9/11/16: (Supervision Session)
-We had our first meeting with our supervisor.
-Discussed mediums, ideas, what makes a project practice led.
-Discussed what we aimed to find out for magazine content.
-We thought about target audience, who would read our magazine and why.
-Gained an understanding of content analysis and methodology.
-Discussed exploring practice based research and theoretical basis.
-Discussed why women behave in narcissistic ways and media portrayal in the magazine industry.
-Discussed audience studies.
-Discussed people picking up on traits such as posing in photographs for ‘selfies’ and how ‘selfie culture’ is popular in society.
-Discussed approaches, context, understanding theory.
-What we want to achieve within our project.
-We were shown examples of relevant magazines such as Logon.
-We expressed our areas of concern and how we were going to go about investigating and exploring different angles.
-Discussed discourse analysis and psychological analysis and gained an understanding of the concepts.
-Discussed different styles of research and decided on a consistent form of being informed by a psychoanalysis approach for our project because the project links to a psychological approach.
-We received feedback on our first proposal form that there was a little too much emphasis being placed on the project being a psychological study but easily resolved by talking about taking the ‘psychological slant’ of it.
-We were advised to resubmit our proposal form.
14/11/16: (Supervision Session)
-We need to communicate to an audience (young women) through a magazine.
-Explore the idea and deal with issues, make sense of our topic.
-Approaches, language, made up around an issue.
-Research idea, how and why work is created.
-The intent of doing the work, the outcome is to find something out.
-Deep thinking is required, level of research, intent of project.
-Methodology, conduct interviews with industry professionals to find out why and how identity is constructed through technology/social media.
-Whose interest is it in.
-Semiology; how images convey meaning.
-Magazines, social media, reveals to society the representation of a perfect female appearance.
-Are the issues of narcissism changing, how is beauty defined now, digital technology involved.
-An enhanced version of ourselves, think about questions to ask.
-Use quantitative data, focus groups, surveys.
-Has to be practice based.
-Do readings on the topic of social media and how people present themselves.
-Think and make something exhibition worthy that is visually appealing.
-Apply methods, reason for creating, decide on one question.
19/01/17: (Supervision Session)
-We checked if we need to take our own photos or if we could use brands for the magazine.
-They have to be topical to narcissism like skincare.
-We thought about the audience, not to limit women’s choices.
-Dove might fit but L’Oreal might not, holidays; woman in a bikini in different sizes, content analysis.
-Life stages, social demographic, understanding our context, really important for the essay, focus groups, do people find the articles interesting.
-Discussed demographic and marketing strategy.
-What are we trying to sell and to whom.
-Alternative publishing theory.
-Show understanding of alternative media production and why we are doing this.
-Advised to check out Magma at Charing Cross Corner, new magazines
ICA bookshop, alternative magazines for research.
-What are the codes and conventions for alternative publishing practice theory.
-What are the grids, using the right language, representation, sociology.
-Educated group of women, demographic, focus groups, ask the audience what they think at the beginning and halfway through.
-Discussed our ideas for our flat plan, structure all pages for the presentation including: working title, potential cover, articles, potential photographic article, number of pages.
-Magazine, grids, demographic.
-Everything in relation to our demographic.
-Write manifesto, what we are going for.
9/02/17: (Supervision Session)
–Came up with three attributes we intend for our magazine to represent; feminism, seriousness, connectivity.
-We were advised that ‘Narcissist’ was not a good name for the magazine as the whole magazine was not going to be purely about narcissism.
-Undertook a naming workshop linking relational words together to understand what we want to create.
-Does the name of the magazine sound feminist, serious or connected.
-Understood why we used this method to get us into a different space.
-Explored the tone of the voice, look, feel and personality for the magazine.
-Looked at other magazine bindings and researched grids and visually appealing magazine formats.
-Discussed the two segments of audience; target readers and advertisers.
-Started to learn how to use InDesign.
-Visited the printing shop to meet the team and discuss magazine styles and budgets and we were shown examples of paper types.
16/03/17: (Supervision Session)
–We received some positive and constructive feedback about our work regarding the type face in long quotes on separate pages.
-We need to pull quotes and differentiate between making writing bolder and light handed.
-We saw more examples of magazine publications with simple roman type faces.
-Gained an understanding of common tricks in publishing such as bold italicized quotes and putting quotes in separate sections.
-What are we trying to accumulate by having a circle of writing in the middle.
-There are rules in magazines such as two column grids, line separating, typography, spacing, we have to remove words for a pleasing aesthetic.
