Final Brief Submission

 Here it is. The fruit of my labor over these past few months. I hope you guys enjoyed going on this journey with me, and I hope you guys enjoy the end result as much as I do <3

Here is the link to my project in InDesign: 

https://assets.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:aa132707-c894-49f3-b388-37c9fbd01fec?view=published

Here is the link to my project in a Google Drive link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19xMKNBJgBHfRfJMaCpJsAgWyDEW34mH1?usp=sharing

The double spreads don't work with blogger and in Google Drive unless you download it, so I also included the pages separately. Open whichever link brings you the best quality <3

Switching out my replacement pictures for the actual pictures

Since I had taken my pictures so late, I had to use place-holder pictures while I was making all of my pages. So now, I have to replace all my pictures. It shouldn't take too long, but I will have to readjust my text. Of course, I didn't forget to screen record for my CCR. 

I won't reveal what the magazine looks like since that would ruin the surprise, but all I will say is that the pictures fit very well. Tomorrow, I will look over the magazine one last time for any final touches. That way I'll be ready to submit on Wednesday.

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Additional pictures

I still needed other related pictures for my content page, so I took advantage of the Canon 90D while I had it and used that to take those pictures as well. I also utilized a light box because my dad owns one for some reason. My dad owns a lot of random photography-related items. 

I needed pictures related to the articles I had, but still something I would have at home, so I decided on doing something based on the articles 

• Upping Your Fit with a Simple Addition: Jewelry
• Blushes that will make you Glow this spring
• Newest Nail Designs for this Season

I also wanted to do something for the article "Men Can Dress Up Too" so I took a picture of one of my male friends in one of their good outfits. For the other articles, I used the light box and some materials I had at home. I used my gold jewelry such as my necklaces and I placed it in a layered format. I also included rings and a bracelet on the sides. For the second article, I used blushes and brushes. Since I don't own that many blushes OR brushes, I did ask my friends to give me their's for the weekend. I used press on nails for the third article, since I own so many sets of press on nails anyways. For each product I had to ensure that I didn't reveal any brand logo or such. Here are how the pictures turned out:

 

This makes it so that I have 12 original pictures. That's way over the minimum! Which means I have succeeded. The next step is to finally put everything together since I have all my content. The majority of the work now will be putting everything together. 

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Taking Pictures

I know taking pictures definitely shouldn't be the last thing I did, but unfortunately I couldn't find any time to go out and actually take pictures. My schedule finally aligned with Addisyn's today, so we went out and took pictures with her as the model. The pictures I took today are going to be the ones for the cover page and the feature article. I need at least 6 original images, and 2 of them are going to be the ones from today, I'll need at least 4 more. Most of these are going to be pictures of beauty products and nails for the content page, but I might need another model just for the content page.

In order to get good quality and professional pictures, I checked out a Canon 90D camera along with a 18-35 lens from our TV Production program, which I am a part of. 

Addisyn picked me up and drove us to the location, since she has her license. We went to a nearby park, and we found a pretty spot next to a lake at around 6:30 PM. We wanted to catch the final rays of the sun on her, so I would get the best natural lighting possible. 

I bought a pack of clip on flowers to put in her hair and I had her pose in front of the lake as the sun hit her face. The pictures actually came out beautiful, and I haven't even edited them yet. Honestly I had a lot of fun shooting and I think she also had fun modeling. Here are some of the pictures we got that I really like:

I'm actually amazed at the lighting and the vibrance of the pictures. I have't even edited them. I was planning on setting aside time to edit, but the raw pictures came out so beautiful that I don't think I'll have a need for editing. 

I think I'm going to used one of the first 6 for the cover page itself, and then the others I might add into the content page. I'm super happy with the success of today. The next step is to obtain my other original images, such as those I will be using in my content page.

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Putting the Cover Page into InDesign

Oh my god. It's finally time to do the LAST PART of this brief. And also probably the easiest part, but I've saved the best for last of course. 

And here it is! I'm finally done with this entire project. And ohhh myy goddd, when I tell you I feel INCREDIBLE! This feels like a HUGE burden lifted off of my back. I hope you guys enjoyed this journey as much as I did, and I'll provide the official link later. 

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Putting the Content Page into InDesign

With 1/3rd of this full brief done, I need to get the second hardest part out of my way. That is, the content page. I think the hardest part about this is going to be actually arranging the entire content page and figuring out how to put the images and text in a cohesive manner. Also, I made sure to screenrecord!! I ended up working on it for nearly 3 hours, and I'm exhausted. But, here it is!

