Here is my development progress with regard to the contents page
Reflection:
The best part of this section of the project is that I got to unleash my inner potential and creativity to create something that was way beyond my comprehension. I think that without the initial sketches and planning with pictures that I would be lost and that it would've taken me far longer to finish this project.
What I found very easy to do is the research which took me only about 15 minutes. I also found it very easy to continue finishing the contents page once I already had a workable layout that looked half decent.
The part I found that I disliked it my time management. It is actually a very fun project but I just don't know how to properly manage my time. That is the only real problem I faced.
I found it pretty boring and laborious to fill in the blog but it is always an accomplishing feeling to finish the blog posts.
Thankfully on the day of submission, I was able to get last minute feedback from my teacher and he advised on ways to make my contents page even better and I was very satisfied.
Research
Here is some research I conducted to develop my contents page.
According to what I have found, many of the magazines of my genre use a white or solid coloured background with black text. Not only that, but many pictures including people rather than locations were found to be within this genre. Therefore I am willing to use this as valid research. I also see that some of them include their church logo somewhere in the contents page. I will take that idea and put it on my magazine contents page. However, I will not be using the Revival 2019 contents which is just a small box in the bottom left corner of the front page.
I like that there are many pictures of people within the contents page of these magazines. I believe that this style of contents page will be easy to design as it is basic and because I am now familiar with the genre conventions of my magazine. I dislike the use of the different colours and animated pictures. I think they take away from the simplicity and realism that is Christian magazines.
I also like the numbering with shapes over the pictures as well as the columns for information. I will use that for my contents page.
Each of these magazine contents use similar typefaces and fonts. However, there is a range of serif and sans serif typeface which all seem pretty basic and nothing out of the box. I like this as it adds to the simplicity of the magazine. I will try to see if I can replicate this convention.
Sketches
Here are some hand drawn sketches for my contents page.
Here are a few attempts to sketch a simple design for my contents page. I may not refer to this. However, I am quite happy about this part. I like the inclusion of pictures as it adds a bit of humanly characteristics. I am not too happy about the variety of layouts which may make the contents page a bit messy. I think I would've been able to work easier if I was able to refer to a different genre of magazine like travel.
With regard to these layouts, I am happy with the top middle, bottom middle, and bottom left sketches as I believe they are the easiest to work with.
Visual Development
Here are some visual development attempts for my contents page.
I decided to play around with a few different typefaces as there aren't really any genre conventions. I very much like the serif typefaces as I believe they fit in best with my magazine front cover and that it will go well with what I plan to also put in the contents page. I like the bolded serif typefaces too as I think they stand out better on a white or off-white page.
I dislike the default typefaces like calibri and arial as they seem pretty boring and out of place on my magazine. Therefore I will not use them. I may use them for what I plan on putting on the contents page though, if I can't find a better font to use. The fonts I will experiment will be Trajan Pro, Times New Roman, and Modern No. 20 as they all fit within the genre conventions despite all being serif fonts.
Here is a bank of 11 pictures I may use for the contents page which each are relevant to a story within my magazine. I like _MG_8418, _MG_4828, and _MG_8496 as they seem like they could have a great story behind them.
I am not such a huge fan of _MG_4905 which features someone destroying cigarettes as a sign of defeating an addiction as it seems a bit odd to include that in my contents page. Perhaps it would be better suited in a different page of my magazine which features a victory over addiction article.
I decided to add four more pictures as I felt that they would be relevant to the contents page if I was to be going to elaborate on _MG_8496. I like them because I think I can make them all work out without cluttering the page too much with pictures. I dislike the level of the guy's head in the picture as it makes it a bit harder to work with when cropping the images, so that means that his head may not be level when I make the collage.
Final Attempts
Here are some attempts made for my final submission.
For this result, I used Microsoft PowerPoint to make my front cover, as that is the only software that I am very familiar with. I did try to use PhotoPea and Canva but I did not find them easy to use. PhotoPea is a free alternative to photoshop whereas Canva is a free presentation creator site with thousands of free templates. I don't like using pre-made templates so I made my own.
After receiving feedback from my teacher, I was advised to make a few changes to typeface sizes such as the one above the statistics and to line up the featured section with the the top of the word Contents. I took his advice and took necessary action to make it look better which included moving the copyright information around until it lined up perfectly with how I wanted it to.
Final Submission
Here is my final submission for the contents page of my magazine.
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