Draft 2

One of the ways my product engages with readers is by giving them the power to provide feedback to help make any changes that they would like to see in future issues of the magazine. One of the main feature of my product's website is the comment section. This is where subscribers have the ability to provide their opinion on any of the changes they would like to see made in future products. The readers also have a chance to discuss the magazine with each other. The comment section isn't the only way for consumers to provide their opinions, they can reach out through email or by sending a letter to the company's P.O. box.

Draft 3

Throughout this project there has been a large increase in my production skills which have made the project a much more pleasant experience. Some of these skills include: troubleshooting, speaking, and time management.

One of the production skills I was able to develop throughout this project was troubleshooting. I would constantly run into problems when creating my magazine, a major one of them being the cover picture. When I first started working on my cover page a problem I ran into was getting some of the pictures to fit the page so that the quality would be the same as the picture I took. I started experimenting with the size of the picture by changing the size on Excel, but this didn't seem to fix the problem. After multiple failed attempts I finally discovered that the way to fix the problem was to crop the photo on my phone because, unlike cropping on Excel, on my phone the quality of the pictures was not altered by the parts of the photo I had gotten rid of.

Another one of the skills that was well-developed during this project was speaking. I had to do a lot of talking with others when editing the magazine, doing interviews, or getting some feedback from others on changes I should make to the magazine. When editing my project I did a lot of talking with my partner Nick Saslow along with other people who have done this same project. Another instance that improved this skill was either scheduling, or doing interviews. I would have to talk with the person I was going t interview in order to find a good time for them, along with the questions I needed to ask them during the interview. Scheduling the interviews also falls into my time management skills.

Draft 4

During the production of my magazine I used various different software and hardware. For example, to get pictures for my pages I used the camera on my phone(Droid Turbo 2), the phone was also what I used to edit the photos before uploading the pictures to the computer. After I took the pictures I used G-Mail to email the images to myself in order to be able to upload them to a computer then put them in my magazine. I used G-Mail to upload photos because I have used the website for the same reason in the past and found it to be easier than carrying a flash drive, which includes the risk of forgetting the flash drive and delaying the magazine's production. Everything done on the magazine, whether it be: placing pictures, changing page colors, typing articles, making lists, placing titles, or editing fonts, was all done on Microsoft Excel. At first I had some troubles with the program despite being very familiar with it, but after taking some time to look through all of the tools I was able to become even more familiar with the software and made the production process much simpler.

Draft 1

Multiple conventions of magazine production were utilized during the making of my product. The first place these conventions are used in is the titles on each page. The use of a masthead for the title distinguishes this part from the rest of the cover which helps it catch the eyes of readers. In this case, to make the title stand out I gave it a different color than the rest of the cover page's text. Also, I gave the text a different font type, made the text much larger than any other, and place a bar beneath the title in order to underline the text. The use mastheads can also be seen on the titles of my two page article, and the table of contents. On theses pages I also used a different font than the rest of the page's text, and used size.

Another convention utilized by my product is the inclusion of images across the pages. The picture of the football field on the cover is meant to show the reader that my product's genre is sports. The cover picture can also catch the eyes of potential customers by making the page more pleasant to the eye. The images on the table of contents are placed next to articles that they are related to in some way. For instance, the article 'Why Lift?' has a picture Iowa State University's weight room, to show the reader that this is an article about weightlifting. On my two page article the pictures are meant to give the reader a visual of what a person, place, or thing looks like in real life.

One of the social groups that is well represented by my product is athletes at both the amateur, and professional levels. In my magazine there is multiple articles about sports at the professional level. For example, the article 'NFL Playoffs Review' talks about what athletes will be game changers for the 2018 NFL playoffs. As for amateur sports, my two page article 'Benefiting Each Other' is all about how high school athletes can improve their performance in one sport through being a multiple sport athlete. Not only does my product give proper representation to athletes, but it also does a very good job of making sure that sports fanatics have just as much representation as the athletes. Multiple articles in my magazine are specifically aimed towards fans. Such as, the article 'NBA mid-season MVP' which is a vote taken by basketball fans for which NBA player deserves to be named MVP after the season is already halfway through. Articles like this allows consumers who are sports fanatics to have some say in what goes on certain pages of the magazine they pay money for. Also on my products website there would be a comment section for readers to leave feedback that could help better my product, and for readers to discuss with each other the positives and negatives of recent issues. This is another way that readers will have the opportunity to use their opinions to help make the product more enjoyable for them.

Distribution Research 3

SKI Magazine only has one subscription option on there website. The subscription costs $10($1.67 per issue) for six total issues,  and lasts one year. This option also includes a 90 day risk free guarantee, meaning that if subscribers are upset with their subscription, then within the first 90 days of their payment they are able to cancel the subscription along with a full refund. Every two months the reader is mailed a new issue.