Here's my CCR Reflection!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UDDhkvDgUGgk6A9gmYLy1a31GoLiBGEZ/view?usp=drivesdk
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Reflection:
Fan Foods was based around the idea of making
a food magazine based on pop culture, with articles about making food items
inspired by or that had appeared in certain shows or movies. This was already a
huge passion of mine as I love attempting to recreate iconic Disney recipes or
making cookies decorated with superhero symbols, and this is a magazine I wish could have existed when I was starting out. Considering the strong pop
culture base my audience would be the people most connected to digital media,
so it would be teenagers and young adults. Due to that audience I had to keep
in mind that most of my audience would not be experts in terms of cooking
skills. It was apparent from the start
that I was going to be changing things up in terms of magazine conventions.
Most food magazines are made for middle aged or older women, and focus on a fancier approach, allowing its readers to feel like they can create beautiful restaurant style meals at home. The color scheme is lighter, with colors like white, gold, soft grays or silver. My magazine, on the other hand, uses bright, comic style colors that really pop out and make it attractive to its target audience. It also doesn’t focus on making difficult, perfect meals, focusing on simpler yet fun recipes that don’t have to turn out perfect. I suppose the group that I am representing with this is the teens that are going to be reading this magazine. I suppose I’m representing them as people who do want to learn useful yet fun skills like cooking. There’s a strong stereotype that those of younger generations no longer want to learn these skills and would rather be lazy and have things done for them and only eat fast food and such things. This is the social aspect that I really want to combat, as I think a lot of teens and young adults would really be interested in learning how to cook if they had the chance. That relates to how my product engages with the audience, as the subject matter of pop culture and the eye-popping colors really serve to attract my audience to read the magazine. The cover lines in the magazine are formatted almost like social media articles are, in the style of “Top ten things” This is the same that we can see in my table of contents, as usually they have small descriptions of the article near them, but my magazine makes the titles clear and to the point, so it appeals to an audience that, because of the rise of social media, is used to things being quick and to the point without having to read summaries. If this project were to be distributed, I would really play to the pop culture aspect of the magazine and would reach out to large media companies to maybe write about the food in their newest series or film, so that the magazine can be marketed alongside it. I would distribute it as an online magazine, as teens and young adults are far more connected to things online.
As far as how my production skills developed throughout this project I would say I learned a lot more about photo lighting and the design of the background of the photo to make it look more appealing as I did not realize the extent to which lighting makes the photo quality soar. I also learned a lot about graphic design and color, as at first it was a little hard to make sure the colors pop enough to give that comic look I was searching for, but not enough that it starts hurting people’s eyes to look at. Unfortunately, I also made a pretty big mistake, which was taking the photos with the wrong tool.I mostly used my mom's new phone which has the highest camera quality and made the pictures turn out perfect, but when she got a call I used another phone for the full image for the two page spread, and that one did not have a high enough quality to enlarge the image like I planned to.That meant I had to think on my feet a bit more and change my original plans. Still I think I like this version a lot more than my original plan, as it feels like it pops out a lot more and reminds me of those Seventeen magazines that were some of my first sources of inspiration,
I used all kinds of technology to bring this project to light. Joomag was a fantastic website to use for the whole thing, as its layer feature allowed me to add all of the pictures on the table of contents as the comic panels you see here by letting me put the yellow text squares above the image and frame it all in a nice border. I found an iPhone app that increased the saturation of an image to give it a comic effect, and use that to make some of my duller images really pop. I got the comic text box icons from Microsoft Word and they were a great way to place my text in for the two page spread. This graphic design helped me find new ways to do things with the software I already had. Overall I learned so much from this entire experience, had a blast creating it with a friend, and am really excited about how it came out.
Most food magazines are made for middle aged or older women, and focus on a fancier approach, allowing its readers to feel like they can create beautiful restaurant style meals at home. The color scheme is lighter, with colors like white, gold, soft grays or silver. My magazine, on the other hand, uses bright, comic style colors that really pop out and make it attractive to its target audience. It also doesn’t focus on making difficult, perfect meals, focusing on simpler yet fun recipes that don’t have to turn out perfect. I suppose the group that I am representing with this is the teens that are going to be reading this magazine. I suppose I’m representing them as people who do want to learn useful yet fun skills like cooking. There’s a strong stereotype that those of younger generations no longer want to learn these skills and would rather be lazy and have things done for them and only eat fast food and such things. This is the social aspect that I really want to combat, as I think a lot of teens and young adults would really be interested in learning how to cook if they had the chance. That relates to how my product engages with the audience, as the subject matter of pop culture and the eye-popping colors really serve to attract my audience to read the magazine. The cover lines in the magazine are formatted almost like social media articles are, in the style of “Top ten things” This is the same that we can see in my table of contents, as usually they have small descriptions of the article near them, but my magazine makes the titles clear and to the point, so it appeals to an audience that, because of the rise of social media, is used to things being quick and to the point without having to read summaries. If this project were to be distributed, I would really play to the pop culture aspect of the magazine and would reach out to large media companies to maybe write about the food in their newest series or film, so that the magazine can be marketed alongside it. I would distribute it as an online magazine, as teens and young adults are far more connected to things online.
