Karla Perez

IT IS DONE!!! HERE IS MY FINAL PRODUCT: Front Cover: I fixed the "Winter Issue" part and changed it to what it's supposed to be: the country in focus of the month, in this case, Cuba. I made the font sizes for the article titles and such smaller, as recommended. Table of Contents:   AS for the TOC, I finally put the other page of it that I had forgotten to make. I was inspired by Tastemakers for the left page. This time I also categorized the page on the right by Features, Reviews, and Niche—which will include parts of the feature of the month, quizzes, and more. Spread:

So... after lots of people's criticism, I'm (once again) doubting and rethinking everything. I truly want to make this project perfect--not just for the end-of-course grade and AICE credit, but also for the satisfaction and pride that I feel when I work on this magazine or when I think that my unique concept could be made into a reality. I'm thinking that I should completely re-do the entire Table of Contents and just change a few things on the cover. As for the spread, I'm thinking of rewriting the article and changing the topic--I'd write about it on a different blog post more in detail. I hope everything works out and ends up as perfect as humanly possible for my standards and limitations.

Front Page: Table of Contents: Spread:

So, today I met up with my focus group and further reviewed and critiqued deeper than the first time and here's what I was told: change the saturation of your pictures to make them brighter; edit your content a bit more so that it fits the vibe of the magazine better change the placement of the captions in the TOC and check grammar (on the left) consider making the page numbers red (TOC) possibly change the picture you used on the left of the TOC--something brighter and that screams music and Latin more put a low-opacity box for your captions (spread)--maybe make them the same pink as the title of the article put the "Article by" on the left, right above the article itself proofread I'm going to take all of these comments into account and see how it goes.

Today, I got some really helpful advice from a dear senior friend of mine who knows a fair amount about this kind of stuff. This is what she said: "The magazine's cover needs to be checked for font sizes. Use real a magazine as a reference but the hierarchy is very lopsided. The fonts are too large and competing with the title. Try making the table of contents' numbers the same red as the box to make them stand out more. And the title on the cover should be larger (think about Vogue or Rolling Stones)." I will be applying these comments to my next edits, so stay tuned!

Today I asked my AICE Media Studies teacher if I could present my first draft to my project to the class to get their feedback and she allowed me to. I was really nervous while presenting because I kept doubting my work and rethinking everything and already started planning on things I should change. Here's their commentary: For the most part, everyone liked the cover but just pointed out that the smaller text was kind of hard to read and that the "The Winter Issue" at the bottom was unnecessary. They also said that the Table of Contents didn't really seem to fit in well with the rest; someone called it "book-ish," saying that it looks more like a book's contents spread rather than a magazine's. They also reminded me that it would be much better if I added the different sections' titles, as well as of the fact that I need the full spread of the TOC. In terms of the spread, everyone seemed to really like it. They just pointed...