Creative Critical Reflection

  1) How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? 

We’ve all seen the typical home décor magazine. The beautifully decorated house with the perfect lighting, the charming furniture and the eye-capturing color schemes. We’ve seen the fashionable celebrity featured on the front page smiling brightly from the living room or patio. We’ve read the teaser articles on the cover; “Here Comes Summer! Quick and Easy Tips for Your Outdoor Get-Togethers!” Its conventual, expected, customary. Anyone who is looking to renovate, restyle, add or make changes to their home knows exactly what magazine to buy. You’ve probably seen it on your mother’s bedside table. But not your father’s, this magazine is directed solely at the average upper-middle class American woman. 

Then there is your typical pets' magazine. Depending on the kind you buy you might see a picture of an adorable puppy or kitten on the cover below the large bold masthead. There's big bold typography and teasers shouting at you, “Adopt Me!” or “The Best Beds, Coats and Toys.” The target audience is animal lovers everywhere. Age? Race? Gender? It’s all irrelevant here because this magazine is attracting all pet owners. But where not just talking your average American family adopting a dog. Where talking your neighbor across the street with 12 cats, your friend who sees a dog and drops everything just to pet it, your coworker who won't stop talking about their bearded dragons and your younger brother who has three snakes! Obsessive dog, cat, rodent, and reptile people can’t keep themselves from buying a magazine that features their favorite animal right there on the cover. 

Then there is my magazine. Something that challenges both traditional publications. When creating my project, I took two successful types of magazines, (home décor and pets) and combined them to make Pet Palace Magazine which focuses on designing and creating enclosures for all types of pets. The magazine features how to build enclosures for the crafter people and design ideas for those who’d rather leave the constructing to someone else. Despite the concept being a mixture of two magazines, it stays true to some important aspects of each. For example, similar to a home décor magazine, Pet Palace has articles about design and color schemes, but they are directed at animal enclosures instead of houses. While Better Homes and Gardens might have a story on summer patio furniture, pet's palace would feature an article on summer doghouse colors. However, I did not put any celebrities or models in the pictures of my magazine. If I were to keep with the popular convention of having a celebrity or model posing on the cover, it would take the attention away from the entire concept of creativity, building, and love for your pet. Although I don’t see it outside the relm of possibilities in future issues. Another choice I made was to be sure that the enclosure was directly on the cover, similar to how the magazine Better Homes and Gardens always has the staged room on the cover. I wanted to make it clear that this magazine included designing and building ideas for animal enclosures and not just a typical pet's magazine. The content page was what resembled Better Homes and Gardens the most. I was a really big fan of how they placed the images next to the text. I loved how clean and professional it looked. I also loved the variety of articles they incorporated because it encourages people to buy the magazine. Ive also noticed the images on the content page always have the same color scheme, which really makes the magazine more appealing to look at. In my own content page, I placed the images in the same fashion and also included several articles with descriptions to look at. I also added a slightly blue filter over both pictures so that they would resemble each other and match the typography color.  

 My magazine also incorporated some conventions in classic pet magazines. For inspiration I looked at the Modern dog Magazine and Cat Fancy magazine. One of the major things I used from each magazine was putting a picture of an animal front and center on the cover which appeals to animal lovers. In every issue of Cat fancy magazine, there is a picture of a cat on the cover, in my magazine the animal on the cover will very each issue, this issue it was a turtle. I also added teaser articles on the cover relating to animals like typical pet magazines although mine are slightly different. For example, a modern dog teaser article is, “The Best Breeds for Everything!” and Pet Palace has a teaser articles like, How to Build: Dog Houses, Hamster optical courses, Cat Scratchers and more!” The difference being that Pet Palace’s major focus is on enclosures for pets rather than the actual pet themselves. 

Clearly, Pet Palace magazine uses several conventions from both types of magazines but challenges the conventions in the way that it is a combination of the two. 

As, for social groups and issues, this magazine does not really address either. In future issues, the door could be open to discussion about the conditions in animal shelters and pet stores. There could be an article on whether or not their needs are being met and the ethical issues with keeping an animal in bad conditions. But currently my magazine does not really address any social problems but rather steers clear of it in order to attract all types of pet owners to the magazine. 

2)  How does your product engaged with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? 

 

The productThe concept works seeing as over 84.9 million or 67% of American households own at least one kind of pet (according to a study done Feb. 2nd, 2021)

 

3) How did your production skills develop throughout this project? 

At the beginning of this project my production skills where at an all-time low. I would define the word production skills as; attention to detail, creative thinking and problem solving, communication, and experience with computer/software. When the project was first assigned, I struggled with all these things. I paid little to no attention to detail, my ideas where at best mediocre, my ability to communicate with peers was weak and my software/technology experience was minimal. But, over the course of making this project my production skills developed immensely and have been proven to be very useful in making my final tweaks. Although I grew stronger in some areas then others, I would say this project has impacted my production skills positively. 

