Small Subversion of classic conventions:

Since my audience is very different from the typical audience of a food magazine,which tends to be middle age to older women, I'm probably going to have to make a lot of changes in the style. Due to its typical audience, food and recipe magazines tend to be very stylized and elegant, appealing to those that want their food to look delicate and beautiful while tasting delicious and homemade. The fonts are usually nice cursive fonts and there are usually some articles related to hosting events like dinners for holidays or family events. One good example of typical formatting would be thsi magazine from Food Network:

 
It contains hosting ideas like appetizers and is very stylized with its cursive font. Looking at the table of contents here, it definitely also has a lot of recipes for a more experienced reader to follow, like brioche bread. I'm hoping to make mine easy to follow for younger people that may be starting out, with far simpler recipes.

 I definitely don't want to have my magazine have the same look as typical food magazines so I decided to look at some magazines that are more for the people in my target audience. Upon my first search I saw a bunch of copies of Seventeen magazine: 

While this magazine is a lot more fashion suited in audience I do think it gives some good pointers towards formatting ideas, mainly making it more vibrant, making the titles and the articles pop, using bright colors and attractive text. These are ideas and forms of inspiration I'll certainly take into account when creating my magazine in hopes of making it appealing and fun to read.

I think I've decided I might do a mix of my two ideas since they do overlap and make my magazine issue have simple, regular recipes and also some that are themed to certain shows or movies.

While searching for more inspiration on food magazines or recipes more suited towards teens, I found this list of articles by Seventeen magazine that contained a bunch of easy recipes. An important thing I found here was the article about recipes to make in a dorm room, because dorm room adaptability is something I definitely want to look into for some of my recipes and ideas, so that they can appeal even to those that may not have as many kitchen tools or ingredients.

Doing further research on common dorm kitchens I found that most have a microwave or a small refrigerator so I might have to look for some recipes that can work with those appliances and test them out (which might be difficult considering I don't have a microwave at home). Then after that I could attempt to make them a lot more fun or based on different pop culture things. (The pop culture idea is something I'll have to narrow down since there's a huge variety of popular shows and movies to choose from.)

An update on the photography tricks I was talking about a couple of days ago: One of my friends has taken a couple photography classes and has offered to teach me some of the things he's learned so that I can take well lit and well positioned photos. The only thing he's asking in return is to try some of the food I will inevitably be making, and that's perfectly fine by me because otherwise I could end up eating it all and that would definitely not end well for my stomach.
In other news, I've been looking over some ideas for both of the magazine concepts I came up with and I've been trying to decide which option is best

For the film themed foods magazine concept I found this YouTube series that has been giving me inspiration for some foods I could put into my magazine. His videos are very in depth and are good at explaining some concepts that may be new to viewers that are not as experienced with cooking, something I definitely want to keep in mind for my audience.

For the basics of cooking magazine concept I began looking at this list of articles by The Spruce Eats that are all focused on the basics of cooking to see what different things I should explain that best fit my audience. Unlike their list which is focused on a more adult audience, I want to keep mine in mind by doing the recipes that use the simplest and most inexpensive equipment and ingredients, as my audience may be teens in college or who are preparing to go there and may not have a high budget for food, but still want to eat healthy and nice meals.

Hey, I'm back on this blog and extremely ready and excited to do a lot more research and finish this project! I've decided on a food magazine because cooking is one of my favorite hobbies and I think that's the one I'll be able to pull off the best and also enjoy the most. As far as audiences go, my audience is going to be around the ages of 15-23, teens to young adults, people who may only just be starting to learn how to cook.
As for the actual content of the specific magazine I have two ideas:

• An issue focused on teaching basics and concepts of cooking to those who may want to start learning simpler recipes, which works well with my young audience
• An issue focused on more fun, entertaining recipes based on things like popular films and tv shows that people can make for things like fan events and watch parties

Since I'm not quite sure of which idea to do, I first decided to research one of the more challenging things that I'll face on this journey, which is the food photography. I want to make sure all of my images are aesthetically pleasing and attractive to the eyes. I first found this video, and while it leaned more on the professional food photography side of things, it gave some good tips on what to do if you can't buy fancy equipment which I will definitely use, such as using a white cloth to diffuse light in your pictures. Then I found this other video, and while it is very long and extensive, some of the images I saw while watching a part of it had really nice aesthetics and definitely gave me insight into how to make an image attractive to the eye. I hope some of these resources will help me give a more professional look to all of my images.