CCR

CCR

The final product

This is the final magazine which I hope you like because it is the product of an investigative work done with a lot of effort and dedication, based on own experience and new experiences that have taught me that it is possible to do what one proposes, thank you very much for having read my blogs. It has been a real journey and I’ve learned a lot...

Portafolio Project

Table of contest

Almost ready!!! With the finished articles, today I will define how to sort the table of contents in the magazine. The table of contents is very important as it will indicate and guide the reader the order, the pages and the title of the articles. In my group we have defined to use the same font and size for the word "Content" to maintain the structure and the format. In my case I decided to use a large box with a picture instead of several small as my teammates did with other figures. I am taking the risk of doing this and not following exactly the same format of them because my photos, since they are large of graffitis, are lost and not appreciated where put into a figure so that is the reason I only used one large picture to show it completely. In addition to this, putting many photos of this style plus the arrows makes it look very loaded and does not facilitate the reading, but rather generates confusion in my case. Reviewing various magazines you can see that if there are editions that do not have the table of contents exactly the same, so I'll take this as an example. By looking at this, I feel relieved because I don’t think it will be a major problem that my table of contents looks different. I hope that when they see my table of contents they agree with my concept since in my opinion it is in accordance with the design of my magazine and above all with the elements that I have decided to use.

With all the elements finished and revised, it is time to unite them, for this I will use the Canva.

Magazine coming really soooon!!

Writing process #2

Today I started writing my pieces for the magazine. I realize that there are so many things I want to include, but the space for the text is limited due to the pictures. So, I've writing all day and I've  been finding it hard to concentrate on the topic without starting to talk about other things I experienced while I was in Wynwood.

The thing is that once I get an idea, I start writing and writing and writing and then I can't decide whether everything should be included or if I should cut some parts of. The idea of the article in my magazine is to make people want to visit Wynwood and offer them a close up of what this city is. So what I am going to do is that with my rough drafts that I have right now, I am  going to ask people if what I wrote satisfies that or if I should change anything.

I think that what I wrote is good and I am proud of.. Let's see what my peers think. Almost done with this long journey. Stay tuned, the magazine is coming soon.

Writing process #1

Reviewing all the information gained during my visit to wynwood I can realize that there are many fascinating topics that I can use to write the articles in my magazine. However I will focus on those who called my attention.

These are:

-Wynwood The Walls

-Art Basel

-Salty Donut

- Shops.

Writing articles on these subjects gives me a great boost since I have always considered myself an independent writer and the experience gained in this project is a step for expressing myself and it gives me a chance to write however I want. It allows me to tell a story they way I want to and I am really excited for that.

Based on all the research done, I hope to have the capacity to guide my articles towards the correct publication, focusing on generating good ideas for its development and above all looking carefully at all the details. Due to the number of photos I took I decided that in these articles I will include these, so for now I must decide where will I put them to go according to what is written in the article, this is not going to be an easy job since I would like include all. I think it is really important to include pictures in the article because that way the reader doesn’t feel overwhelmed and it helps to visualize what it is being said in the article.

Cover page

For the creation of my cover page, I will use as an example some magazines of tourism that already exist in the market and they called my attention a lot. These magazines will help me to stick with my project and will be a guide to see its structure. Analyzing the covers of these I realize that the cover design is very important and this is what makes the people come back to see, read and buy the magazine. For this I must focus a lot on the cover and put all my creativity and originality in the realization of this so that my magazine awakens the interest and people want to acquire it.

Today I begin to make the sketches of the cover and I can realize that this must be elaborated correctly, it is very important that I choose the correct typography, and the margins. The image I  choose should call the attention of people and this should be selected within all photographs I took. Ufff that is going to be a difficult job to decide since I have many photos that call my attention, so I will ask the opinion of some people to choose the best. The masthead should be easy to read, the name should be the most attractive of the design as it is one of the first things that people encounter whenever they see the magazine somewhere, the typography must be legible and the color should be combinable with many colors so you do not have to change it in each edition.

It hasn’t been easy designing my cover page, I’ve doubted every decision I make and I keep changing and changing things. I just want it to look amazing and it’s been hard deciding the font, the color, the picture, etc… I honestly have so many ideas but it’s like I try them and they just doesn’t look right and it is kind of stressful but I can make it and I will make it. I’ve been really focused on the producing of my magazine and I actually enjoy it now. I feel like I am gaining skills for life and learning a bunch of new things..

It is important that I keep one style and do not mix more than two sources on the cover because  this will make it easier to read and it will not lose structure.

After several tests of colors to use, I can see that if I mix colors these must combine and I have to be careful with their use so that it does not lose order. When I look at the covers of the magazines used as an example, I realize that the colors they use appeal to the eye. Another very important point that I must consider for the cover is that I have to be careful with the spelling because it would be very embarrassing to have spelling mistakes on the cover.