As far as how my production skills developed throughout this project I would say I learned a lot more about photo lighting and the design of the background of the photo to make it look more appealing as I did not realize the extent to which lighting makes the photo quality soar. I also learned a lot about graphic design and color, as at first it was a little hard to make sure the colors pop enough to give that comic look I was searching for, but not enough that it starts hurting people’s eyes to look at. Unfortunately, I also made a pretty big mistake, which was taking the photos with the wrong tool.I mostly used my mom's new phone which has the highest camera quality and made the pictures turn out perfect, but when she got a call I used another phone for the full image for the two page spread, and that one did not have a high enough quality to enlarge the image like I planned to.That meant I had to think on my feet a bit more and change my original plans. Still I think I like this version a lot more than my original plan, as it feels like it pops out a lot more and reminds me of those Seventeen magazines that were some of my first sources of inspiration,
I used all kinds of technology to bring this project to light. Joomag was a fantastic website to use for the whole thing, as its layer feature allowed me to add all of the pictures on the table of contents as the comic panels you see here by letting me put the yellow text squares above the image and frame it all in a nice border. I found an iPhone app that increased the saturation of an image to give it a comic effect, and use that to make some of my duller images really pop. I got the comic text box icons from Microsoft Word and they were a great way to place my text in for the two page spread. This graphic design helped me find new ways to do things with the software I already had. Overall I learned so much from this entire experience, had a blast creating it with a friend, and am really excited about how it came out.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Bake day part deux!
I'm back with the update on the final bakes! Sara came over again today and this helped me finish up the whole thing (Can I mention how honestly amazing of a friend she is!! I had a lot of fun baking with her and I'm super grateful for all of her help)
Anyway the first thing we did was prepare the icing for the already made cookies, using a recipe my mom gave me, and then Sara showed off her drizzling skills once again by drizzling the icing to look like the stripes in the Harry Potter ties. Overall they were by no means perfect but I think that's what makes me love them even more.
Then we moved on to the butterbeer, which we did last in order for the whipped cream to come out as best as possible and topped with butterscotch chips.We also tried to accessorize it with some Harry Potter merchandise I had lying around.
We retouched the pizza bites by adding more sauce and more freshly melted cheese and then we were ready for group pictures!!!!!!!
I'm absolutely in love with how everything turned out and it was pretty much exactly what I had thought it would be!
We retouched the pizza bites by adding more sauce and more freshly melted cheese and then we were ready for group pictures!!!!!!!
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Bake day!
Today was our bake day, and unfortunately my friend Kira couldn't make it so it was just Sara and me. The plan originally was to have my parents go get the ingredients early so I could have everything mostly measured out and prepared by the time Sara arrived but due to unforeseen delays I wasn't able to do that since my parents came home right before she arrived around late afternoon ish. Still we made the best of the time we had and got baking.
The fries came out beautifully!!!! We topped them with salt and pepper and took photos of them in a large bowl (I even used a trick by padding the bowl with paper towels to make it look fuller and make the fries pop out more)
This was one of my favorite pictures of it!
Then we moved on to the pizza bites, and I made a small mistake then by actually attempting to roll out and knead the puff pastry, rather than just cutting it out of the already rolled out dough, luckily we had two sheets. Second time's the charm I guess!
After that we moved on to the popcorn, in which Sara showcased her amazing drizzling skills and also had a joking idea that I ended up adding to the recipe. I had some Lilo and Stitch chocolate molds that she thought would be fun to use and so we ended up ditching the chocolate drizzle and just added little chocolates on top of the caramel (or in this case butterscotch) corn, making it more of a snack mix instead. The chocolates didn't turn out perfect but they were definitely cute and fun!
We made the dough for the cookies then, but we realized it was getting kinda late and Sara had to head home. Luckily she was already coming over tomorrow and said she'd love to help continue this so we'll have to finish the group photos then. I'm posting this pretty late so I should probably head to bed but will be back with an update tomorrow!
Friday, March 22, 2019
While working out the layout of my two page spread before I take my images, I remembered a magazine I saw while working on an activity in class. It was a thanksgiving magazine and I think it gave me a good idea of what exactly I want my two page spread to be like.
Having a large image of the whole layout first Andrei then having another two page spread for each food item puts a lot more work on my plate but it allows me to focus on each item and their own recipe and have a really nice full image of the whole thing as well I like the idea of also giving little tips on the specific food item and how best to prepare it, which I will most likely do on the individual sections.
Also there's fun news! My friends Kira and Sara are going to help me with the making of the items and the photo taking next Tuesday, so we'll all get to have fun and hang out while doing so!
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Since I do not have any images to work on my two page spread, I've decided to at least start working on the layout and formatting of my table of contents. I decided that for it I really want to do a nice comic book style so I looked up a couple of images like this for reference.
I really liked the yellow boxed text so I figured I'd use something similar to that and then put my different articles in boxes mug like the comic panels above. I had some images of other foods I'd already done beforehand that were well taken so I figured why not use some of those to start making it and laying it out. This is what my first page looks like so far without some of the images that I don't have yet.
The reason some don't have titles yet is because it's been a bit difficult to think of titles without seeming really repetitive. Also I just now realized that I forgot about the page numbers but I'm going to add them inside the image. I'm unsure if I should make space for a small description of the article as I've seen good magazines do because I fear it might make it seem way too cluttered, but overall I really like the look of this page and I feel like it came out exactly how I wanted it.
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