This weekly diary details a student's progress on a magazine production project over 6 weeks. In week 1, the student began writing articles. In week 2, the student designed the front page. In week 3, the student designed double page spreads reflecting different brands. In week 4, the student designed advertisements. In week 5, the student created a bold article using Virgil Abloh's color scheme. In week 6, the student felt the magazine was progressing well but was behind on writing articles.

1. WEEKLY DIARY

2. Designer Research
This week I have looked in to certain designers
such as Rob Janoff etc. I aimed to cover
generally who they are and what each artist had
achieved. I found this section fairly easy to do I
would say that the only issue I had was there
was some what limited information actually
available. Often only a brief wiki profile and
magazine article, sometimes it took abit of
digging to find facts.

3. Today I have carried on my designer research
and have enjoyed researching Virgil Abloh a
mens fashion designer. As a fashion designer he
is useful to research as he may be included in
my magazine. I tried to include various
information and images. I also watched a brief
youtube documentary explaining who he is.

4. Research
For my research I have looked in to various
magazines such as Proper and Mix Mag. I really
liked the styles of these two magazines which
made them fairly enjoyable to research I did
however run out of time for various sections so I
will be adding to my work later on. I thought I
did fairly well at annotating but need to put in
more detail in the powerpoint.

5. Over the last two days I have carried on my
research. I have looked in to who my target
audience is and who I should aim my magazine
towards. I have also researched production
techniques, I have watched various YouTube
videos. These have mainly been Photoshop
tutorials and I have listed the step by step
process for each of them.

6. Problem Solving
Problem solving I struggled a lot with initially as
I wasn’t sure what i was supposed to be writing
however this changed after I got some help.
After it was explained to me again I found this
powerpoint extremely easy and simple to do.

7. Since my last entry I have done extra work on
my problem solving as I now understand it a lot
better. I have picked potential problems and
explained solutions to them and what can be
done to avoid them in the first place. I began
with an initial list of problems and solutions and
then chose which ones to elaborate on.

8. Pre Production and Planning
This week I have planned my magazine I have
looked at various methods that I can use during
production such as looked at fonts, colour
sheets and basic layouts. I have then also looked
at what equipment, props, models I will need
and how much everything would cost. I slightly
struggled doing this as my project doesn’t need
a lot of props etc so some sections I felt were
too small.

9. This week I have created a mock up magazine
for my planning I think that I have prepared
some creative designs and practiced a lot of
techniques that I may use in production. Overall
I think that this is really well done, I have gained
a lot of experience to use. I have also wrote up
some potential articles that I may use in my real
magazine.

10. Weekly diary
Production

11. Weekly Reflection week 1
In my first week of production I have began writing
the content for my magazine as I have found this
the most difficult in previous projects. I have picked
the company's I want to write about in pre
production and done some research on them. I
already know a lot about the company's or topics I
am writing on however so a lot of it is my own
knowledge. I think I have struggled to stay focused
as I find writing content the most boring area of
making the magazine.

12. Weekly Reflection Week 2
This week I have began production for my magazine I
have created my front page. I have used a simple design
for this and kept to a simple colour scheme. I think that
using pink in the masthead with the pinks and whites of
the image worked very nicely. I have decided against
using article titles and subheadings as I think the name
and number gives off a very clean image. I have also
colour corrected the image to make it brighter and more
vibrant. I think I originally struggled with how big the
model should be however I decided to go with the full
image instead of zoomed in. I feel like the background
gives a nice urban look.

13. Weekly Reflection Week 3
This week I have been focusing on some article designs. Mainly double
page spreads. I have tried to design every page differently aiming to
reflect the brand or business through the background and images. I
initially found it difficult to think how I could represent these
companies but after researching them and looking at their sites I
started to get a feel of the brand image. For example Oi Polloi a
Manchester based fashion boutique, the theme is simplistic with a lot
of clean designs and almost quite hipsterish. I decided that a wooden
floor fits in nicely with the decor of the shop and used that as the
background. I then placed images of inside the shop along the bottom
and a large image of the outside leaving space for the text in between.
I may use white boxes to separate the text between the two pages. As
I final touch I took the company's logo to head the page but made
some slight alterations to make it stand out from the background
more.

14. Weekly Reflection Week 4
This week I have began working on
different adverts to use in my magazine.
I have been focusing on simplistic
designs to follow my genres theme of
powerful backgrounds and branding. For
example on this image I combined
different features of the companys logo,
slogan and magazine and aimed to
combine them in to one advertisement.
Some of the companys I am advertising
have a brand image to maintain a prime
example of this would be battenwear
the company is all about simplicity so I
have tried to keep this in check with my
design making small changes for the
biggest effect.

15. Weekly Reflection Week 5
During this week I have created some more of the
magazines articles, I have decided to be a lot bolder in
colour and focused on one of the top fashion icons Virgil
Abloh. I decided to use an orange and green colour
scheme as he often uses on his off white shoes. I have
tried to keep in elements of design that he himself uses
such as quotation marks and bold titles. I really like the
contrast of the orange and green colour scheme and it is
the bravest design in the magazine. I struggled to decide
on the gradient pattern I wanted to use however I think
the overlaying boxes and image gives very nice effect.

16. Weekly Reflection week 6
So far I like how my magazine is turning out I have
used various techniques in production and have
stayed true to basing my designs on each subject
and making every one unique. I think that I have
struggled in some aspects I am seriously behind on
writing the articles for my magazine which I am not
convinced I will be able to finish before the
deadline. However I have definitely become more
adventurous as the project has gone on and I have
learnt new skills.