Planning - Magazine Content

Magazine content plan

Hi Blog! Today I'm going to plan what I'm going to cover in my table of contents and feature article.

    Table of Contents

        - When creating my table of contents, I plan to use a lot of pictures along with page information to make a more visually appealing page. I think I'm going to include fake page numbers under few different pet photos that I either don't end up using on the article and then have a larger photo of an unused picture from the feature article with another page number.

    Feature Article

    - When making my feature article, I have a few ideas for main articles and stories and a few other ideas for modules. 

Here's a list of my ideas..

Article 

    - My friend Gaby's cat having 7 toes (Genetics behind it, Is it harmful?, maybe an interview from a veterinarian)

    - My friend Lana's cat Winnie being an "outside cat"

    - My aunt's cat Abby's experience having a new baby in the house having been the "only child" for so long.

Modules

    - Lana's Lazy kitty (cat behaviors module)

 Whichever feature article doesn't make it to actually being a feature article, I'll use as a module.

Planning - Magazine Title

Our Magazine's Title

    Today, we started talking about possible names for our magazine. We went through a lot of names, and I'll list our top 5 below!

    

    We wanted something easy, memorable, and reflective of our tone, location, and purpose..

   - Fetch Florida

    - West Broward Whiskers

    - Paws & Palms

    - Paw Post

    - Paws in Paradise

    

Using photoshop, we tried our favorite 3 to see which looked the best.

After a lot of deliberation, we decided on.... Drum roll...... PAW POST!

Planning - Project Proposal

Introduction

Hello blog! My name is Christopher Villegas and for my portfolio, I chose to work with my friend Angely Borge to create a pet magazine, with our editions differing in pets, her doing dog, while I do cat subgenres. We're excited to work together since we both love animals and are in Yearbook together. With our experience, we are confidence in making a visually engaging magazine.

Target Audience 

The target audience is primarily 16-30 year olds, all genders, pet owners and animal lovers, as well as people who are interested in animal photography, lifestyle content, animal care and more animal-related things. Young adults are a strong audience because there are many new pet owners or people considering getting a pet. Furthermore, animal related content performs very well on social media and online platforms making this demographic likely to engage with our magazine. However, our magazine could also appeal to anyone who owns, works with, or is interested in animals.

Social Issues / Representation

In our magazine we want to address

    •    Responsible pet ownership

    •    Pet adoption vs. buying from breeders

    •    Animal welfare and proper care

    •    Representation of different pet breeds and mixed breeds

We want to promote positive messages about caring for animals responsibly and highlight the importance of adoption and animal shelters. Our goal is to create content that is both entertaining and educational.

Software / Hardware and Skills

To create our magazine we will be using

    •    Adobe InDesign for layout and design

    •    Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom for photo editing

    •    A Canon T8i or T7i Camera and Canon sx740hs camera for all pet photography

We would like to improve our skills in

    •    Magazine layout design

    •    Professional typography and font pairing

    •    Photo editing techniques (lighting, color correction)

    •    Creating strong cover designs and headlines

Learning more about design principles such as alignment, contrast, hierarchy, and spacing will help us make our magazine look professional.

Basic Plan for Our Magazine

Our plan is...

    1    Creating a masthead and magazine title

    2    Designing a professional cover page with a featured pet

    3    Including possible feature articles such as:

    ◦    “Top 5 Tips for First-Time Dog Owners”

    ◦    “Understanding Your Cat’s Behavior”

    ◦    “Adoption Spotlight”

    ◦    “Healthy Treat Recipes for Pets”

    4    Adding interviews with local pet owners or shelter workers (if possible)

    5    Designing a table of contents page and at least one double-page spread

Practice Exercises

To prepare for creating our final product we plan to

    •    Analyze existing pet magazines for layout inspiration

    •    Practice editing pet photos

    •    Experiment with headline fonts and color schemes

    •    Create mock cover drafts before finalizing the design

We are excited to begin working on this project and look forward to creating a magazine that is creative, visually appealing, and meaningful to animal lovers!

Planning - Official Style Guide

Style Guide

    Hello! This is going to be the style guide for our magazine for both issues. After deliberating what we were going to use for fonts, colors, and motifs, we're compiling it into the style guide and including all copy fonts, grammar conventions, and audience/message.

Audience Overview

    Our magazine aims to pander to all pet lovers and owners, including both advice and comedic pet stories. Using advice from veterinarians and veterinary students, we offer advice to new and experienced pet owners. We will share information and spotlight stories to keep readers entertained and informed. We will keep a casual tone, keeping info easy to access and readability high for quick readers, especially young adults. All ages are pet owners, so lifestyle with pet ownership is what we aim for.