Look at some sketches, soon you will know which will be the chosen one. I am definitely going to work on both and see which one comes out better but for now I know that these are my two options and that either of them will be part of my magazine.

D O N U T S

I could've picked a restaurant to talk about in my magazine but this donuts are what pop out in wynwood. In the magazine I what this donuts are about. Now I can tell you that I had to walk a lot to get to this place, and it was not easy to find. I got lost like five times because this place is hidden and I to figure out where it was I had to call the place to give me directions.. When I got to this shop the line was sooooo long and when I saw the menu there where so many flavors that I bought most of them to see what they are. So now I have a bunch of donuts and while I am typing this I am eating one of them.

People were really happy with this donuts and they bought a lot of them. I found out that this shop sometimes has to close earlier because they ran out of the hand-made donuts. The line never ended.. it was incredible and they tasted really really good. I would recommend that if you visit wynwood you go to this place. It has a wide variety of uncommon donuts and they also look so pretty.

"Enjoying" Wynwood

ufff.. finally I feel I've moved forward with the making of my magazine. I am more calm now that I have the pictures. I am really involved with this and nothing can stop my now to release my magazine probably next week. 

Definitely it was an exhausting weekend but it was full of new experiences. I got to see Wynowwd in different way because the time I went before it was only to know the place but now I feel the place. I got to talk with a lot of people and know what this place means to them and how they see it. Also, I was more attentive with every single detail to capture the essence of Wynwood in the best pictures for my magazine. So, I got a new perspective of a place that for me before was only some wall with paint. I realized that to make a tourism magazine, I have to know well and love the place being shown to transmit this to the audience for it to be sold. There was so many people of all ages and I noticed that everyone took pictures EVERYONE, like they all want to have a lot of memories of this place because with the people I talked they thought this art district is amazing.

It was definitely hard taking the pictures because there was a lot of people taking their own pictures and I didn't want them to appear in the picture because you couldn't see the whole wall. Also the lighting wasn't always at my benefit and it has hard capturing the hole wall cause some are really big. There where times were I had to wait up to fifteen minutes for the walls to clear out completely. And also since this is Florida you can imagine the weather... it was a really hot day.

Funny anecdote... I LOST THE CAMERA! I need to tie my shoes and so I did, and I left the camera in the bench and like half hour later I realized I didn't have it and came back to the place and luckily someone gave it to the cops and I got it back :)

After all the pictures I took, now that I am looking at them, I don't know which one would be good for my cover image because I have a lot I want to use but I can't use them all... I will be looking at them more to see which one I think is the best.

Here are some pictures of my day..

Change of plans

On a recent group meeting, we tried designing our original title for our magazine, which was "CITY". What we wanted to do was to use change the I for a magnifying glass but when we actually tried to do it, we realized it would not work and it that looked very ugly. Our problem was that the circle from the I is detached from it where as in the magnifying glass is all attached, and it ended up not looking like an I. We had no other ideas to make it work and we started to get really pissed off because we had no other name and nothing came to our minds...

IT'S SO HORRIBLE! IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE AN I AND IT DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE A MAGNIFYING GLASS EITHER!!!

So this is our attempted fail.. It is so annoying when you have something in mind but it just doesn't  look liked you expected when you actually make it :):, so yeah it was frustrating, and then we decided we need to change the name of the magazine. Probably a good thing now that I think about.. the name was pretty cliché and not as good as we thought when we first got the idea.

After talking and looking for a solution, we decided to change the magazine's name. We came up with new names (this time only including letters) and the best one was: Urban Spots. I like this title better than the first one because is more interesting and I think it fits with the theme.

plans... plans...

So this is my planning for next week...

I plan to go to Wynwood on Saturday where I will try to get the most information I can. I will take the pictures needed for my two page spread, including the walls, the food, and the stores which are the themes on my magazine.

I think it would be interesting if I interview people who work there, or people who had lived the transformation of Wynwood, so I can include their personal experiences in my magazine.

For the food there was a place that really caught my attention and it is called "The Salty Donut" which according to my research it is very famous in the area. I will go there to take pictures of the food to include them in my magazine, as the last post showed, and I will also like to try this donuts to let you know if they are as amazing as people say! I also want to find out how they are made and what makes them so popular in this area.

It's going to be a long but interesting day... I will sure get the experience of Wynwood before recommending other people to experience it in my magazine. I'm excited for this weekend, since I've never been there before! SOO, a lot of new things going on for mee :) stay tuned. 

