Magazine Cover Tutorials

Good Morning and Happy Monday -

For today's blog I would like you to take a second and post both your tutorial and self-created magazine covers and discuss the important elements you learned about creating a magazine cover and the meaning behind the one you created.  Please be sure to respond to the following questions.  Don't hesitate to include any other thoughts along the way.

• What is the theme you have chosen for your magazine cover?  Who are you trying to attract?
• Discuss the different type styles you chose and how they go along with the photos, story titles and descriptions.  Do all the parts work together?  Was this a time consuming part of the design process?
• How is the readability of your cover? Can you read the type against the background? Is the type style readable? Are the sentences too long? Are the titles descriptive enough to make you know what the article is about? Does the type size signify the importance?
• Does the photo or photos support the theme? Does the photo catch your eye? Is it too busy or too simple?
• How is your effort and craftsmanship? You will need to be selecting, cutting, pasting and cropping. Does your cover look professionally neat?  What elements do you like most about your cover, which areas could use improvement?
• In regards to the layout, how well did you arrange all the elements? Is the type all lined up flush left, right, centered? Is the type over the picture or a background?  Did you add a banner with the issue date and cost? Does the layout make it easy to read or in looking at it again does it appear confusing?  Would you buy the magazine?
• Lastly, in the assignment write-up I noted that "magazine covers not only offer information about what’s inside a particular issue, they also provide significant cultural cues about social, political, economic, and medical trends. As both historical artifacts and marketing tools, magazine covers deserve closer study."  How and why would a magazine cover act as a historical artifact and/or a marketing tool and how are they important to our society over time? I will specifically be looking for a response to this question when I read your blog!

Thanks ... 

Preparing for our Visit to Santa Clara University

Good Morning -

For your project today, 2/2, please click on the following link: https://goo.gl/Z31v2p

Answer all of the questions on the form.  This will help you mentally prepare for your visit to Santa Clara University and make our time there as meaningful as possible!

Thank you, have a great day and see you on the block day!

Show Your Stuff!

Good Morning and Happy Monday!

Congratulations on completing your first self-created InDesign Document!  Today I need you to blog about this first experience.  First, lets post an image that shows what you were able to create using the InDesign Tools!  Then, take a moment and respond to the following questions:

1. Describe the Assignment.  What did you set out to do?
2. Describe what InDesign is to you.  What is your first impression of the program and what sort of work do you feel like you could do/accomplish with this tool?
3. Explain what aspects of this first InDesign Project was easy?  What was challenging?  Explain how you overcame the challenges.
4. Explain what you learned from this first InDesign assignment (feel free to also include what you have learned from the various Lynda.com videos we have watched).  Describe some of the most useful tools you have learned and/or how you went about creating your document with text and graphics.
5. What else do you want to learn and/or do you feel would help you in creating more complex, exciting, visually appealing documents in InDesign?