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September 20th

I plan to make my magazine on gardening, specifically scenery. Like, how to use flora to make an area beautiful.

I was inspired to write about this due to the recent revival of my school's gardening club. They are working slowly but surely to plant flowers and other plants around to bring life to the campus again.

I'll have to keep brainstorming ideas for the masthead. So far I know I want it to be a softer, more rounded font. One that still looks mature, but friendly. I'm thinking the color should be green or off-white.

The selling line might be something along the lines of 'taking the scenic route', since that's what the magazine is about--scenery.

The main image is going to be a photo of some of the work the gardening club at my school has done. I already have a photo of some roses they planted:

I don't think it will be the best photo for a cover, but I do plan on using this one way or another. What I'm thinking for the main image is, like, a photo of a plant/some flowers in a un-lively area?

My goal is to make this magazine friendly towards the middle and lower classes (not necessarily appealing to people with a lot of money) and people who aren't necessarily well-versed in gardening. I guess my target audience would be middle aged women and anyone interested in redecorating their yards, or gardening in general. Kind of an introduction to gardening?

October 6th

By now I have done some research on the layout of a magazine cover and page spreads. I have an idea on the direction I want to go in now.

Like I mentioned on my October 4th-6th research, I plan on having one page be purely a photo, possibly with some captions, and the other having my main article.

I have an idea for a color palette. Something along these lines:

I definitely will focus on greens and browns. The extra pop of color will vary depending on what photo(s) I use. Also, these colors are a bit too soft, I think. I might want something bolder or more saturated. I won't really know until I experiment, however.

If I use the photo of the roses from the last post, I could put a little caption talking about how it was the first plant planted by the Gardening club at the school. I could also add something about what kind of plant it is, but I'm not sure that it would be relevant to the topic being discussed--at least on this page.

Regarding font, I looked around online and played with fonts in Word until I found a solid list of fonts I could use for headings and regular text:

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The fonts on the left side are actually from a photo I found online, but some of the fonts are almost exactly what I'm looking for.

'Lemonade' and 'Simplicity' are the top two I am considering using for headings. Maybe 'Ever After' as well. I like the all-capitals and the width/length of the letters. They are the kind of fonts you may see in a 'rustic' magazine or article. They feel friendly to me, like I would pick up a magazine and it would look like something I'd read.

The fonts on the right are ones I found while playing in Word. I might look around more, but these give off the look I'm going for. I'm leaning towards Daytona Pro Light, however. I like that the letters are large and easier to read compared to some of the other fonts I have listed.

I wanted the content of the magazine to be for newer gardeners, however the look I'm going for is one you would find in a more expensive magazine. I can probably get around that though, because of the fonts I want to use. I'm not sure exactly how to describe what I'm thinking of other than 'natural-looking' or 'clean'. Maybe something similar to Magnolia magazines.

October 19th

After doing research on the TOC (table of contents), I've been brainstorming a bit. I liked the way the TOC pages I researched were designed. I discuss this more in-depth in my research, but I want to follow the same direction they did.

My idea is to use a picture of tree branches reaching out from the corner of the page. I need to go around and snap some test shots to get an idea of how this would actually work. However, my other thought, is that I want the TOC page to match my cover. So if I use a tree here I would have to use a similar image on the cover.

There is also the issue of the fact that this a magazine about gardening and trees don't exactly fit into the category. Not easily. I still need to do some figuring out here. I could have a special section of the magazine for trees.

Other than the image, any fonts I use on the cover will remain consistent throughout the magazine. The same goes for color scheme. Whatever I use will have to look good in both places. I talk about fonts and color scheme a bit in my previous blog. I do think I've made a decision on what fonts I will be using, however. This is, of course, subject to change:

The actual contents of the page are a bit up in air but I have a few ideas down:

Letter from the editor
Using plants to add life to your home/campus
Easiest plants to take care of
Garden care 101

I'll have to flesh this out more, of course, but this is just the beginnings of my brainstorming. I might include some of these titles on the cover as cover lines, actually.

I'm going to start snapping photos an playing with designs more to get a better idea on the direction I'm going with this.

October 29th

I ended up changing my mind on the fonts I want to use. I found that it would be easier to use fonts that I could download in the photoshop. I used 'Champagne & Limousines' for the Masthead on the cover page, and I used 'Secret Code' for everything else.

The black square indicates the location of the subject of the image. Where 'coverline' and 'headline' are written are the general location I see them being in.

I like the idea of using an image that covers the whole page, no negative space. The image wouldn't be busy, otherwise it would be difficult to read the writing. I think the subject will be in the direct center of the page, that is where the reader's attention would first be drawn to.

The colors of the masthead, coverlines, and headline could definitely change depending on what photo I use for the main image, but this is what I'm thinking for now.

