Magazine Cover Conventions Reflection

    When I was learning about the many magazine conventions, I found it somewhat hard to understand the differences of certain elements within a magazine and how to differentiate them. For example, I was to trying to describe what is a puff/plug, versus the definition of a coverline. These two elements in my magazine were the reason why I had struggled to apply them on my cover since I was in confusion of the differences between the two and took an extended duration of time to complete. My own magazine is supposed to have the genre of horror due to the cover image having myself and friends that are dressed up in costumes with bags of candy. My motivation for choosing this photo and genre was due to this photo being my most recent in terms of group photos with friends or family in a while. I also preferred to discuss about the horror genre mainly because of how recent Halloween was from the making of the magazine and the photo.

    Within my magazine, I had utilized the conventions of a magazine such as, cover image, feature article, coverlines, puff/plug, banner, barcode, and dateline. The reason as to why I had used these conventions, is the fact that these conventions are used throughout many and multiple magazines which are used to appeal to the audience that are reading them. Mastheads, for example, are the most commonly used convention throughout all magazines due to them being the title of a magazine so that the reader(s) can understand what the magazine is going to mainly be about for the type of genre the magazine will present. My masthead was written with the font of Times New Roman to give the appeal to the audience that the magazine is more about horror along with some "old-timey" feel to it.

    For my magazine cover, I had many struggles with using InDesign mainly during the beginning process of my magazine. In this case, it was importing a photo of what my magazine's headline article going to be about. I tried to put in my image by sending the photo through my Gmail and opening it up on my computer, but I realized that it was much easier to just save the photo on Gmail and then opening it up on my computer. Besides that, the rest of the progress of creating my magazine felt much more straightforward and had little to no difficulties in adding the rest of the elements of a magazine and applying them to my own.

    Moving forward, with this new knowledge that I have gained, I will use it to express my understanding of how InDesign works. Along with this, I slowly learn how to used the menus and tasks that are required to insert certain appliances to my creations on app like InDesign or any other. I believe this new information that I have learned can help me gain a new option for when I am deciding what to use for my portfolio project and knowing that InDesign can be a good option for me.