The next and final step is to work on the cover page. I saved this one for last since it's the easiest one by far, and hopefully will be done pretty quick.

Thank so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Putting the Feature Article into InDesign

 Finally, it's time to actually start working within InDesign. I'm going to start with putting in the feature article, since the entire thing is already written. Since I had planned to use a timelapse of my work in InDesign in order to answer one of the questions for my Critical Creative Reflection, I'm going to have to try to remember to screen record everytime I have a work session. I won't speed them up just yet, but I will insert a screenshot of the work I've gotten done in each blog post. Anyways, it's time to get to work. 

And, here is my final feature article! It took me nearly 2 hours to put it all together, despite the fact that I had the entire article already ready. Anyways, I'm glad I got this out of the way, so now I can work on the slightly easier parts: the content page and cover page. 

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

I WON AGAINST INDESIGN.

 So, this wasn't really my plan for this blog post, but I have some exciting news to share... I WON AGAINST INDESIGN!! By that I mean I figured out a way to import the font I wanted into InDesign! 

"I though you said you were giving up on InDesign..." Is probably what you're thinking right? And you're absolutely right. I did say I was just going to end up using Canva, but as I was creating the document for the magazine, I realized it would be difficult to do the double spread feature article. Why is that? Well the double spread feature article requires two pages, obviously, since it is double page. On InDesign, theres a way to put the two pages side by side so you can actually create the double spread properly:

As you can see, pages 2 and 3 are side by side, making it easy to create a continuous design. There is no way to do this on Canva. So after realizing this, I got so frustrated that I just ended up solving my problem. I did a LOT of digging and finally found a download link to the font I wanted that actually worked. I've written out the masthead so far, and it looks glorious.

I haven't tested any of the other fonts, but I'm sure that I'll be able to get them. If I could figure out the masthead, I'll be able to do the rest of the fonts as well. Which is exactly what I'll be doing now. 

I found the second font family (The Seasons) on Adobe Fonts, and the third one (Alice) on another website. I also found the fourth one (Abril Fatface) on another website. These fonts worked perfectly in InDesign. So... I guess this means I lied about using Canva. I will in fact be using InDesign for the magazine. 

Hailey said she was going to still use Canva, since she was basically entirely finished. I don't really mind, as that's her personal choice. And I don't think it'll make much of a difference considering we're using the same fonts and font size. It shouldn't look all too different. But anyways, I just though you guys should hear about my incredible victory against InDesign!!

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Resources:

https://www.onlinewebfonts.com/download/a959448c957069dae7d52078616ebdc8

https://font.download/font/alice-4

https://font.download/font/abril-fatface

Feature Article Draft

 This post is going to be a bit short, since majority of my efforts are going into building my feature article in its entirety. There's not much to consider since I already figured out my basic layout yesterday, and all I had to do was write down what Addisyn answered to my questions.

Building the Feature Article

It's time to get past the one thing that I've been dreading: the feature article. Actually, I lied, I dread doing just about anything related to this portfolio. I know that's a very negative outlook, but I just have so much homework these day that I find it difficult to enjoy even creating a magazine. But anyways, thats enough complaining (someone needs to count how many times I've said that).

Before I can even start working on my feature article - which was going to be about fast fashion and how it's drastically changed fashion trends - I need to do some research on the topic itself. So this post will be sort of a research post on all the information I need to build up my feature article. As always, all the resources used will be linked below. 

The Feature Article will begin from the perspective of an interviewer talking to the interviewee, who will be Addisyn Kostzer. I will be asking her questions about fast fashion and it's effect on the fashion industry. After doing some research, I found mixed results on how long a double-page feature article spread should be, but I found a website that showed how each word count looked and examples. The average is said to be 600 words, but they can range from 350 to 900 words. I think I'll just stick to the average and get to 600 words. 

I want the article to be interview style, where the question is listed and then the person's answer is written underneath. I've seen two different examples that use this format, and I think both of them came out super cute! 

The next thing to consider is what questions I could as as the interviewer? I guess I could include questions such as:

• How has do you think fast fashion has changed the industry?
• How has this impacted clothing?
• Do you think fast fashion has taken away from originality?
• How has fast fashion affected the environment?
• Do you think fast fashion is ethical?
• How can people make more ethical choices when it comes to fashion?
• Do you think fashion will improve in the future?

These are just some basic ideas that I've had so far. I will most likely improve the wording and such. And instead of having Addisyn play the part of a model now, I will make it clear that she's a model AND a fashion expert, so that it makes sense for her to have this much knowledge on fashion. 

