Hannah spent her first week of her final major project conducting background research and creating a pre-proposal. She researched four influencers - photographer Annie Leibovitz, mental health charity Mind, feminist activist Jameela Jamil, and journalist Gloria Steinem. This helped provide context and inspiration for her project creating a feminism/mental wellbeing fanzine. Hannah also analyzed existing fanzines on Issuu to help shape her own product. She finished the week having laid good groundwork through background research and initial planning in her pre-proposal.

1. Hannah McNeill
Production Diaries
Week 1
28/01/20 For my first week of my Final Major Project I created a short plan containing a
bullet point list of what I needed to successfully complete in the first week; I needed to
complete my proposal and pre-proposal, my aim was also to conduct research on at least 4
influencers that I can use as context and background knowledge related to my project, to give
me a wider understanding of the topics I am including. I spent my first day of my Final Major
Project by creating my pre-proposal. The first proposal I began writing was just a draft
proposal and a way for me to first properly engage with the project, allowing me to put
together my ideas and discover where I wanted to go with my project. Writing and planning
my pre-proposal brought me a lot of clarity because it gave me the opportunity to see my
ideas and to understand why I wanted to create my project and why it was important to me. I
began by briefly explaining my idea in less than 20 words to get a clear idea of what I wanted
to do. Then I explained why I decided to make it and what made the project important to me.
There are multiple different reasons why this project is important to me and by writing them
down and seeing them on paper it gave me the ability to really understand why I wanted to
create a feminism/mental wellbeing fanzine. I spent an hour completing my pre-proposal
explaining the small details and the thought process it took me to get to my final idea. I
included a range of different details because I knew that even if it was a first draft it was still
important because I would use this through my project to shape my final product. Through
my project some of my potential ideas might change and therefore in my evaluation I will be
able to look back and compare my first ideas with my final project and be able to explain
why I changed my mind.
29/01/20 My second day of pre-production was spent researching different influencers to use
as my context/background research. I decided to use my time most efficiently I needed to
plan what influencers I was going to research and how it would help me further on in my
project. I looked at my idea for my end product and after evaluating what skills/topics I
needed to learn about I chose four different influencers. For my research, I planned on
including more influencers but I thought I would start with four. The first person I researched
was a photographer whose work is very established and a personal favourite of mine. I have
always loved her work and found her photographs emotive and moving. Photographer Annie
Leibovitz. I thought it would be extremely useful to research a photographer for my project
because a massive part of the fanzine will feature photography and in order to create effective
photos and conduct efficient photoshoots I need to learn about photography. I research
Leibovitz in detail finding information about her past personal life and also her career. The
information I found was very insightful and has already inspired me with different ways I can
conduct my own photoshoots in the production stages. During researching Leibovitz I made
sure that I created a bibliography of all the websites I used, using Neil’s Toolbox. This means
that if I need to quote my research or I need to find the website I found information from I
can go to the bibliography, saving time.

