Skip to main content

(63) But wait...there's more!! Creative Critical Reflection #1

 


The end is nigh. Welcome back guys, well now that we've finished our magazine, let's reflect on this journey! So this is one of four critical reflections that I will be doing! Within each of these I will be answering and reflecting on a question about our magazine.

So for today,
How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

    Well to answer the first part of this question, let me put it simply, my magazine consists of all the basic conventions of a magazine. It includes a masthead, a main image, cover lines, a date line, a barcode, and a price. Throughout the production process of this magazine I was inspired by many different magazines like Men's Journal and Playboy Magazine.


In the cover page, the first thing you notice is my masthead. The masthead is the title of a magazine located at the top of the cover page. I used font hierarchy to determine what I wanted the viewer to see first. I called the magazine Menluv and put Men's Fashion as the title to show what it's about, the image of our model Tyrone also helps to convey that point as he is a man, with fashion of course. I've also used contrasting colors to further grab a viewers attention and I've taken the liberty of editing my background image to fit the red and blue color theme.


Next is the table of contents, and for this I have taken design choices to make it as simple as possible. Once again I've used contrast and font size to allow readers to better distinguish between text elements and I've added some images that relate to men's fashion. Overall I did my best to make the table of contents as clear and concise as possible as the purpose of this page is to be informational and guide the reader to particular parts of the magazine.


Finally, we have my double page spread. Now this part is truly a culmination of design and simplicity working perfectly together. What I've done here is make all the images black and white and made most of the text colored, this is to add emphasis to the text. Because if the images were colored I felt I would be taking away focus from the feature story, there is symbolism in the text colors too. I used red to emphasize energetic phrases, blue to emphasize Tyrone and manly phrases, and I used purple to emphasize fashion related words and phrases.

Now to answer how my magazine represents social groups or issues. Well if you played close attention you would've noticed all my background images are as some would say, ghetto areas. This was done on purpose to create a deeper meaning, and that meaning is that no matter who you are, or where your from, you can still enjoy men's fashion. Besides that you may also notice how colorful my magazine is and how it might even seem a little silly, well this is because I also wanted to appeal to younger audiences as well and to captivate a viewers attention. In truth my magazine is meant to appeal to men of all ages and all backgrounds, whether they grew up with hard or easy life, it is meant to unite men with fashion. This magazine helps men feel better about themselves regardless of their age or background.

Link to Prezi Presentation:
https://prezi.com/view/bMOYDwefI3l236R6hOxK/

Anyways guys, that's it for today, next time we'll answer a different question, until then-
Thanks for Reading!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

(21) Is it really a good morning?... House Styles PART 2!!!

  I think I'm losing it, I've looked everywhere, but I just can't find it...OH THERE YOU ARE!! Welcome...back, I wasn't looking for you, no...I was looking for my...uhm MY GLASSES!!..."where are MY glasses?" ahhh gotcha, anyways lets get back to discussing house styles, well we already discussed it, so lets look at some examples, Yes right away I think you guys can see the general theme and use of house styles in this magazine. It's pretty easy to spot. For one we can typically see an image of an individual in the cover, the magazine logo, in this case being XXL, and the use of large headings typically at the bottom left with a barcode at the bottom right. Lets go over some more analyzed and high quality examples, These are some very nicely analyzed examples and they easily searchable on the internet so credit to the google search "house style in magazine". Anyways we can see that the Vogue magazine is clearly very streamlined in it's product

(5) Check this out! More camera angles, yes!

I knew you'd want some more  😉 and I've got you covered!! Today I wanted to demonstrate to you some more camera angles and shots!! The first camera angle is the establishing shot This shot is used to establish the location and environment of a scene and can also set the mood while giving the audience visual clues of the day, time, and general situation. For example in the establishing shot you can tell it's within a school. Another angle similar to the establishing shot is the master shot This shot is meant to focus not as much on the location, but more on all the subjects in the scene, smaller shots can be interwoven into the master shot. Moving on,  I have the close-up up shot This shot is taken very close to the subject and has the subject fill most of the frame, the purpose is to emphasize the subject or a small feature of theirs. For example in the photo it appears like he's thinking and you can deduce this by his facial expressions. Any closer and this would

(20) Hey, what if we like stopped being creative?...hmm good idea, House Styles

  Hey there friends...what? Your not my friend? That can be solved *gives you half eaten donut*, yeah we chill now. ANYWAYS, to all my dear readers, AHEM, yeah I mean you!! I wanted to discuss with you what is house styles with regards to magazines. I care for you all and would hate to waste your time so I'm going to make this short and sweet and divide this topic into two separate blogs, I will use one blog for to help you understand the subject of house styles in magazines and another blog to demonstrate this in terms of actual magazines so you can see house styles in how it is applied in terms of an industry setting i.e. official magazines. But before I begin let me give you a short list of useful resources to understand the concept of house styles before I simplify it to oblivion for you; https://www.thoughtco.com/house-style-editing-1690842 https://www.theeword.co.uk/blog/creating-a-house-style-for-your-content-why-how/ https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-alm