The layout

In class, with my group we designed this layout for our magazine. This is how we want it to look like. We are planning to make our coverline of the main article the biggest so it can be different from the other coverlines. Our cover image will be of the place we each chose, in my case Wynwood, and the main coverline will be related to this image since the article from the two page spread is going to be about the place each of us chose. The other coverlines will be related to Miami but not to our place, so it will be things that will aid the reader in their trip to the specific city.  All of three editions will maintain the same format.

We still need to chose a font four our masthead and choose the colors we will like to use for the masthead and coverlines. Since its Miami, bright colors come to mind because of the tropical weather it has.

Here, we designed our two page spread. This is only an idea of what we want to include but we are not sure it will look exactly like this.

What we are sure of is that on the first page,he article will be different for all of us, each of use is going to chose something important to talk about our place.  In my case I want my article to be about how Wynwood has drastically changed this years, from being a dangerous place to being one of the most visited places in Miami. I also want to include a story of how the painted walls has changed the life of people who live in Wynwood and how it has helped those who work here. For this I plan to interview few people that are there.

The next page will be the same idea for all of us in the group. We plan to include one restaurant that is worth visiting in our chose place, what people most visit there, and an  activity we think is worth mentioning.

The name

After a meeting in the class and a lot of ideas... even though it was not easy since we are  three woman that think very differently we've decided the name for our magazine. We will call it "CITY".

The name of "CITY" was chosen because our magazine will be a type of monthly publication, which will contain three editions focused on the same city of the United States, detailing in depth different places that you can visit, describing some histories of the most tourist sites, and stating events scheduled for that month. This magazine can be used as a guide so that the people who buy it can have a clear and specific idea of ​​the place before or during their trip.

The idea is to attract the attention of the reader, not for the interest of the immediate news but for the valuable information they find in it which can be of great help to make your trip pleasant.

To choose the cities that we will use in our editions, we will take into account which are the most visited within the United States like: New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas, etc. The first publication with its three editions will be about Mami.

Now the hard work begins as we begin with the design and information of the magazine...

The beginning..

At the moment each of us chose a theme or a particular place that is related to the city of Miami, we must develop that theme individually and then review it together. I chose the Wynwood neighborhood, my partner Clementina chose Brickell / Downtown Miami area and my other partner Anabela chose Miami Beach.

I started my research on the internet and found this link where we tell the story of Wynwood.

Although most Miami tourists spend most of their time in South Beach and its surroundings, without denying that Miami Beach is one of the best destinations to rest on the beach, Florida also has places like the Wynwood that give that urban charm that makes Miami such a different place and that deserves to be visited not only because it is the fashionable neighborhood.

Wynwood is the favorite place for Hipsters and bohemians. Very recently this area stopped being dangerous and quickly became the favorite neighborhood for those who are looking for an alternative and artistic corner in Miami. Personally it reminds me a lot of Williamsburg in New York.

Every day there are more stores who open their doors in this area, apartment buildings have been revalued very fast and musicians and artists have taken the neighborhood to fill the area galleries and recording studios. The neighborhood's ornate walls and the large number of quality bars and restaurants that have appeared in Wynwood guarantee its success.

In my next blogs you will be able to know more about this subject and especially of the development and elaboration of our expected magazine.

DECISION MADE!

Finally!!!
After reviewing all the options and many hours of discussion, this week we decided that the topic for the magazine will definitely be Tourism and Travel.
To start with our project, we believe that it is better before starting with the photos, name, or designs of the pages, to review more thoroughly and to concentrate in a special place since when talking about Tourism and Travel We can cover many places.
That is how I started with my search by reading in a very interesting article from the magazine “Negocios” that indicates that in 2016 Florida imposed a new record in tourism reaching the highest number of visitors in history with 112.8 million, turning to Miami in the second most visited city of the United States. This caught my attention and by sharing it with the group we decided that we would really like to know more about that city that we have so close and that is also considered as a tourist destination of sun and beach excellence, and a tropical paradise that the whole world should know.

Miami 

Why visit Miami?
Miami is different from other American cities. Its privileged location in South Florida makes it a tourist destination where you can enjoy a warm climate during the twelve months of the year.
With an average annual temperature of 75 degrees, Miami beaches are crowded for most of the year. Its endless stretches of white sand combined with its blue water form an incomparable setting to enjoy the holidays.

Although beaches are Miami's greatest attraction, it is certainly a place that has much more to offer; You can enjoy a refreshing day in the Everglades National Park, have a Cuban-style cafe in Little Havana, spend a fun day with the animals on Jungle Island or sit on one of the terraces on Ocean Drive to observe the environment of South Beach.

Coming closer to our decision...

We continue in our search and although we have all participated in exchanging ideas and giving our opinion it has become very difficult to reach a definitive agreement on the subject that we will use for our magazine.


For now, the three of us consider that the theme that most strikes us is Tourism, and personally I think this topic can be very interesting because it will allow us to know and make people know several places in depth.