2. I then decided that for my second influencer I needed to widen my knowledge on mental
health awareness in the media. So, I researched mental health celebrity ambassadors and
discovered the charity Mind. I had already heard of the charity and was aware of the work
that it does, however I didn’t know that it had multiple celebrity ambassadors, such as George
Ezra and Duke McKenzie. I then further researched the charity and the two celebrities.
Successfully furthering my knowledge on mental health which is integral to my project
because I want to include different articles/photoshoots about mental wellbeing. I also kept a
full bibliography addressing all the sources I used throughout the research.
30/01/20 After having researched two main influencers for my project I decided to take a
break from background research and started conducting marketing research. I began by
looking online at the Issuu.com publishing website where I can find thousands of different
magazines/fanzines all with different topics. So, I visited the website and search ‘mental
health fanzines’. I searched this because it is associated with the style that I want to create my
fanzine around. I found a fanzine created by the Art’s Student Union about mental wellbeing,
I flicked through the fanzine and saw that it contained an array of different and interesting
drawings and articles so decided it would be useful for me to analyse. I then planned different
qualities of the fanzine that I would analyse in order to find out as much as possible about the
magazine. I chose to analyse the; colour scheme, main focus, headline, typography, image,
target audience, layout.
After I had analyzed the fanzine in detail I moved onto analyzing another fanzine. This time I
decided to analyze a photography fanzine/magazine. On the Issuu website I discovered a
portfolio/fanzine from a photographer called Imdad Barbhuyan containing a range of
beautiful photography. After looking through her portfolio I decided to analyze her work
because I really admired her photography and thought they I could learn from her
photography skills. I analyzed the photos and then spoke about the colour scheme she applies
to her photos.
31/01/20 For the final day of my first pre-production week I finished off my
background/influencers work. I analyzed a feminist and actress ‘Jameela Jamil’. I researched
Jameela because she is known for her hosting and radio work but is also famous for being a
feminist and activist. I personally find her very inspirational and think she as a character is
very interesting. I researched her through different websites and articles and I also discovered
a book called ‘All feminists wear pink … and other lies’ where she has a short article
published which was extremely interesting to read and useful for my research. After I had
completed my research for Jameela Jamil I started researching a journalist/activist called
Gloria Steinem. I researched her and her journalism career and then also researched her
feminism/activism career in detail in this helped me because researching and writing about
her work inspired me and gave me a wider knowledge about people’s different experiences
and perspectives of feminism.

3. Week 2
04/02/20 To start the week, I finished my context work by researching a journalist, Bob
Woodward. Although I wasn’t planning on researching a journalist because I won’t be
including many written articles as my magazine will be primarily based on photography and
animation with short articles. However, I thought it was important to explore at least one
journalist in order to understand more about magazines. And in case I did decide to write a
long article I would know more about how to structure/write it. I don’t have a wide
knowledge of different journalists, so I used Google and looked through a few different
journalists and read information about them before deciding which was the most interesting
and useful to analyse. It was interesting to research Woodward as his work is extremely
impressive. After I had finished my research about Woodward I started making mood boards,
I thought this would be a good idea because so far I have done a lot of written information,
reading articles and books, therefore looking at visual elements was refreshing and also let m
link all the theories and research with visual aid helping me solidify what I had learnt.
Furthermore, mood boards are a good way of inspiring ideas. Then as I finished my work
from last week I could properly start my second week of my project started, I began a new
stage, I started conducting research, which includes primary, secondary and market
production. As it is only the first week out of four I have conducted all of this research yet
but I feel confident with the pace I am working at. The first aspect of my research was market
research, to analyze existing products so I can appreciate different features of products that
hopefully can inspire me and also shape my project. I looked through the website ISSUU to
find different fanzines to analyze, I thought it would be most useful to research a mental
wellbeing fanzine because in my context research it was more focused on feminism, therefore
I wanted to have an even knowledge of both topics, in order to make my fanzine as effective
as possible. after looking through a range of fanzines I decided to work with a fanzine called
‘Mental Wellbeing Zine’ by the Arts Student Union – London. I applied different marketing
aspects that I decided would be useful to evaluate; Colour scheme, Main focus, Headline,
Typography, Image, Target audience, Layout. I found it easier to plan subheadings to explore
before starting to write about the fanzine aimlessly.
05/02/20 My second day into research was then spent finalizing my research about Mental
Wellbeing Zine. I chose two double page spreads from the fanzine to scrutinize in detail, this
was very useful to my idea development because it gave me the opportunity to look further
into the aspects and qualities of the photos/animation and what they symbolized, which
helped me understand the fanzine more. Then, I finished the research by completing my
bibliography. Then I conducted more research about another fanzine. This time I stirred away
from the topics of the fanzine – mental wellbeing and feminism – and I decided to
concentrate on another important element, photography. I searched for photography
portfolios/fanzines. I found a product from Imdad Barbhuyan, a publisher who wasn’t famous
or even known, but just published her work to ISSUU. It was interesting researching a
product that wasn’t famous or well-known compared to the celebrities I had spent the past
week researching.