One of the major reasons I didn’t pay very much attention to detail in the beginning of my project was because I was not entirely sure what I was supposed to be looking for. When it was time to create an outline of the project and we were told to draw out our ideas, this skill came into play most. In my head, an outline meant a very rough sketch of the actual thing, something that I didn’t need to spend much time or effort on. It wasn’t until later, after reading articles on the importance of story boarding that I realized how crucial it was to pay close attention to detail and to plan. After that spent more time and energy on really drawing and writing out each idea and trying to capture exactly what I was imaging on paper. This came in handy later when I was designing my pages on InDesign because I already had exactly what I wanted to do written out for me. I think this really helped me improve on my attention to detail. I also learned the importance of this after the peer review, where classmates made critiques on my magazine. Many of the critiques were made about small aesthetic things that I missed when making my original product. When I went back to fix it, I kept a closer eye on the specific things that I hadn't realized mattered before, for example alignment and off shades of colors in the text. In the future I think I'll be able to spot theses litter mistakes faster. 

The second skill improved in was creative thinking and problem solving. The biggest challenge with this project was trying to come up with an original concept. When the task of coming up with a magazine concept was first assigned, I rushed through without taking the time to really reflect and consider what my options where and weather of not the type of magazine I wanted to do would be possible. Obviously, this led to a lot of frustration when my concept was continuously shot down and I was forced to go back and revise my plans. Eventually I realized my concept lacked originality and that I needed to think outside the box. I ended up taking to completely different types of magazines and combining them to one making a fresh idea and a totally untapped market. Problem solving came in when I needed to start decorating different enclosure to photograph for my magazine. I was able to use things around the house to construct a little stage for a little turtle. This also led to my push to make the issue centered around DIY (Do It Yourself). By the end of it, I felt as though my creativity and problem-solving skills improved a lot from the beginning. 

Communicating with others was another production skill I had difficulties with at first. This skill was probably the one I gained the least improvement on, though there was improvement none the less. At the start of the project, I had no intention with working with anyone. I did not want to have to compromise my ideas and most of all I did not want to waste time trying to get comfortable with a stranger. But during one particular assignment it was mandatory to work with a team, and so I had to step out of my comfort zone. During the exercise I do think my ability to communicate and share ideas with others improved even though I spoke very little. However, during the peer review my communication skills were put to the test when the class was required to make give constructive criticism. I found that I had an easier time speaking up and being confident since I had already done something similar before. I still decided to work alone in the end, after working with others I decided I wasn’t totally opposed to the idea. Which was definitely a step up. 

Finally, the production skill of working well with technology and Software. This was a very agitating part of the process since the easiest way to become acquainted with different parts of the computer is to just play around on it until things begin to click. It was long and grueling, but eventually I started to figure things out and it became much similar, which is why I would say confidentially that I improved on my technology skills during the process of making this product. 

In all, when making this project my production skills developed significantly. I improved on all of the major aspects of productivity in my opinion. I learned the importance of paying attention to detail, I expended my way of thinking to allow for more creative ideas and solutions, I stepped outside of my comfort zone and used my communicated my opinions and lastly, I became more experienced with technology and computers. 

Question 4: How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project? 

I initially thought that because I chose the option to make a magazine rather than a film I would have to deal with less technology. I was very wrong. Capturing and editing the picture alone was a grueling process that took a lot of patience to do properly. When making this product I used two major three major pieces of technology. First, a cell phone which I used to take, crop, and add filters to pictures, second a computer which was used to upload my pictures, and finally the Software InDesign, which is what I used to put my finished product together. 

I used my cellphone to take pictures not only because it was the only camera I had, but also because it had readily available editing right there. My cell phone allowed me to increase and decrease the magnification, to crop pictures where I felt it was necessary and add filters over the photographs to make them more aesthetically pleasing. I used these features with both pictures on my content page. Before uploading them on to the computer I added a slight blue filter over them so that they would look better against the blue text I was using for the page. I also pre-cropped them because I already had an estimate of how I wanted the size to be. I also adjusted the brightness, contrast and shadows on several pictures using my phone as well to make the pictures have a more intense effect. 

My computer was very useful during this process. I used it for all my research and editing. I uploaded all pictures on there and then dropped them into InDesign which was the most important software/technology I used in the entire project. On InDesign was able to build my magazine by choosing font styles, colors and sizes and by rearranging the pictures. I used the add shape tool to put a circle on my cover so that it would draw attention to a specific teaser article. I added an outline around my masthead to make it pop and used the ink dropper tool to make the title color match the colors on the picture. The large section of fonts came in handy when I made my content page, because I wanted to be sure there was something to differentiate the titles from the descriptions besides just color. For my feature article, I used InDesign features to align my text properly and arrange my pictures.