I did tell Addisyn to do some research on fast fashion so she had prior knowledge before we did the interview. I found some websites that provide general information on fast fashion and its effects, so I sent those to her. Some key points that I want her to consider are:

• Fashion used to be all about originality. Now it's just about following trends.
  
• Clothing quality has gotten significantly worse.
• People switch through closets too fast now, and waste lots of money because of it. 
• Fast fashion is unethical and harmful to the environment.
• There is a necessary mind shift switch if we want to bring back original and ethical fashion.

Now that I have a basic idea of all the interview questions I want in my double spread feature article, this task will be a lot easier to manage. Next, I need to actually interview Addisyn, which I'll be doing tomorrow. I'm going to fully write out the entire article, and make sure it is basically perfect enough to put right into the magazine.

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Resources:

https://getcapstone.com/5183-2/#:~:text=But%20if%20you%20want%20to,again%2C%20across%20many%20different%20publications.

https://environment.upenn.edu/events-insights/news/fast-fashion#:~:text=Enter%20the%20phenomenon%20of%20fast,up%20with%20the%20latest%20trends.

https://earth.org/fast-fashions-detrimental-effect-on-the-environment/

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/fashion-clothing/what-fast-fashion-why-it-problem

InDesign is my WORST ENEMY.

Guys. There's a problem. Maybe... we shouldn't have done our style guide on Canva. Because now I'm thinking about it, and I remembered that the fonts on Canva are NOT the same fonts on InDesign. Originally, I had planned to import those fonts into InDesign, but to be completely honest, I have no idea how to do that. I'm going to try and see if I can find any way to do so, otherwise... I'm just going to do it on Canva. HEAR ME OUT. It's because everytime I look at reference blogs that did magazines, EVERYONE used Canva. I did not see a single one talking about using InDesign. So why must I go through the trouble of using InDesign?

I understand that InDesign is a DTP or whatever and Canva isn't, but to be quite honest, I would do a better job on Canva. I mean think about it for a second: I have YEARS of experience with Canva, while I have next to no experience on InDesign. I also have Canva pro, so I have access to a bunch of useful features such as removing backgrounds, etc. And also, InDesign is extremely difficult to use. I mean it took me nearly a month to get used to Premiere Pro for TV Production and I'm STILL not that great at it. It's just Adobe apps, they're so user un-friendly.

However, despite all this, I WILL try to figure out a way to import the fonts onto InDesign. I'm actually going to try my best to use InDesign. But if it's not worth it, it's not worth it. I'm pretty sure Hailey has already decided to move to Canva. I'll give InDesign another chance, but we'll see. 

So I took a look at a Youtube video (linked in resources below) on how to import fonts into InDesign, and it seemed easy enough. One issue: the guy explaining was working on a windows and I'm working on a Macbook, so I don't know if it'll be just as simple for me. I'll test it out and get back. 

Okay, so I found this god send of a website that allowed me to download our main masthead font for free!! The other website I was looking at said I had to pay $99, so it's good I found that website. I followed the steps that the guy in the tutorial said, and it was actually pretty similar despite the difference in computers. BUT, before we get too excited, I'll let you know that it didn't work. I downloaded the font and it even popped up on InDesign, but when I actually changed the font of the words to the one I wanted  (Archetype Bayer-Type is the name by the way), it literally did not show up. 

I don't understand why this is happening, but it's really annoying. So after lots of experimenting, downloading fonts, and moving things around, it's still not working. I've decided to admit defeat. I cannot win against InDesign.

I suppose this means that I will be using Canva. I am happy about that because it will make my life easier, but at the same time I hate that an app software won against me. I have an odd feeling that this decision is going to come back and bite me in my butt, but it is what it is. 

The next step is to draft up a fire feature article, the same way I did for my content page. Once I do that, it'll FINALLY be time to start assembling everything directly onto the magazine itself. Pictures are the last thing we plan to do. I know, I know, we probably shouldn't leave that to be the last thing to do, but both Hailey and I have been incredibly busy with States for theatre for Hailey, and the sheer amount of homework and tests I've had for my classes. But I mean, what did I expect choosing to take 3 AP classes (one of them being AP Chemistry) and 3 AICE classes as a sophmore. But that's enough complaining. I notice that I say that phrase a lot, which means I probably complain a lot. I apologize for all this ranting you guys have had to go through, but it IS my personal blog to document my experience, so this is kind of my job. Anyways, thanks for coming along this absolute emotional roller coaster with me guys! Hopefully next work session will go a little more smoothly, and hopefully my life will be easier now that I've decided to use Canva. 

