrounding my text for my double page spread. This was impossible. I tried so hard to maneuver the text into a way that would outline the landmark and got overwhelmed. So instead, I settled for a layout that I originally wasn't as proud of. Obviously, now I really like how my magazine turned out and I know the hard work that goes into publication. This was a really great way for me to experience these road bumps since I want to go into this field when I'm older. Another challenge was finding out a group of fonts that work well together. This may seem simple and irrelevant but it is exactly the opposite. Canva had so many fonts to offer yet I didn't feel like any fit my magazine. I had a clear vision of how I wanted the font to look, but had trouble finding ones. I might like a certain font one day, but the next day it looked totally wrong. But a positive of this situation was that I could develop my decision making skills. Instead of just picking something randomly, I wrote down pros and cons of each font, each layout, each photo, etc. Speaking of photos, this was actually the least stressful part of my project. Since I've previously traveled to a handful of cities that I loved, I had an abundance of options for photos on my spreads. I absolutely love the photo on my cover the most and it worked perfectly with my project since one of the more popular cities is New York City. I also didn't originally start with a magazine edition on solely cities, but since most of my photos were cities, it was perfect. I think zooming in on a specific type of location has made my magazine better because now it had a specific focus that helped me tie together any other aspects, like titles for my TOC. The TOC was fun to make because I got to write potential story ideas about traveling. I love copy writing but I knew I didn't want to write a whole story for my main spread because I wanted it to seem realistic and beneficial to potential consumers. Those who pick up travel magazines most likely want tips or reasons to travel to a specific place.This is why I decided to give tips for navigating cities. I also loved interviewing people and having another point of view in my magazine. Finding a target audience was kind of hard since I interviewed a majority of high school students, but I originally wanted to appeal to adults. Since I'm not an adult, obviously, it was easier to open the range of my TA to accommodate more of my generation. So in the last couple weeks of my project I decided to make another double page spread to engage my audience and I'm very proud of how it turned out! I'm so grateful for this experience and how it urged me to tap into my creative side. Thanks AICE Media!!

CCR:

Hello everyone, I’m Jessica Walker and I’m very excited to share my journey in creating my magazine. Over these past few weeks I’ve been working hard on my foundation portfolio for AICE Media Studies AS Level. Although there have been certain challenges and bumps in the road, I managed to complete a travel magazine that I’m very proud of, and that I’m very excited to share. For this project I worked alone because it was easier for me to stay focused on my ideas and have a clear vision throughout the process. I knew from the beginning of the school year that I wanted to create a magazine rather than a film opening, because I’m more interested in print. I’ve been wanting to be a journalist ever since I was 12 and I took this class to learn more about print media. Other than writing and editing my schools yearbook, I love traveling. Combining my two favorite things led to my decision to create a  travel magazine. After this decision, I quickly came up with a name, Travelogged. Right from the start of my research, I found out that most travel magazines have somewhere in their masthead the word “Travel.” Sticking to these conventions, I looked online for good blog titles and decided to go with Travelogged. In this way, my magazine uses genre conventions to an advantage because by using an aspect consumers are familiar with, I’m able to attract a larger audience. However, my product does challenge genre conventions by restricting photos to a square instead of typical landscape on the upper left corner. I didn’t intentionally change this convention, but I knew I wanted to keep the organization and moderness of my strategically placed squares. I talk about how much I love my modern layout numerous times in my blogs. Back to genre conventions, my magazine also represents certain social groups, much like other travel magazines do. For example, certain tips like “Become familiar with at least reading in another language to understand street signs” and “ becoming familiar with local transport options are beneficial in finding cheaper ways to get to work” directly appeal to my target audience of college students and new parents.  Getting to work is obviously for those who have started their careers and some colleges require students to graduate with another language learned. This is the age range in which most people have started their careers and make enough money to travel or take their family traveling. I started as early as college students because that’s when vacations are more likely to me idolized due to immense social media advertising. When you see a friend post pictures from New York City, you can’t help but want to visit the Big Apple too. As for engaging with my audience, my second double page spread has a question and answer part and a few open ended questions for consumers to ponder, which draws them to keep reading. They also help persuade an audience to come to a conclusion on their own and form their own opinions. This has a greater effect rather than just telling my audience something plainly. My product would be distributed in stores, but also online on a website and social media sites. With the competition from social media influencers and celebrities, having an account just dedicated to showing features of my magazine will help it be successful. During my research process, I found out that Cosmopolitans brand grew significantly when they promoted their articles on Snapchat. Cosmo is getting approximately 3 million people a day to view their articles through Snapchat alone. As for storefronts, I want my magazines to be sold at the basic Target, Wal-Marts, and other local supermarket companies. This way, when shopping for essentials, those in my target audience range will be able to see my covers and hopefully pick up the magazine. My production skills grew exponentially when working on this project since any decision I made had to be reevaluated and revised when thinking of the consumers. For example, I spent so long deciding a font to choose because I wanting it to be eye catching yet simple, bright but not blinding, and pretty but not girly. Thinking this way was hard, but now I realized I apply this to other aspects of my life like when working on the yearbook. Since my audience for that book is high school students, will high school students understand what the word Predilection means? Another skill that I improved on was technology. Now I feel like I’m somewhat technologically savvy due to my canva skills and editing on my Macbook. I spent so much time maneuvering items on canva and one of my favorite new skills is using these guidelines. I can adjust certain aspects of my magazine and make them sync next to each other and organize the layout. This is using canva and my macbook but you can use these on most editing softwares and all computers.  

Thank you AICE Media for helping me develop these skills and thank you everyone for watching my CCR.