The two page spread I have planned is something along the lines of "The best snacks for a great watch party". It's going to contain a couple of recipes but they will all be fairly simple and easy to pull off for anyone. I've looked up some recipes for what I want to do, and I've kind of modified them to either make them simpler or use less ingredients so I don't have to buy as much to make them.
1. The first item I thought of was fries and I found this recipe, which allows you to make them without frying with oil by using an air fryer, which is a lot less complicated.
2. The second item I thought of was pizza bites, and instead of having to prepare the dough I thought I'd find a recipe that uses puff pastry, which you can get already made. This recipe was what I decided I'll do.
3. The third item was caramel corn, and for this one I've decided not to use a recipe as I saw that most were made by heating up sugar and that's a lot more complicated than I want, so I've decided to just make popcorn and cover it with melted chocolate and butterscotch.
4. The fourth item was a drink, and for this case, I've chosen on of the most iconic drinks which is Harry Potter Butterbeer. In this case I'm also not going to use a recipe as from all of the ones I looked at, they used too many things including heavy cream when it really wasn't necessary. My version is going to be cream soda mixed with melted butterscotch chips and ice cream mixed in (plus whipped cream for decoration.
5. The fifth item is going to be sugar cookies, and since I've done an item themed on Harry Potter, I figure I'll decorate those in the colors of the Hogwarts houses. I'll be using my mom's recipe for those  since it's absolutely delicious. I plan on baking everything during my spring break because I'll have a bunch of time and am not going anywhere.
I'm pretty excited to make all of this! It'll be pretty fun to try out these recipes!

To make my masthead original, I figured I'd make it  from scratch from the sketch I posted earlier. I used the Microsoft Autodesk app and a stylus pen to trace over my original design with the color palette I chose.

The only thing that worries me about it is my fear that it'll look kind of unprofessional. I tried my best to make it as neat looking as possible but I might not use it if I find it looks too strange. The peer review we are doing next week is probably really going to help me with that. I'm using Joomag to create my magazine, so I had to remove the background from my logo and place it there.  I used an app I found on my phone called Background Eraser and luckily it didn't lower the image quality.

Seeing these two options side by side I definitely prefer it on the side and tilted like it is in the first image, it seems a lot closer to that comic book style that I'm going for with the entire magazine.

I've found another YouTube channel that has given me some idea inspirations. It's called Rosanna Pansino, and the creator has a series called Nerdy Nummies and focuses on recipes inspired by popular shows, movies, and other forms of media. Her recipes can sometimes be simple, but a lot of them can also tend to be complicated. A thing I enjoy about her tutorials is how she always encourages her audience to have fun and customize the recipe im fun ways that they like. This has given me the idea to possibly do a recipe based on something with multiple variations, for example: Hogwarts houses, where depending on which one you have you could customize the recipe to be a different house theme. I also think the different house crests are very stylish and have fun eye popping colors that could certainly give a nice aesthetic.

Now that I've thought about the masthead font and some ideas, I realized I also needed to think about colors and their visual appeal. I certainly want to make it colorful and bright, but not to the point of it being garish.
The colors yellow and red can increase appetite in the viewer, and are also widely used in comic books which matches my theme, so I could use those as my main colors in my masthead ad potentially my cover page. I used a color palette generator to get some visually appealing color combinations and these were my favorites:







These all have a brighter red and yellow that would pop out more and while the other colors are more subdued they fit and are still really nice to look at, matching that comic book style pretty well.

Here are some sketches of what some of my title font ideas are:

This one is in a more comic book style and I think it really pops. The border also really makes it exciting and appealing to the audience.

This one i think is my least favorite. I tried to go for a 3D more geometric style look but I don't think it would be the best.

This is a more bubble letter style and I like how its more simplistic and still kinda bouncy, fun and laid back.

Title font ideas:

Since my magazine is going to be for a young audience and is going to be based off of pop culture and media, I think it'll be best if I make my font be fun and colorful. The first idea that I have is to make it in a sort of comic book text style and these were some examples I saw that could fit what I'm trying to go for:

These are fun, eye catching and I think they really fit the theme I'm going for so I'll see if I can figure out a font I can make inspired by these.

Masthead thoughts:

I'm having a bit of a dilemma, as I wanted to start looking for some different font ideas and ways to format my masthead and cover page, but I can't seem to think of any titles that I could give my magazine. I want it to sound fun and inviting, to attract new readers to try out cooking and check out the recipes inside.
I tried looking at some examples for inspiration like, Bon Appetit, Taste, Tasty, Delicious Dishes, and Good Food. It seems like most are very to the point and simple but I think I just keep overthinking mine. I need to just state what the magazine is like front and center i guess.

Welp, something really funny just happened. Just as I was typing this out I came up with a title. I think I actually really like it.
My masthead is gonna be Fan Foods!
I'm glad I came up with it cause now i can start brainstorming some style aspects and how it will look which is going to be a lot of fun!