I changed the font for the heading here to 'Secret Code' however I might change it back to 'Champagne & Limousines' to match better with the rest of the magazines.

Here, with the table of contents, I plan on having two images in opposing corners bleeding off of the page. Similar to the table of contents examples I have in my research section, the images may be flowers or leaves or something else, I need to experiment.

It is a bit minimalistic-looking right now, I might add extras onto whatever image I use, in order to make it more full.

This is the left page of my spread. I am thinking of including an image along the side of the page, I'll have to make sure it doesn't look too busy, though. Also I want to make the image match whatever I have going on on the right page.

The article will be in the center. I mapped out the general size but I haven't actually planned out what I'm writing quite yet, so for it's just a general idea.

This page is going to have a picture. I'm thinking it might be of a potted plant against a brick wall. I have to mess around with the idea, still. I also want ot include a caption. I got this idea from one of the spreads I researched, I thought it looked cool so I'm going to try and include it in my own spread.

November 10

Recce Report

Location: Lowe's Garden Center. I needed an area with a lot of flowers that would be typically found in home gardens.

Permission: No permission needed.

Times Available/Unavailable: Lowe's Garden Center is open 6 AM to 9 PM. I needed to way get here between school, work, and my extracurriculars.

Electricity Supply: The Garden Center is outside so there was no electricity available. However I did not require any to take my photos.

Noise Interference: Customers, dogs, birds, wind and leaves. There was a lot of noise interference, however I was only taking pictures so this was not an issue.

Light: The time I went at had the sun high in the sky and lighting up the while area. Even if I was in the shade I had plenty of light to take my photos.

Obstructions: Given this was a Garden Center, there would be rows of the same plant. Sometimes this was useful, other times it served to be an issue. There would be people in the background of my photos and sometimes walls of shelves and other man-made objects. I had to do a lot of careful positioning to avoid this.

Mise En Scene: There was no prep needed. I walked in, read the names of the flowers, looked up their growing needs and took some photos. I did nothing to adjust the way anything looked.

Types of Shots: I took still shots of flowers. My goal was to highlight one flower within each cluster so that the viewer could easily seen what the flower looked like. My background would then also be full of flowers and nothing distracting.

Other Limitations: I only had what was available to me. I did not have time to go elsewhere. The photos I took here needed to be the ones I would use in the final product.

Special Equipment: I needed no special equipment. I only used my phone to photograph and research.

These are some of the photos I've taken and thought might be good enough to put into my magazine:

I saw these yellow flowers while walking around campus one day and thought they would look good in the corner of the TOC page.

These tree branches were another idea I had for the TOC page. However it's a bit hard to cut out and it doesn't etirely fit with my theme.

The picture of the orange flowers is another photo I tried to use for the TOC. I want to get a better photo of this one, though. I originally just took this photo because I thought it would look good somewhere in the magazine.

The photo below was taken as a possible cover image. It's a bit too busy however. I liked that it it was a mix of plants still in their pots, but, again, it was too busy when I tried to put it on my flat plan.

When I first saw these white flowers, I wanted to get a photo of it because it was a pretty classic garden flower. I used this one for a TOC page idea as well. I like how it ended up, but I want to retake the photo.

This picture of the roses was the first photo I took. I tried use it for the cover but still think it is a but too busy. I need to take more photos with the cover in mind.

All the photos shown are ones I tried to work with. They came out of a much larger pool of blurry and mediocre photos. I plan on retaking the photos I want to move forward with. I also still need to work on finding better photos for the cover and actual spread.

I came up with a couple of basic ideas for the cover and table of contents. I used Photoshop to make these. I did some minor editing with lighting and contrast tools to make the colors of the photo pop more. Then I cut them out using the Quick Selection tool and pasted them on the TOC page. I erased any parts o the picture I didn't want with a very small brush and lightly blurred the edges. I did it messily here because I was messing around with ideas.

The right page is my favorite. I like that I was able to have both pictures from the same image. I might reposition the bottom image to have the leaves pointing inwards instead. My only issue is that it looks almost tropical here, which isn't the look I'm going for at all.

On the other hand, I like the yellow of the flowers. The pop of color looks nice. I want to get a better photo of those flowers though, because the leaves in the photo I used were blurred out.

This is one of the cover ideas I have. I kind of like it, it fits with the template I made. However, I think I need to make the color of the words darker, or at least bolder. They're hard to see here.

Also, I'm not sure if I like have the bars of black at the top and bottom of the page. The picture wouldn't fit otherwise and I didn't want to stretch the photo.

I'm actually surprised that I like how this looks. I'm going to try and move the picture over a little to get rid of the blurred pink flower in the background.

Extra Photos Taken At Later Dates: