Final Submission

Creative Critical Reflection

https://prezi.com/p/rxwnfnmrwnhf/

3rd Quarter Submission

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.

Distribution Research2

The magazine Sports Illustrated, is one of the most popular sports magazines in America. The distribution of the magazine digitally is all done on the company's website. On their website the reader can pay for either a one or two year all-access subscription that provides the buyer with both print and digital versions of each issue. The print versions are mailed to the subscriber. For the one year subscription there is thirty-nine total issues, therefore with the two year all-access subscription you will receive a total of seventy-eight issues of Sports Illustrated magazine. The one year subscription costs a total of $39, so $1 per issue. The two year subscription costs a total of $49, which is only 63 cents for every issue. The two year deal also includes a jacket and T-shirt fir your favorite NFL team.

Distribution Research

For a magazine the traditional distribution model starts with the publisher finding a national distributors which delivers the product to a wholesaler who then distributes the magazines to places like stores, and newsstands. It is most common that magazine publishers utilize truck drivers to deliver their product to wholesalers. 

Revisions

On my cover page on of the changes I've made is that I have moved the title upward on the page. This needed to be fixed because it was much harder to see the title of the magazine while it was over the scoreboard and it would be much easier to see the text while it was in the sky. I have also put more space between the titles of each article, because before they were very clustered and didn't have any space between.

Before

After

Planning Interviews2

Recently I interviewed Mac Mitchell, who is a three-sport athlete at Sarasota High School. The sports he participates in include: football, wrestling, and weightlifting. Of the three sports he spends puts most of his time and effort towards football. Some of the questions I will ask him include:

• Does being in three sports help you with football?
• How does it?/ Why not?
• Which of the two others benefits you the most?
• What aspects of football does it benefit?
• How long have you participated in each sport?
• Why did you decide to do wrestling and weigthlifting
• Is there any ways that either sport negatively effects you on the football field

Target Audience Research 3

For many major sports magazines it is common to include a popular athlete(s) on the cover of issue. One of the magazines that commonly uses this technique is a basketball magazine known as SLAM. The magazine features some of basketball's most popular figures on every issue's cover. For example, last year they included former Celtics point guard, Isaiah Thomas. This was due to the stellar season and rise in popularity. This technique is effective because the athletes featured on the cover usually have large fan-bases, which makes people who follow the athlete want to buy the magazine.

Super Bowl Ads

The most popular advertising technique for all ads is featuring celebrities. Companies that used this technique can include Doritos(Peter Dinklage), Mt. Dew(Morgan Freeman), and M&Ms(Danny Devito). The reason this is a common technique used by advertisers is that the company or brand can gain popularity through the popularity of the celebrity that is featured in the advertisement.

Another common technique used during Super Bowl commercials is the placement of products or logos. Advertisers use this technique by keeping the company or brand's logo with the entertaining part of commercial. For example, in the rap battle commercial for Mt. Dew Ice and Doritos, each brands logo was placed next to whatever celebrity was rapping. This technique makes sure that the viewer actually takes in some information about the product rather than just thinking about how entertaining the commercial was. The reason this technique is used so much is because it keeps the focus on the product so people don't only put focus towards the commercial itself.

In many company's Super Bowl advertisements, they associated themselves with something like a mascot. One example of a brand using this technique is Mt. Dew Kickstart. The mascot used in their commercial was called 'puppy-monkey baby'. This eventually became very popular across the entire internet. The reason this technique is so commonly used is that it provides a way for viewers to remember the advertisement and the product is displays. For example, in the rap battle commercial for Mt. Dew Ice and Doritos, each brands logo was placed next to whatever celebrity was rapping.

Magazine Cover Template

On the cover of my magazine there is descriptions for four articles, along with a picture from the football field, and the title of the magazine. The articles included on the front have the: title, page number, and a brief description of what the article is about. For the magazine title I used a different font and color than I did for the article titles and it is much larger. I also made sure that it was easy to notice what the featured article was by making the fonts for Benefiting Each Other larger than the other three.

 A problem that I ran into while making the cover was making sure the fonts were legible. At fist I had all of the text on the cover in black which was difficult to see with all the grass in the background. This was easy to overcome because all I had to do was mess around with different colors in order to see what the best fit was. Eventually I decided that white as the best color for the text on the field and kept the title in black to create diversity in the fonts.

Target Audience Research2

Another magazine that reaches out to both athletes and sports fans is, ESPN the Magazine. Like Sports Illustrated, ESPN uses social media for advertising and has multiple Social media accounts. Another way that ESPN reaches their target audience is through commercials. For example, in a commercial for one of the magazines first issues, they released a commercial featuring NBA stars, Stephon Marbury, and Kevin Garnett. Also, ESPN usually tries to make these commercials very comedic in order to keep the audience engaged with the commercial. This technique is very effective because of the large audience that ESPN has on television.

Target Audience Research

Through my research I have found that the magazine Sports Illustrated reaches out to sports enthusiasts of all ages, which is similar to my magazine's target audience. The magazine has used social media as one of their main sources for marketing. The company has accounts on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, because these are three of the most popular social media websites. On these page SI will often make posts telling followers about a new or upcoming issue along with a link to purchase the issue, or a subscription. The pages will also feature popular athletes in order to persuade followers to subscribe.

https://twitter.com/SInow?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Photoshoot

The pictures from wrestling rooms will be used for both my article and the table of contents. The picture of the football field is going to be used as the cover photo, and the picture from Iowa State University's weight room will be put somewhere on the table of contents to go with another article. Today I plan to do a photo-shoot on the basketball court and the track.

Table of Contents

I based the page numbers for articles on the pages in my flat plan. I made sure that the articles included on the front page were at least three pages or longer. The pictures I took were from the football field and Iowa State University's training facility. The picture of the football field goes along with the article Turf vs. Grass, The wrestling room matches up with Weighing in, and the weight room goes with Why Lift. For the articles that aren't actually seen in my project I just made up names.

Planning-Flat Plan

After looking at other flat plans I decided to put an ad or two between each article. If an article takes up at least three pages I tried to put an ad in between some of the pages. The heading pages are just the title pages for the articles. The only thing left to do is make up titles for the articles in the table of contents.

Front Cover	Table of contents	Ad	Heading	Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Ad
Ad	Article	Article	Ad	Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Article
Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Ad	Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article
Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Article	Ad	Ad	Heading	Article
Article	Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Ad
Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Ad	Article	Ad	Heading	Article
Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Ad	Article	Article	Ad	Heading
Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Ad	Article	Heading	Article	Ad
Article	Article	Ad	Heading	Article	Article	Heading	Article	Ad	Back Cover