Critical Reflections
1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
My magazine, Bellissima, is a magazine focused on beauty and fashion. The cover follows basic conventions: the Masthead is at the top and center letting people know it's the name of the magazine, the main image is in the middle of the page being the main focus, the model is looking at the camera making eye contact with the reader, sell lines which tell the reader about some of the articles featured, there is a barcode placed on a bottom corner of the cover, anchorage text, and the date is featured under the Masthead. I challenged some cover conventions by not giving my magazine a slogan because I believe the title speaks for itself. I also utilized a model who is a ginger, making her exotic and different. This allowing me to go into the fashion and beauty market because of simply how "differently beautiful" she is. The contents page also follows basic conventions: page numbers are included, the word contents is clearly stated, and small subtitles are included to inform the reader of what articles are found in the magazine and where they are. I included a small paragraph,on my contents page, about my front cover model due to the fact that my spread wasn't based on her and I wanted to write a bit about her. My double page spread breaks conventions as it does not contain images on both pages. I did this for it to look different, again helping me reach the fashion and beauty industry. My magazine represents women and it is based all around them. I took a very feminine route in the creation of my magazine, utilizing pink all throughout it and my subtitles in my cover and contents page addressing mainly women.
2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
My target market is women from ages 17 to 35. Bellissima engages with its audience by having content most women would be interested in. The bright and bold title drags attention in. Also, the model facing the camera is very attention grabbing due to the fact that she makes eye contact with the reader, dragging them in. The article is written in second person using words such as “you” and “you’re” to form a connection between it and the reader. It would be distributed through the magazine’s website, which in this case would be bellissimamag.com, and also on the website there would be a link to subscribe to the magazine and get it in the mail monthly, this due to cost, speed, and accuracy would be very efficient. After having high sell rates online and having it be pretty exclusive for a while, I would sell my product to a big magazine publisher such as Hearst who deals with magazines such as Seventeen, Elle, O, among others.
3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
Before working on this project I had little to no experience in the field of magazine production. I had previously worked closer with film productions so this was definitely going to be an adventure. I researched what the best, most advanced, yet not so hard to learn, program to create my magazine was. I chose InDesign because I usually love Adobe software and get a grasp of them quickly. I learned a lot about what it takes to design, edit, produce, photograph, etc. a magazine, which no doubt is a lot of work. As an editor, the task was pretty hard to get a grasp of but I accomplished my goal. As a photographer, which is something I love to do, I did not have struggles with and it was something that was very enjoyable.
4. How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - in this project?
I own a MacBook Air and this was the computer in which I installed InDesign in. I utilized InDesign to design my magazine. I found my fonts on dafont.com and downloaded them onto my computer. I first utilized istockphoto.com for my placement photos and then used my Cannon PowerShot SX530 HS to take my photographs. I also created and kept my blog on wix.com.
Thank you reader, for tuning in this is Mariette Sanchez-Casillas signing out.
maru xx