Karla Perez

I finished the other half!! And thankfully before the year ended. Merry Christmas! At first, I wasn't going to put the image at the bottom left, but I decided to just do it .

As I sat down to make the template for the spread, I realized that it came out exactly how I envisioned it, so the only other thing I did was mess around with the pictures and colors. The very last one is the one I like the most. As you can see, for today I decided to only do the first half of the spread so I could get a general idea of what I wanted. Merry Christmas Eve, by the way!

This week was dedicated to the spread. I've been putting it off for some time but since Winter Break is coming up soon I wanted to get it done as soon as possible to rest during the little vacation. I will keep working next week on the spread but this time design-wise. I feel like I've constructed over these past weeks a good idea of what I want the spread to look like, so we'll see how it turns out.

Today I'm sitting down to write this article. At least for now, I will only write about one topic from one of my last post which is "The Origin of Our Salsa Roots," so here goes nothing. Latinx folks are known for a few stereotypical things—being loud, partying hard, dancing. While sometimes these stereotypes can be harmful, most people prefer to fully embrace them, along with their culture and roots. Part of being Hispanic or Latinx lies in knowing about music and dances and being able to move to any possible rhythm thrown at you, but even with our vast knowledge on these topics, most of the time we don’t know the history behind them. Salsa is one of the most famous dances in Latin culture; throughout all its years, it has managed to prevail and expand further than South and Central America—it ya managed to reach places where the population’s national language isn’t even Spanish. The dance originates from Cuba in the early 1900s. Before the new style emerged, Cuba ...

I've written articles non-stop for these past two years. I'm in the Journalism strand of my school, so it's required of me to write articles practically every other day, but it's all for a newspaper. I've never written for a magazine and thus, I decided to do a bit of research before I decide to tackle the writing portion of my full spread. I found out that a magazine's article can range from 500 words to a typical New Yorker article (several pages), and that it's up to the creator to dictate such things. Personally, I feel like people mainly read or even just pick up music magazines to flip through the pages with pretty colors and get song or artist recommendations. So, I believe that an article on the shorter end will be perfect and capture the reader's attention for however long it lasts. Unlike typical newspaper articles, magazine articles don't start with a lede (the 5 W's: who, what, where, when and why--and sometimes how); rather, th...

Today I woke up and felt like it was the perfect day to just get the table of contents over with (at least for now), so here are my two drafts: The only difference between them is the amount of text and a slight difference in contents. We'll see what my friends say about it...

It was a week full of commotion; my school work has started to interfere and leave me with little to no time every day to work on this project, but I'll somehow manage. This was a table of contents week and I feel like I did well but not well enough on my drafts. I guess I'll have to keep working harder.

In order to fully finish my table of contents, I realized that I had to decide what will go in it, because despite the fact that I will only be creating one spread of the magazine, the whole product will have several things, so I decided to brainstorm and come up with different ideas in these following sections: Features -  Women Empowerment Through Music (Becky G, Natalie Natasha, Srta Dayana, etc.): an article on how several female artists are using their art (music) to empower women--with topics of breakups, sensuality, being unapologetic and more in their songs. - The Origin of Our Salsa Roots Opinion Pieces -  Reggaeton Article: an article either on whether listening to reggaeton is good or bad (the stuff it's associated with and whether it makes you "less cultured," etc.) or an article on how toxic reggaeton is (the toxic masculinity, degradation of women, etc.) - Why Pitbull will never run out of style?: what it means for him to have gotten the "Mr 305...

Today I had some sort of epiphany and just decided to let my creativity flow and create and here's the outcome: I feel like one of these might be the one...

Today I only messed with this specific template but just shuffled pictures around. I'm not yet quite sure how I feel about them.

Today I started to mess around with a few ideas and honestly didn't like any of them but I'm posting them for the sake of keeping track of my progress. They all look yearbook-y and I feel like that's partially because I'm in the Journalism strand of my school, so I'm mainly used to the tables of contents looking like this (despite having done my research). I'll keep working on it for tomorrow and try to improve.

This week was rather productive and I surprisingly had no issues. I think I managed to get a good draft of what my cover is going to look like as well as an idea for how I want my table of contents to look. I honestly am incredibly proud of myself for the outcome of the cover but am still debating on a few things such as the "The Winter Issue" at the bottom left. I'll show my artsy friends and ask for feedback!

Before this week ends, I wanted to start off with researching a bit on tables of contents and how they're usually designed (specifically in music magazines), so here goes nothing. I found this table of content that I liked but although it's from a music magazine, I feel like it doesn't fit my product's style so I kept researching. ALL OF THE FOLLOWING ARE SCREENSHOTS FROM THE ISSU WEBSITE!! Rhythms Magazine: I really liked this spread but it felt a bit too text-heavy for my style. New Noise Magazine: This one looks great but it's for exactly the type of magazine it is: a punk rock magazine. Music Legends Magazine: This one was the one I liked most to be honest. It demands your attention but is still soft and simple too look at; it's not so hard on the eyes. Under City Lights Magazine: This one feels rather empty to me but it's all a matter of preference. Tastemakers Magazine: I really like the idea of having a pictur...

Today I'm going to be editing the picture a bit to bring out the colors a bit more and rotate the image to make it look straight. I will also be taught how to put the letters behind the woman by a friend of mine on an app called PicsArt. I'm a bit worried about using it because it's only available on phones so it will be a bit difficult (I don't have Photoshop).

After going out yesterday to take pictures, I decided to start working on more first drafts for the cover and here they are: I started this process with the idea that I would put the title at the top left corner of the magazine but realized that it looked weirdly place, so I started messing around with placement. I then started experimenting with the classic center title, but this time I gave the title's letters like a border (which kinda looks like Rolling Stone's now that I think about it) to make the letters stand out, especially in front of a red background. I'm thinking that this picture might be the one and that I'll have to learn how to edit the words behind the woman. This is another idea I played with--following the same concept of a bordered, centric title--but using another picture. Here's a similar picture but without the border for the title... it looks off. This is another completely different idea that I considered b...

Today I decided to go on the hunt for cover pictures, so as a true Miamian (person from Miami), I went to Calle Ocho (one of the most famous and tourist-attracting places in Florida full of Latin stuff) and began my quest. Most of these (if not all) will not end up using in my magazine but I thought it would be fun to share the beautiful Miami with you guys anyway. Enjoy! P.S. I think I got the perfect picture for my cover.