Thank so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl3x_mYhe78&ab_channel=ZeedignTutorials

https://www.fontsmarket.com/thankyou/bayer-typearchitype

Building the Contents Page (Part 2)

Hey everyone! Welcome back to part 2 of developing my content page! I am feeling a LOT more creative and positive today, and this whole project is starting to feel a little more manageable. I'm going to continue with my third section, which is Beauty. I was thinking about making the name a little more interesting, like maybe adding another word in front of or after Beauty that also starts with the letter B. As of now, I can't think of anything that's creative but not cringe. But anyways, let's get started.

Beauty:

• Blushes that will make you glow this spring - 4
• Newest Nail designs for this season - 84
• Healthy Hair in Humidity - 13
• Shaving Tips for Baby Smooth Skin - 39
• Celebrity Makeup Artist Reveals how to get your makeup to last all day - 46
• Get Rid of Eyebags Quick: Best Retinol Eyecreams for instant results - 72

Now for what will be most likely be the final section, unless I decide to add another one: Trending Today. This section should be the heaviest section, I feel like, since it's heavily focused on fashion and that's the main focus of our magazine. I had many other ideas for the Beauty section but I purposely restricted myself as this is a fashion magazine and not a beauty magazine.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, just today Hailey and I had quite the realization. We were chatting about the different articles I could include, and I realized that doing a Men's Fashion Magazine would have been so much easier. Firstly, we wouldn't have had to model and the outfits would've also been comparatively similar. Not saying that Men's fashion is lacking in anyway, but their outfits tend to be less extravagant compared to women's outfits. Men's fashion magazine also focus on quality over quantity, so many of the major fashion magazines such as GQ will produce 80-100 page fashion magazines. Although that seems like a similar number to women's fashion magazines, 100 pages and 200 pages is quite a large gap. In fact, GQ actually released a feature on LeBron James and other players which was 24 pages long. So yeah, that really puts it into perspective. 

But anyways, no more regrets because it's too late to change anything, so let me get on with what is hopefully the final section. Trending Today:

• MODE's Spring Outfit Collection - 96
• Fantasy Fashion: Seasonal Greek Outfits - 75
• Designer Days: Cheap but durable designer replacements - 43
• Dressing for YOUR Body Type - 61
• Letitia's Iconic Met Gala look that everyone is OBSESSED with - 54
• Livin' la Vida: how to be a Fashionista EVERY day according to MODE's Gleneth Truman - 30
• Sundresses are IN: the public's favorite types of dresses for springtime - 37
• Fashion and how it influences daily life - 25

I'm hoping 8 articles is enough (it's probably not) but I'm willing to add more in the future as inspiration comes to me. I really need to continue brainstorming on how to layout the entire content page, and how the pictures will fit it. That's is definitely going to be the next focus, as well as actually putting all of these ideas onto InDesign. Anyways, that's all for today.

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later! 

Building the Contents Page (Part 1)

 The first thing I will begin to create is my Contents Page. That one feels like the most manageable since we don't have any photos yet and since I am really not in the mood to write a whole Feature Article. Hailey and I are trying to work out dates to shoot, but it's really difficult because we're both busy during the week. We're trying to get our pictures done this week because the next week, Hailey will be gone on the states trip for theatre, and she needs time to work on the brief. This final stretch of the project is really making me wish we had started this entire thing in quarter 2 so we wouldn't be rushing right now. I'm really starting to doubt how well I'm going to do on this. 

But whatever, that's enough whining. I need to get to work because I have no time to complain. Like I said, the first thing I want to do is the content page. I did have some ideas of certain titles we could include, but I really don't know anything apart from that. I look into how many pages a typical fashion magazine is, and I found that the number ranged from 80-200. Anyone who thinks I'm going to make this go up to 200 is crazy. I've decided to stick to 120 pages since that's what most magazines tend to do, especially Vogue since that's the magazine we've been mainly relying on for inspiration. 

As I mentioned in the Content Page Planning post, I've decided to have 4 sections. I might add more, but for now, these are the 4 that I've decided I'm adding for sure:

• On the Cover
• Fashionable Features
• Beauty
• Trending Today

I also noticed something that I didn't notice earlier: the page numbers aren't in order. For example, each section obviously includes whatever page number of the article that matches the section right? But the page numbers jump around. For example, the page numbers for On the Cover could be 6, 54, 114, and the page numbers for Fashionable Features could be 13, 64, 88. That's something I have to keep in mind when making the final product.