-Boxes, colour, text, paragraphs, switch hyphenations off for a beautiful visual appeal and spacing.
-If there are too many letters, change words to make them shorter but mean the same thing.
-Decide on if we want paragraph breaks or indenting breaks, a whole article starting with one big character in the same font, a fancy font.
-Start off with a quote in the same font.
-Decide on rules, we all use the same typeface, Garamond.
-Set rules to be consistent throughout the magazine for a better way of managing once established.
-Rewrite the editors letter to be tighter.
-What size are our pull quotes and why are we putting them centrally.
-Other magazines are trying to communicate that they want you to look here, then there.
-Writing style to be pleasing on the eye.
-Decide on how section is titled and what we do when it’s an article and when it’s an interview.
-Looked at other magazines to get a feel for them, the choices such as the quality of paper used, and different size lettering.
-Three column grids, pagination, graphic styling grids.
-Think about where we put our pictures in the section, it would be better to have it central.
-Think about what’s the most important, pictures and quotes.
-Everything has to be in a set of four pages to print, facing pages, no single pages.
-Link threads in text boxes, move graphics, populate all boxes, put in the articles and change it, learn the rules to master pages.
-Research more on how and why people use certain grids for magazines.
-Practice more, learning, looking, experimenting, trial things out to see if they work or not, ongoing attempt to get the magazine style right.
-We are undertaking iterative practice by repeating the same method throughout the magazine.
22/03/17: (Supervision Session)
-Discussed more magazine name ideas such as ‘Wyfe’ and ‘Miss Representation.’
-After naming research, we had to check nobody else had the name but they did.
-We came up with more names such as ‘Miss Portrayed’ and ‘Mirrored.’
-Now articles and interviews are completed, we need to communicate visually now we have collected words and show the design: art direction/copywrite.
-Think in terms of a visual editorial team such as the front, spine and back of the magazine.
-Focused on brand typeface, paper types, silver foiling, the design.
-Discussed the exhibition space such as having a plinth and the catalogue description of our project.
30/03/17: (Supervision Session)
-We met with the course programme leader to get some feedback on our magazine we had created so far using InDesign.
-Feedback included that the adverts chosen were appropriate and that the typeface and images used was also appropriate but we need more pictures.
-We needed a coherency between the front and back pages.
-We discussed the online version such as not using adverts.
4/04/17: (Supervision Session)
-We received article feedback regarding minor changes to make such as the titles.
-We showed more of our images we had taken in the photography studio.
-Was shown an image of Alfred Hitchcocks ‘The Birds’ to understand the power of visual images and instant communication and a reference to a reference.
-Discussed construction of our own imagery and that we cannot think of it as journalists, we need to show visuals that convey meaning in images.
-Advised to research front cover photos from ID magazine, Vice, Marmalade, Face, and Tank.
-We received some advice on our magazine regarding sizing, and that fonts can be smaller, and there can be more white space on the page to achieve a beautiful visual layout but overall our navigation on InDesign is good.
-We were shown an example of a graphic design students piece of work which had margins and smaller fonts on the page.
-We visited the Grayson Perry exhibition to look at design and visual ideas regarding structure and colour.
6/04/17: (Supervision Session)
-We showed our supervisor our group Pinterest board where we are collecting visual ideas and interesting finds for inspiration.
-We received some feedback that some of the pictures we had pinned to our board had too much of an obvious meaning.
-Pictures can have semiotic meaning through being black and white or in colour.
-Now the writing and articles have been edited and completed, we focused on the visual agenda.
-Our visual agenda will represent that there’s more to a woman than just her appearance, as modern magazines present women/models in magazines to be looked at purely for their appearance.
-We are going to use edited and cropped images we’ve taken of young women in order to never show their full face or body so that a photographed woman can never be judged purely on what she looks like.
-We will use a close-up of eyes to represent women being closely looked at.
-We will use close-up pictures of a part of a women’s face or body such as close-ups of bare skin or cellulite for example, to represent women being closely scrutinized for their appearance. (This can be a double page spread of a close-up image)
-We will never show a picture to be a full image of a woman, only a part of their face or body for front cover and pictures. (Excluding adverts)
-We conducted an audience study to clarify the magazine name. We asked 45 young women in total; 13 picked ‘Bad Wyfe’ and 32 chose ‘Miss Portrayed’ which finalized our decision.
25/04/17: (Supervision Session)
-Received feedback on Miss Portrayed magazine and was given advice on how to improve the front cover.
-Was shown an example of Cactus magazine where the magazine title and writing on the magazine on the front cover fit underneath.
-Advised that our magazine front cover must be impactful and have a visual appeal like Cactus as the audience do not have to look in different places to read, they just look/read by following one line.
-We should put Miss Portrayed, issue 1, feminist, serious and connected so it all fits together, we could also include a date.
-Advised that the shape of the woman on our front cover does not look like a woman’s body and could be a womanlier shape.
-The other option for the front cover is to put two of the collage eyes over the hands of the woman covering her face on our front cover image to give it more of a collage effect.
-We do not need a price on the magazine but we could have a barcode at the bottom of the back page.
-We need the same gap between the article title and where the article starts for all the magazine articles.
-We need to use leading on InDesign to have less of a gap between the lines of the quote.
-The different typefaces of the quote and the person’s name who quotes it works well and we could have those two typefaces for the front cover title.
-We need to bring the person’s name of the quote up the page more.
-Have smaller gaps between the ‘treat social media like a house party, if you wouldn’t have them in your house, don’t have them on your social media’ quote and try to fit more words on one line so it doesn’t look as long.
-Less words take up more space and feel more beautiful.
-The page with the interview can’t go as close to the bottom line as it is, the same spacing needs to be applied throughout the magazine.
-Have the same spacing for quotes throughout, we can leave more of a gap at the bottom of the page than the top, all quotes can go higher up.
-Image slice the ‘trapped’ picture to follow the theme of our images.
-We could use the same typeface we have saying Miss Portrayed at the bottom of every page for the Miss Portrayed front cover typeface so it’s the same.
-Received feedback for the online website version we created of Miss Portrayed.
-We could use the magazine front cover image on the website.
-We need a more impactful relevant header picture and an archive.
-We can have a ‘pretend’ next issue advertised on our website which needs to be something feminist, serious and connected to show where we are taking this.
-An example could be women and coffee, for some women in the world, women meet their friends for a coffee date, other women in the world are picking coffee beans.
-Our website needs the same visual ethos as our magazine.
-We discussed the plan for our exhibition.
-Advised to have a big wall with 3 big printed out pictures, one each from each of our magazine articles A1 size.
-We should then have printed out double pages of the whole magazine to put on the wall underneath the 3 big pictures and the magazine spread should be in line with the pictures.
-All measured out to be the right height and width.
-We will then have 1 magazine copy on the plinth, advised to have 5 printed out copies, 1 each for the 3 of us, 1 for the exhibition plinth and 1 spare.
-Only 1 person will be looking at the 1 magazine on the plinth at a time, so it is a good idea to have the magazine pages all printed out and are readable.
-For the exhibition wall space, we need to find out what sizes, work out how much gap and how many double page spread are needed to fit, it needs to look slick and tight.
-It’s a visual display, we need to know how big portrait size measurements are, the height should be higher than the width.
-We should treat the exhibition as our magazine launch.
-We need to draw out and plan out the angles to align the top, make sure it’s all straight on the wall and use a spirit level or spirit level app.
-Be aware of the width, which sizes fit a high wall, A1 size, print to fit, legible read.
-This may also involve using grids, how many cm attached, more space at the bottom than top for the exhibition.
-Measuring is essential, 2 rows of A3 size pages.
-We could also have the front cover above the 3 pictures, everything needs to fit and look visually appealing for the display.
2/5/16: (Supervision via Email)
-We sent our final magazine to our supervisor via email ahead of our final supervision session before the deadline.
-We received an email with the final tweaks we needed to make.
-Tweaks included making the title bigger and sub-info not italicised and directly centred but at that same size we have it, trying the issue number and date bottom and centred, 1.5 cm from bottom edge.
-Have the cover image bigger, colour grad in title- use the red from the nails, colour pick it.
-Have the first column finishing earlier so that there is more in the second column on pages 10 and 16.
4/5/17: (Supervision Session and Group Meeting)
-We were advised that the eye collage in our magazine should be turned around so the eyes are looking at the audience.
-This meant cropping out half the page so we made some last-minute changes.
-This included making the eye collage a double page spread for more impact which therefore meant we had to add more pages to be a multiple of four.
-We were advised to add in another double page spread advert and a page commenting on our advertising collaboratives.
-We wrote up a page about the chosen advertisements and the reason why we as editors, decided to work alongside the ethical co-operations which promote the same values as Miss Portrayed.
-After the final magazine changes were made, we discussed the exhibition such as getting the right dimensions for our display including the pictures, magazine page print outs and plinth.
-We visited the workshop and got dimensions for the plinth to be made.
-We contacted the printing shop to arrange a date to print the final magazine.
Miss Portrayed's Background Portfolio 