Mid Term Submission

Mid Term Magazine Submission

Cover Production:

I chose the title: Muscle Magazine to show readers that this magazine is about muscle, fitness, and health. The target audience this magazine is trying to interest is the average to intermediate gym-goer, and by having a simple name like Muscle Magazine, it best attracts that audience.
I wanted the title, "Muscle Magazine" the be slightly covered by the person in the picture's head. I learned that this required Photoshop to do, which I had no experience in. Luckily, Aaron, a friend that sat near me, taught me how to make the picture slightly cover the title and then reinsert the picture into the magazine. He also taught me how to format the picture so it sat vertically, instead of horizontally, and I finished up by making that picture fit into the border.
I had one universal font for the whole cover page, Haettenschweiler, because I felt this font invites more people to read the magazine over any other one, because the goal is to get the most amount of people to buy it. I have, however, changed up the sizes of the font. Using the Men's Health cover as inspiration, I made the words that I thought would interest readers more bigger, like MuscleMan, and I made less interesting words smaller, like the subcategories of Diet and Gear. This helps to make the magazine more visually appealing as well as sub-communicate the authenticity of the magazine, in replacing the one size text, with several, different sizes.
I wanted the background of the cover not to be one solid color, so I went with a gold-gradient style, and I feel like that makes the magazine stand out to potential buyers. I chose a picture of Jon with his arms crossed to be the cover photo because using the rule of thirds it shows him and the workout room, so it implies that he works out and the whole magazine is about fitness.
I decided not work on anything too special with the 25 year anniversary- it would be too time consuming- so I made sure the reader could see it on the magazine cover, and they would flip to the 11 page article to celebrate it. I included the bar scanner, and also the magazines website, (MuscleMag.com), and publish date, (December 2018), to add more depth to it. Finally I added Jon's name with arrows pointing it to his picture, to tell the reader who is on the cover.
Overall I feel the cover page represents my original intentions and vision for the magazine theme and style.

Table of Contents Production:

 I adapted the horizontal bar at the bottom of the page showing the page number, issue of the magazine, and magazine title for my own magazine. I also took the 3 color concept and applied it for my magazine. The 3 prevalent colors I chose for the table of contents and most likely will be using for the cover page are white, black, and gold. I feel gold exhibits subconsciously to the reader a commanding and trustworthy tone that is able to attract a reader into buying and/or reading the magazine. I also borrowed the section-based format from this magazine as I've seen it was present in several other magazine table of contents.

I decided not to do anything special on the table of contents for the 25 year special except for including a box that says it... I want to focus my time on other aspects of the magazine and not do it because creating 2 original magazine covers is going to eat up time with the deadline coming up soon.

A problem that arose because of this however, was the extra space on my table of contents. I solved this by increasing font size and included text boxes which say featuring interviews/tips/form, etc, to fill up the patch of extra space.

I included all of the articles in the table of contents because I want this to be more of a reference for the reader to make sure they can find the specific articles they're looking for. This format works because I feel it remains equally informative and visually appealing, following my initial goal. 

I have two special categories in the magazine- 25 year anniversary and special interviews and tips from some of the experts I've shot, which have many years experience with bodybuilding and weightlifting. I included these categories so the reader would be more interested/likely to read an article they might have not considered before.

Choosing the photos was tough. we shot so many variants of exercises, that I knew I wouldn't be able to include them all. I decided on fading three pictures together, making it look like a band on top of the magazine table of contents. I feel the photos I chose connect with the target audience (average gym-goer), as they are basic exercises that everyone should be familiar with.

I used three different fonts with this table of contents. The first font, (Rockwell Extra Bold) was used with the title Muscle Magazine (48) and Contents (28)... I feel it size and design make it the first thing the reader sees when flipping to the page, which is why I used it. The second font,(Haettenschweiler at 36) was used with the subheadings. I've noticed in the fitness magazines I researched, most of them had this style of font which seems universal with many magazine headings. For this reason, I used it so the reader can associate this magazine with other fitness pieces. The third font I used (Copperplate Gothic Bold 14) was with the article name and page number, as well as the publish date, magazine name, and table of contents page number at the bottom. I feel like this font went with the overall disciplined theme i'm trying to portray in the format of my magazine.

Article Production:

I wanted the article to be as easy to follow as possible.
For that reason, I used the basic, Franklin Gothic Demi Cond text font for most of the article. The other font I used was Haettenschweiler in the section title, "Gym" and workout sections, "warmup, workout, and wrap-up", I used it to stay consistent with the other magazine pages and to exhibit the fitness theme that this font best portrays.
I took the actual workout name, "broad back", from an old workout that I created, and after adding in some new exercises, I rebuilt it into a functional workout, that tells the reader exactly what and how to do it and what muscles are being worked. I used the back workout over all my other workouts I had created  (quad, chest, etc.), because I felt that this workout would contribute most to the reader as it was the most descriptive over my others.
I used a quote from Jon that I got after asking him for some tips over snap chat, and I put that on the first page of the article, (34), like stated in the Table of Contents. The next page, had a verification for Jon, as it told the readers who he was and why he can be trusted as an expert.
The pictures I ended up using in the article were picked very selectively out of the photo shoot. After realizing I couldn't fit all of my exercises into the article, I had to leave out some good pictures that I was originally going to use. There were several pictures of the person doing the same action, but I had to choose the one that had the most muscles showing. Finally, I had to organize the pictures in the article. I had to move around the text boxes and pictures a lot to find a place where they fit good orderly, (because the workout is step-by-step), and as visually appealing as possible. This resulted in my having to crop a lot out of each picture, and having to have most of them the same proportion. I added a black border and shadow effect to help the pictures pop out of the white background they are in.
The layout of the directions for the lifts were formatted with the pictures, some of the pictures were under the directions, and others were to the right. This made it so I could include all of the pictures and words that I did in the article.
Last, I signed the article, (put my name next to the article title), and copy and pasted the horizontal bar from the table of contents, which separated the article from the issue publication date and magazine title. I updated the page numbers to 34 and 35, to follow the table of contents correctly.
I feel like the article production went smoothly and the finished piece could be in an actual magazine.