3rd Quarter Submission

     For my final draft submission, I made a variety of changes to improve the professionalism, visual quality, and organization of my magazine issue. My first revision was editing the captions on the cover page to fill the empty space and make the title page more intriguing to consumers. This allows readers to immediately know what the topics of the articles are in the magazine. I also changed the title page to a more bold, professional font that will pair well with any cover page design. My final revision was to add branding to the bottom of our pages. It includes the issue date (month and year), magazine title, and page number. This allows readers to be able to see which issue the magazine is on any page of the product.

CCR Draft #4

   Throughout our project, we utilized various forms of technology and computer programming such as Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, Photoshop, editing in the iPhone 7 photos application, and research through Google Chrome. In Microsoft Publisher, we designed and laid out our cover page, TOC, and article page drafts. This software allowed us to edit the positioning, font styles, and overall layout of each page. In Microsoft Word, I setup my flat plan. This software allowed me to type in various text boxes and relocated the different titles or page labels within the flat plan. The software also allowed me to stay more organized than other methods.
   In Photoshop, we both used this app to not only edit the quality of our photos, but also start the beginning drafts of our cover pages, TOC's, and article pages before starting the next draft in Publisher. This method allowed us to professionally alter out photos and repeatedly readjust our beginning drafts. In the iPhone 7 photo application, we used simple photo editing techniques to increase the saturation and contrast in numerous photos to make them stand out more and look more visually appealing.
   Finally, in Google Chrome, we both used this search engine to perform extensive research and learn as much as we could about magazine layout, production, and distribution. This helped us do the best we could in all aspects of the project, especially distribution, which neither of us had much experience in. Overall, the assistance of technology incorporated in various aspects of the project helped us create an exceptional product.

CCR Draft #3

Throughout the creation of this product, both my partner and I improved our design skills, writing abilities, but most importantly our production skills. This was through lots of research about our genre topic and different production and distribution methods used by magazines similar to ours. Additionally, we both improved in our techniques used in creating the overall design of our cover page, table of contents, articles, and instructional sections within the articles. For example, after research of magazine companies such as Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, and HGTV Magazine, we discovered that the majority of their cover page designs used features such as having a professional font for their title, using different solid colored shapes behind their text captions to allow the text to stand out more. They also decided to utilize a cover photo that a central focal point that easily attracts viewers. Bright colors were also used to make the title page more appealing and eye catching. We incorporated all of these techniques in our title page and throughout our TOC and articles pages. In addition to research of similar products to our project, we were able to develop our production skills through trial and error, testing what we though looked the best, what didn't work, and how to fix it to make it look better or more professional. This was done a lot on our cover pages as we changed our cover photos, the color and font of our title name, article captions, and the layout of those captions as well. Overall, the use of extensive, educational research and trial and error allowed us not only to perfect the look of our cover pages, TOC's, and article pages but also to improve our production skills in this project area.

CCR Draft #2

     Our magazine is able to connect our target audience because it features a variety of articles that are enjoyable for artists of all skill levels. This means that regardless of one's experience in crafting, cooking, or gardening they should be able to understand the article or at least be interested in the topics. Additionally, we plan to create numerous social media pages. This will allow consumers to stay up to date with out project ideas and even allow them to further understand the crafting ideas. We could use websites such as Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube to create videos or step-by-step instructions to further explain our popular article topics. Also, the use of social media will allow users to be further exposed to our product and cause them to be more interested in our magazine. This will increase revenue.
     Some methods we could use for distribution of real paper products would be through mailing directly to subscribers' homes or on the shelf in various grocery stores and other shops. Additionally, working hard to increase the appeal of articles and photos featured on the cover pages of our products would attract more new customers and increase our number of subscribers. This would not only increase revenue overall, but also allow us to see what types of cover photos and article topics attract the most amount of consumers and which ones don't. Overall, our use of social media and intriguing article topics should attract and connect to the most consumers in our target audience.

CCR Draft #1

For our magazine project, we didn't originally intend to represent a certain social group or issue. We originally wanted to just create a fun-filled product that anyone could enjoy. However, we did end up creating a product that attracts a couple different groups of people. One of these types of consumers is artists, chefs, and gardeners who have a passion for the topics featured in our magazine. Our theme focuses mainly on creative home ideas, therefore angled towards people who enjoy that topic and are knowledgeable about the theme. Additionally, people who have time to enjoy our magazine are another audience group for our magazine. Therefore, another social group represented in our magazine is people who work from home or spend the majority of their day at home. Since there is a variety of projects and articles in our magazines that are about DIY crafting ideas, anyone who wants to pursue the suggestions in the articles should probably have enough time to do so. Many people who have a job that allows them to work at home, are full time parents, or are retired and have plenty of free time to do fun crafting ideas are the main type of people we consider our target audience. A final group of people we consider main consumers of our product are people who may not have experience with arts and crafts, cooking, or landscape decor but want to practice and learn more about it. Our magazine is great for this since we have a variety of types of crafting ideas throughout our magazine, many that are very simple and easy to understand. This means they are great for beginners or people of any skill-set. Overall, our magazine represents and targets a few different social groups, the main ones being people with a passion for our magazine theme, people with the time and effort to pursue arts and crafts, or anyone who wants to learn more through the articles in our magazine.

Distribution Research - Better Homes and Gardens

For this magazine's website main page, it has a similar theme and setup to Good Housekeeping and HGTV's websites as well. It has the same structure of having different layered sections containing different themes such as gardening, cooking, fashion, or celebrity gossip. For this magazine, however, it features much more cooking-related content such as easy home-cooked meals, different dessert recipes, and fun party snacks. The top of the page has a link with a large picture to a new page primarily featuring family craft and cooking ideas. Farther down, it has another section of popular dinner recipes, a section for personal fitness and yoga, another link to a page mainly about pasta dishes, and some other smaller featured pages about beauty products to keep with you at work, more lunch ideas, and home cleaning hacks. Overall, it contains a lot of cooking and food related articles but also features some stories about personal health, family, fashion, and beauty. This suggests that this company is aiming towards a target audience that enjoys cooking and spending time at home with family. It is also probably aiming towards an older age group since there is less celebrity and millennial-themed articles. Additionally, they are most likely angling towards a female audience since many of the fashion, fitness, and beauty articles were for women. Overall, it seems they have a pretty similar target audience as our magazine, but slightly different since we are more crafting based and most likely aiming towards a younger audience.

Distribution Research - Good Housekeeping

For this magazine, it features many different links on their website's homepage. These include large photos for their most popular articles, groups of links to smaller, similar articles, and tab options to switch between pages to view more content. The first articles to be featured are in a group and generally focus on fashion, celebrities, or shopping. Further down the page it displays larger photos about recent popular events which makes consumers want to click on the link to that page. There are three or four of their larger article links before another group of smaller articles. This next sections mainly features stories about news in the royal family. There is also another smaller section beneath that about movies, actors, and celebrity drama. Overall, the set-up and choice of articles to be featured on the main page show that this magazine is trying to project its product towards a certain audience. They are most likely aiming to attract female consumers who enjoy celebrity gossip and are probably home owners who would appreciate articles about home decor. Additionally, they may be trying to reach a target audience of millennials and people who would enjoy an easily to use and accessible website.