GRAMMAR CONVENTIONS

In our magazine production, we will have.....

- No use of contractions, to ensure this magazine conveys a professional and sophisticated image, I will refrain from using contractions in all articles and headlines. 

- No use of modern-day slang, slang is deemed as improper, and to successfully maintain a professional image, I need to avoid it at all costs.

- No excessive use of passive voice. Using passive voice sentences makes them feel slow and unclear. Using the active voice creates energy and makes your articles easy to understand.

- Avoided filler words (like, super, etc), filler words weaken the point you are trying to make and come off as unprofessional. 

Headline Fonts and colors

    For our main theme colors, we chose a palette of 3 different colors that were bright, but not overbearing. They're named cornflower, banana cream, and sweet salmon.

    Our fonts are Dream Orphans Bold in uppercase for headline accents and our masthead, and Amarieta in lowercase for headline normal.

    

    For modules, we are using Butterpop for small headlines.

Article Design and fonts

For all articles, we will use the baskerville font family for subheadings, copy, and names. here is a list of our specific font sizes and types.

    - Baskerville pt. 11 - Copy

    - Baskerville Semibold Italic pt. 15 - Dominant Subheading

    - Baskerville Semibold Italic pt. 14 - Module Subheading

    - Baskerville Semibold pt. 12 - Names

    Design Motifs

For our design, we will use overlapping and variable opacity on different geometric shapes colored in our main 3 theme colors behind cutouts and headlines. 

We will use text wrapping around both cutout subjects and geometric photos. We will place importance on large images to establish hierarchy.

Planning - Preliminary Design

Design

    Hello! In this post, me and my partner are deciding preliminary design details before we make our official style guide.

HEADLINE Fonts

    Me and my partner wanted to use the conventions of pet magazines by using a variety of fonts but a special importance on at least 1 decorative font. Using dafont.com, we decided on a font called "Butterpop." With this font, we plan to use it on modules on spreads and on puffs and smaller features on the cover.

    We also decided we wanted to use a mixture of 1 sans serif and 1 serif font to create a conventional, but contrasting design. For this, we decided on a serif font without much weight so we could make a larger contrast and have something that doesn't take up much space. We decided on Amerieta, and though it has more decorative upper case lettering, we also decided to only use lower case lettering for the serif font.

    For our sans-serif font, we wanted something more bold, but not too blocky. To do this, we tried a couple fonts on Photoshop paired with Amarieta to make sure they contrasted, but also looked good together. We decided on Dream Orphans, which was kind of a weird name, but it went well for the vision we had in mind of a longer vertical font. 

Colors

    Using coolors.com, we created a color palette with a bright, playful tone that reflects a silliness in our magazine. 

    We settled on a coral, light yellow, and bright blue to have a 3 color palette we can choose from when doing headlines and module designs. 

    Before this, we decided on a definite playful tone for our magazine and it's message, so we fit the colors to that.

Design Motifs

    For our design motifs, we got a lot of inspiration from overlapping colors and shapes like the RGB symbol. So, we decided to use varying opacities in colored shapes like circles, squares, and lines.

    We also decided, as to not take up too much visual space, to only do outlines of these shapes.

Research - Photography and Lighting

Photography and Lighting

     From what I found about pet photography, a lot of the work comes more into getting the right moment of pets rather than finding poses or getting a perfect angle. This contributes a lot to the comedic value of pet magazines photography, making a cuter, sillier picture rather than a perfectly framed, posed one. I saw this is done mainly using treats as a source of reward to the pets, offering a lot of the different poses you see pets in on magazines. 

    

    Camera work is very important for these shoots, having an arms-length distance from the pet being what seems to be necessary for the best chance of a good photo. Being able to be in front of the pet with the treat is what works for many photographers. But, since you need to be close, the camera lens needs to accommodate having a very close subject. From what I found, 35 mm to 50 mm is what is recommended for pet photoshoots.

    Lighting for pet photography has to be very mobile, since pets can move a lot during shoots. The most frequently used lighting I found was overhead movable lights. With this, keeping only 1-2 lights is optimal, keeping it simple to be able to change quickly with the pet. Camera flash is almost never used since pets' eyes often go red. Photos of pets are most often in dimmer rooms, and when not shallow focus is used often to keep focus on solely the pet. 