So to get a better understanding of the types of tourism magazines that exist, I started my research...


A tourism magazine can be aimed at tourists or travelers as it provides details about a particular location or geographical area, a tourist destination or a particular itinerary. Usually including details of interest such as phone numbers, addresses, hotel prices and other accommodations, restaurant prices, main means of transport available, etc. Additionally there is detailed information about the cultural centers and activities of the area: museums, theaters, main monuments and tourist sites that can be visited. Sometimes this magazine may also contain historical and cultural information about the city, country or region.

There are several types of travel magazines that can focus on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation travel or targeting travelers with higher or lower budgets. Others focus on the particular interests and concerns of certain social groups, such as lesbians and gays or couples. Similarly, there are visual guides that contain lots of images of the destination and others more focused on the practical information of the trip.

In addition, I have also been able to investigate that, according to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), tourism has experienced continuous growth for decades, making it one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. By the year 2017 the WTO is forecasting growth in arrivals of international tourists between 3% and 4%. Considering the growth of tourism, creating a magazine that guides tourists to know the cities can become a very profitable business.

Should we do this for our magazine?

When you are in a group you have to listen to all the points of view and if one person is not agreeing with the others ideas then the group can't move forward.. 

So... I start my research on Travel Magazines... For me this is a topic that SCREAMS TROUBLE because where are we going to get the pictures from? What are the stories going to be? We are going to actually have to get out of our little town because Weston... oh well is pretty much all the same.. 

Miami is the closest place to us, so if we choose this magazine I think Miami is our going to our city to "explore". 

-The font of this magazine is very clean, organized and uses light colors. Tends to focus more on the cover image. 

-The cover image is of the place the consumer wants to know about.

- The content is typically of what to do in the place the audience wants to visit.

- This magazines have a specific target audience, which is people that want to gain information of the place they want to visit or know about, which is usually males or females of the middle class from 30-60 years old. 

- The images incite you to go to the place, they are usually high quality images of a beautiful landscape. 

- This magazines call the attention of the consumer and "end up being a family magazine", which enriches people's cultures. 

Fitness? Food?

Even though I thought we had already picked a topic for our magazine, after a conversation through a group chat we are still unsure of what to do. We haven’t really had time to get together and discuss what we want for our magazine to be. We all have our different ideas, we just don’t know which one to pick and it has been really hard to communicate.

We have this ideas:

• Fitness Magazine
• Food Magazine
• Travel Magazine

I researched only two of three options because those are the ones that convince me the most, and have the same target audience.

- Model stares straight to the camera. This cover page incites you to work out because of the usage of a person with a good body.

- The magazine uses different fonts for every coverline.

- The colors are "girly" colors and by reading the coverlines we can see that this are topics that are meant to be for women of a middle class from 20-40 years old.

- This magazine's coverlines are kind of messy and all together, which is typical in women's magazines like this one, because this target audience is more interested the "tips, advices, news" of a good body rather than an organized, clean magazine. Overall, they like to see more information on how they can be like their model.

- The main image is an image of high quality, which according to my research is important because it what incites the audience to purchase the magazine. 

- The font is not so big to give focus to the image. 

- This type of magazine offer promotions for supermarkets or a bonus section of special recipes. 

- This magazines tend to choose recipes and foods of the season they are released in due to extensive competition. 

Intro to my blog

What are you doing for your project?, they ask. Well that's a pretty hard question when you  have so many ideas and want to do so many things but you only get one chance to do it right and to make something amazing out of it.

I am Maria Ponce, an eleventh grader, Cypress Bay High school student, and as lot of teenagers I struggle with decisions. I see this project as a something I’ve never done before, as a chance to challenge myself and have something at the end that I am really proud of. I’m going to make from this project an experience I will never forget and it is something that will help me from now on in every aspect of my life.

I will be documenting my journey through this blog, this will be my space to just get out all of my thoughts of the process of this project: my ideas, my good and bad days, my struggles… basically everything that goes through my mind. This blog is something that will get me out of my comfort zone because I’m the type of person that doesn’t express that much, but I am very excited to start this new journey and to see the person I am after this experience.

Back to my decision making... I started to think what is trending right now? And so I started  to look at different magazines. I was amazed by all the different options you have for making a magazine and the only thing that came to my mind is whatever you choose, you have give it your all because a first impression is what matters the most. I thought it would be a great idea to make a fashion magazine, but I kept thinking and realized that a lot of brands of clothing in the last years have released a line of sports clothes so I thought, why not do a fitness magazine? After all, a lot of people are involved with this topic since most of the people care about how they look and feel. Anyway this is just me throwing out ideas. With my group, we will do more research on different topics to decides which one fits us better.

Welcome to my blog and stay tuned!