For now, I'm going to start with organizing the different article titles into their respective sections. Starting with On the Cover. Here are the articles I'm planning to add in this section:

• Bhumi Harpalani on the effects of Fast Fashion - 56
• Styling IMPOSSIBLE patterns - 23
• Upping your fit with a simple addition: JEWELRY - 90
• Men can dress up too - 78

For the second section, I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to just make up names of people and act like they're famous and established. I don't know for sure, so that's something I will be checking with my teacher. I've noticed that the feature articles also have a short 1-2 sentence description underneath them, so I will be including that as well. Here is what I will include in the section Fashionable Features:

• Fashion is Genderless - Professional Stylist Jada Wong gives tips on how to style men's clothing - 113
• Walking can be Comfy and Cute - Model Rosie Larson shares her favorite heels to walk in that are comfortable and cute. - 15
• All Things Color - Color Analyst Lee Ji-Woo shares what color palettes you should use based off of your skin tone and your features. - 43
• Styling Ananya Raiker - Professional Stylist gives the scoop on how she styles Model Ananya Raiker. - 102
• Serving in Springtime - Fashion Icon Alina Baird talks about her favorite springtime outfit ideas. - 67

I wanted to finish all 4 sections today, but I think I'm all out of creativity for today. I will continue the rest of building up this content page next time. In the meantime, I will start brainstorming how I want the layout of the page to be. I believe this will become a series with a few parts, but this is all for part 1.

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Resources: 

https://nypost.com/2014/02/24/mens-fashion-magazines-go-for-quality-over-quantity/#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20fashion,what%20you%20do%20with%20it.

Official Style Guide

    

Creating a Style Guide

Before we officially begin our projects, Hailey and I need to create a Style Guide. HUHHH What's a style guide? That's exactly what I thought when I was first introduced the idea by my teacher. But apparently a style guide is necessary since Hailey and I are working together.

By definition, a style guide is a "holistic set of standards that defines your company’s branding. It references grammar, tone, logo usage, colors, visuals, word usage, point of view, and more." The purpose of a style guide is to ensure that both of us have the same conventions for our magazine since we are technically working on magazines under the same branch. Creating a style guide also ensures a recognizable voice for your audience.

So, what is included in a style? Well a lot of things, and figuring out what to include in our style guide is probably the most difficult part of this for me. According to GatherContent, a style guide should be 4 to 5 pages long. A style guide includes many things, such as:

• A mission statement - explaining name and tagline
• A table of contents
• A writing section 
• Baseline guide: using the oxford comma, spelling of certain words, using symbols, etc)
• Formatting: how to use bullets, lists, hyphens, quotes
• Tone and voice: sentence structures, tones, etc
• Additional: words to engage, words to avoid

• A visual section
• Formats: infographics, videos, etc.
• Colors: color palette (primary and secondary colors) including HEX, CMYK, and RGB codes and Pantone number
• Logo/Masthead: improper uses, where to use
• Fonts: for mastheads, paragraphs, quotes
• Typography: font size, weight, spacing, 

So with this knowledge, Hailey and I began creating our style guide. We heavily used the Vogue style guide as inspiration. 

We started with our visual aspects like our logo and color palette. Our main colors are black and white, and then we also have a muted red and blue as our primary colors as well. For secondary colors, I chose different variants of grays, red, and blue. Then, we worked on our typography. This part was a bit difficult because we had to include the different variants of our chosen fonts such as the bold and light versions. Then, we began to work on the hardest part, for us at least. This was the Font Styles. Here we had to choose what font and color combination would be used for different headers and such. This took maybe 1 hour or so to do, but at least we don't have to think about that when we are actually making our product.

The next thing we did was our writing aspects. We decided to use the oxford comma because not using the oxford comma makes things confusing. I also added some other things, but I didn't add too many restrictions. I also added an explanation as to why some of these choices were made.

Other style guides tend to have even more information such as mission statements; however, our style guide doesn't require those because we are creating a magazine and not a business in it's entirety. Our style guide is also shorter because a majority of a magazine's style guide consists of different fonts used throughout the magazine. Since we are only doing 3 elements of a magazine, we do not have a need for an excess amount of fonts.

Our next step is to obviously post the style guide. After that, I believe it's time to get started on the product itself. The product is due in 3 weeks, and Hailey will be on a school trip for Theatre in that last week, so we must get everything done in these upcoming 2 weeks. There is no more time for planning. It's time to get to it.

Thanks so much for tuning in, catch you later!

Resources:

https://www.figma.com/resource-library/what-is-a-style-guide/#_5-key-elements-of-a-brand-style-guide

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/how-to-brand-style-guide/

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/business/teams/resources/how-to/brand-guide.html

https://bradfrost.github.io/cn-style-guide/styles/vogue.html

https://writer.com/guides/style-guide/