4. So, I analyzed her front cover and then one of her double page spreads. This was very
important to my project because it personally put me at a massive advantage looking at new,
unseen photographs, it allowed me to tear the photos apart explicitly.
06/02/20 After researching two fanzines earlier this week I decided to take a break from the
fanzine structure and started looking at other media products that I could look at that would
help influence my project. I searched ‘Feminist Theories’ into the search bar of Google,
hoping to find a theory that I could interpret and apply to my work, I discovered a research
journal from a Robert Jensen called ‘Men’s Lives and Feminist Theory’ I could only read the
opening page but it was very insightful. The article was about how feminism impacts men’s
lives about how feminism is an opportunity for men to connect with their emotions. This was
a very interesting article because it showed feminism from a positive male perspective, which
is sometimes rare. After taking a break from researching fanzines I decided to analyze one
last fanzine, I researched a fanzine about feminism because I thought it was of my best
interest for my product if I had a fanzine about the three main topics in my project in order to
have the most knowledge. I found a fanzine called Girl Crush and researched it in a lot of
detail, picking out the front cover and what the hidden meanings of the cover photo was,
uncovering what it represented, then talking about a poem in the fanzine and its relevance.
After finishing the research on the fanzine, I quickly wrote about feminism magazine front
covers. I wasn’t planning on researching front covers of feminism magazines however hen I
searched for feminism magazines I noticed a specific magazine that was named ‘feminist’ but
was the opposite, publishing suggestive images of women, which is not the meaning of
feminism at all. I wanted to write about it in my research because I felt like it was an
important aspect of feminism that is often ignored.
07/02/20 I finished primary research for the moment, I think I will go back to primary
research when I have more time in the next three weeks but after doing a high amount of
concentrated work for the last two weeks I thought it would be more effective and to my
advantage if I took a break from solid research about fanzines, feminism and mental
wellbeing. I thought it would be to my advantage because I knew that soon I would start to
get mental blocks and tired of the work, therefore making me un motivated. So, I started
conducting target audience research. Target audience research is a very important aspect of
research because the entire end product is dependent on how the audience receives it. The
key for the fanzine being successful is dependent on whether the audience have a preferred
reading towards it. I began by researching the two main topics separately. I thought this was
the most efficient way because the two topics are so different so to apply the same basic
target audience to them both wouldn’t have been accurate or reliable for my project. So, I
started analyzing mental wellbeing, talking about the demographics, age, location, gender. I
looked at different websites in order to acquire a range of facts and figures so that I could
compare the statistics to make sure they were correct. I then completed the same research on
feminism. After talking about the target audience about a feminism audience I then decided
to talk about the target age group of my target audience, taking figures from different
websites. I also researched advertising and what social media platforms my target audience
would be interested in. Developing my ideas and knowledge about my audience.
08/02/20 Finally, on Saturday I created a survey to find more information about my target
audience. I have created surveys in past projects and they have been extremely useful to my

5. project, giving me an insight about my audience and what I can do through my final product
to appeal to that audience. Here are the questions I included in my survey:
I sent the link to the survey to three classes in college who are studying the same course as
me so hopefully people will take it seriously and not answer with jokes. However, the
potential ages of the people answering could be quite young so the answers could be
immature. I also asked my friends and family to complete the survey in order to introduce
range in age and profession. I will check the website on Tuesday so I can wait till I have a
few responses so I can compare them.
Still need to write about:
Photojournalism
Feminist don’t wear pink
International women’s day
Key questions
What have you been working on this week?
What have you learned from your research so far? How will that influence your project?
What else do you think you need to look at in your research?
What problems have occurred during this week of research?
What type of research has been mostly useful so far?
What problems might you face in your second week of research?