Project 4&5_ Carolina Guerrero

 To begin my process, I started by listing different categories of magazines that I may be interested in. I thought that if I knew what category/genre I wanted to do first, it would help me design an appropriate cover and layout for the magazine. I made sketches for three different genres and eventually decided on a fashion magazine. 

Concept: This magazine will focus on new social trends in the fashion industry. The color scheme will be bright and strong to give off a bold and energetic feeling. It will be very structured for the most part with a focus on simple shapes and graphics. It will also heavily focus on the graphics to keep the cartoon feeling throughout the magazine. 

Sketches: 

--NEW IDEA--

Concept: I switched to a "Women in Business" magazine idea while still keeping the cartoon graphic side of the original idea to make it more appealing. I still want to stick with the shapes and structure aspects but I will be toning down the color scheme to be bold but also business-professional. I will include pops of color to symbolize femininity amongst the dominantly male demographic in the business environment. 

Sketches: 

Vision: The cover of the magazine will depict the different women in line dressed in modern business wear. They are walking toward a building on the right side of the magazine cover. They will be bright and bold colors while the floor will be black and white. The floor will also have words written in of different stereotypes of women to depict that these women are literally walking on the societal stereotypes and rising above. The title will be along the top and any subheadings will be on the left side, opposite of the building graphic. 

Process:

The first thing I did was create a graphic for my cover page. I used Illustrator to make it and used the shape tool, pen tool, and curvature tool. I used the pen the most as I drew all of the people myself using the pen to draw them into vectors and the anchor tool to manipulate them to fit the way I wanted them to. I used the shape tool for the building and the text tool for the words on the ground. I then saved it as a png with no background so that I could use it in InDesign. I also decided that the name of the magazine will be "We Belong."

This was the first design of the cover page. I pretty much stuck with this idea and only made a few minor tweaks to the final design. 

I originally wanted to go with a grey background for the entire magazine because I wanted the colors to pop on the page. However, it was really dull and boring so I ended up switching from grey, to teal, to the same blue I used on the cover page. It's a fun color but not too bright to where it distracts the readers from the actual content. On pages 2 and 3, I included an article called "Advantage, Challenges, & Opportunities" along with a graphic of women pulling each other up the office buildings. I also decided to keep the black border on all the pages because I thought it looked a little more formal. I also added a skyline to the bottom for extra detail. The main thing I changed from this for the final design was the placement of the text and graphic on the right side because they weren't positioned nicely. 

On pages 4 and 5, I wanted to play with shapes and add some geometric aspects. I decided to do these double bubbles with an inspiring quote in the larger bubble and a picture of the female entrepreneur that said it in the smaller bubble. I also had the bubbles go into the black border because I wanted to add some more dimension to the page so it didn't look so boxed in. 

Pages 6 and 7 have a "Featured Female-Owned Business." I found an article about a real business owned by someone who depicts the theme of this magazine and added an article about her shop. I also included a collage of pictures that include her shop, some of her products, and some customers. I don't have a progress picture for these pages or for the back page because they were very simple and quick.

Final Spread:

The final goal for this magazine design was to make a female-empowering magazine based on business. I wanted to stray away from the normal style of business magazines because they tend to be very dull and boring. As a business major myself, I strive to destigmatize the business world as just black and white and show that color and creativity do not mean unprofessional. So, this spread is graphic-based, has some bright colors that are repeated throughout the pages, and is professional.