Evaluating Preliminary Task

 

In this post I will reflect on my experience creating a cover and content pages for my preliminary magazine. 

 At the beginning of my magazine I brain stormed ideas about the genre of my magazines, what I wanted my main image to be, and the contents I wanted to display on my cover and table of contents page. So, with a thousand and one ideas and questions in my head I began with the photo below and let fate take its course. 

I liked the brightness the lighting of the picture and the contrast of the flower's color against the background gave the picture. No matter how many good pictures I took, I kept going back to this one, so I decided to create my magazine around gardening to accommodate the image. I then decided to use this photo as my main image. At first, I experienced difficulty finding font styles and colors to complement the image instead of blending in or appearing visually overwhelming. 

  Lay Out 

I applied my knowledge of magazine cover conventions as I made my cover page. My subject- a flower- is the cover page's main image, with a large, bolded masthead and the issue date on top, and the cover lines, taglines, and a slogan framing the subject. I formatted the information in columns with its corresponding page numbers to the left to increase readability and its aesthetic appeal on the contents page. Even though the images in my contents page are unrelated to the articles mentioned, I will ensure that all images and information correlate in my actual magazine.

   Text Styles

I found that adding a black shadowing behind the font helped the words stand out so that it can be read. Therefore, I added black shadowing to my fonts, so they do not blend in with my main image. In addition, I used fonts like playlist script, joschico, and mistrully hat which are elegant, but legible. As well as fonts like old standard and josefin slab that are professional and plain, which gives a nice balance between playful and professional. I used playlist script, joscio, and mistrully hat on my cover page to make it appealing. I used simpler font styles such as Lora and Libre Baskerville on the contents pages to go for a minimalistic look. However, it was plain fonts like these I used on my cover page for the issue title and some cover lines to balance out the page. I mostly used white fonts on the cover page with a bit of color to adhere to a color scheme while also making the writing visible. On the contents page, I used a mixture of black and white fonts to convey simplicity. 

 Photography

For the cover page, I centered the flower to make it the center of attention and increased the contrast to brighten the image and increase its clarity. As for editing, that is all I did as the photo was taking at an appealing angle and in favorable lighting. The images on my contents were pictures that I used to experiment with camera angles, gauge the time of day that offered the best lighting, and learn how to pick relevant subjects. The photos chosen on the contents page are the best, in my opinion, that were taken from a good camera angle, during the right time of day, and were subjects relevant to my genre. For my real magazine, I will keep all these conditions into consideration as I get ready to start taking pictures to give the magazine an appealing and uniform look. 

Overall this experience has allowed me to explore Canva and all the features it has to offer. Although it at times challenging to create the magazine cover and contents page was fun and definitely makes me look forward to the real thing. 

Preliminary: Gardening Magazine Contents Page

Below is the table of contents I created for my gardening magazine