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.
No comments:
Post a Comment