    In conclusion, this research definitely helped a lot on specifics about pet photography. I've tried pet photos before, but I could honestly never figure it out. With this info, I've become aware of the spaces I should try to take photos in, how simple lighting can be, and how to get a decent posed photo. I've also realized that pet photos don't need to be perfect.

Sources 

https://www.ppa.com/photovision/watch/expert-tips-on-posing-and-lighting-for-stunning-pet-photography

Research - Magazine Production / Distribution Practices

PRODUCTION/DISTRIBUTION

    Magazine production is dominated by a few giants of production like People Inc. and Condè Nast. These include extremely popular magazines like People, Vogue, Martha Stewart Living, and many more.

    Both of these production companies use multi-media advertising through social media, newsstands, web engines, and retailing. Prints can be found in supermarkets, bookstores, cafès, salons, and much more to diversify audiences. By having both digital and physical advertisement and print, companies keep a wide range of customers with many preferences.

CONDÈ NAST

    Many popular approaches to production practices include environmental and social concerns with deforestation for mass production of paper for magazines. It also includes low carbon materials for lower emissions from hotspots of production and fair business practices for laborers. 

    The production of Condè Nast magazines includes a lot of identity within these magazines. Establishing a "voice" of the magazine is a pivotal part for a message and representation of social groups and issues. These prints are also almost always integrated into digital and physical platforms. Magazines like "Vogue" print and public digitally 8 times a year, shifting from the standard of monthly issues from earlier trends.

    Distribution practices are very standard for these magazines, either through specific subscriptions to magazines or newsstands. Specific issues can also be bought through 3rd party sources, making these magazines extremely accessible.

PEOPLE INC. 

    People Inc. has multiple pet magazines, the focus of my product. By focusing on subscriptions, People Inc. distributes mainly to families or young adults with pets in varying regions. Special editions of these magazines are what is printed, while most publications only have digital forms. 

    

        While print magazines usually only have issues in months, DailyPaws and other issues from People Inc. publish multiple times per week, their websites updating with each article published. They follow conventions of traditional prints, but do not include things like covers. 

    Overall, People Inc. also uses subscriptions as a way to maintain long-term customer relationships. This is through the continued new releases of their magazines while also being completely transparent with customers. In their "Forced Labour Reports", People Inc. maintains their relationship with clients by informing them of their production chains, company policies, and ethic codes. This transparency is what makes People Inc. a media giant in the industry. 

Reflection

    For my product, this will help me greatly in understanding audience and how to effectively convey a message for a social group. It has also helped me realize magazines are more than just information, they create a voice and story for their message, tone becoming prevalent even in print stereotyped as mundane and design-focused.

Sources

https://www.people.inc/forced-labour-report

https://peopleinccontentlicensing.com/content-licensing/pets/

https://www.condenast.com/sustainability

https://fashionista.com/2016/02/dirk-standen-23-stories-branded-content

Research - Magazine Font Theory

Font Theory

    Font theory in magazine works to create an aesthetically pleasing magazine that is cohesive and readable. Fonts are typically matched together to create cohesiveness in a spread, such as using a typeface with a large font family to make a sense of fluidity in copywriting. This is seen in making fonts bold, oblique, and light.

 These are considered different font "weights", heavier fonts being considered boldened. Oblique and italicized are similar, but are different in the fact that italicized fonts are considered a different font than the same font in a font family. This is because italics are often changed in shape from the original font, making an entirely new font. 

    Magazines will also sometimes use "accent" fonts to compliment the "normal" font. This can be seen in headlines with more than one words, often using a bigger font to emphasize a word of importance in a headline. Other types of letterings are small caps fonts, and the use of monospacing. These letterings are not often used in pet magazines that me and my partner are planning for.

    There are 4 main types of fonts, Serif, Sans Serif, and Script, and Display fonts. Serif fonts use serifs on letters to create a more proper font, usually being mixed with Sans Serif and script fonts in headlines to compliment each other. Sans-serif is similar, but sans meaning without serifs. This is the most diverse font type, being able to be used with most fonts due to how it can contrast easily. Display and Script fonts are more decorative, script being handwriting-esque while display is a more widespread font style, being anything that doesn't fit with the first 3.

    Overall, fonts used in Pet Magazines vary between all fonts, but often use display fonts that are bubbly and fun. For headlines, they most often use sans-serif fonts mixed with serif fonts. I personally love the themes of sans-serif with serif fonts mixed with display fonts for module headlines and additional information. 

https://reallygooddesigns.com/fonts-theory/