Front Cover Development

Here is the development process for my magazine. I will put all of my ideas here and reflect on the decisions that I make. 

Genre: Travel
Sub-genre: Travelling to Bali 

Name of magazine: 

1. Vintage Voyages: Bali Edition
2. Elders' Escape: Bali Unearthed
3. Retirement Paradise: Bali Unveiled
4. Bali Heritage Horizons
5. Golden year travel 
6. End of age in Paradise
7. Timeless Memories
8. Beautifully Aging in Bali 
9. Timeless Travel 

10. Golden Abiding Escape 

I decided in the title "Vintage Voyages: Bali Edition" for my magazine as the meaning relates with the description of my target audience, which are old people. It sound elegant, classy, and formal which is what elders are typically fond of as back in the days that is the standards they are used to. The use of "vintage" evokes a feeling of timeless and sophistication, reflecting to the interests and preferences of many elders who appreciate the values and standards of past eras. 

Possible Coverlines 

1. Savoring Bali's Culinary Delights: A Taste of Paradise

2. Golden Years, Golden Sands: Bali's Ageless Allure

3. Heritage, History, and Harmony: Your Bali Dream Vacation

4. Wellness and Serenity in Bali: Your Ultimate Retreat

5. Bali's History: Crafted with Love and Tradition 

6. The Beauty of Bali's Seaside: A Guide to Senior Relaxation

7. Bali's Nature Calls: Where the Grass meets the Sands 

8. Exploring Bali: A Senior's Handbook to the Island of Gods

9. Grass, Sands, and Stones: Bali's Senior-Friendly Itinerary

10. Bali's Delicious Delights: A Taste into the Island of Gods

I want to choose this for my main coverline because it's a fun play of words that aligns with the age of my target audience, which are old people in hopes to make their senior age appear more beautiful and pleasing and less of a bad thing. The word "golden" may also attract them as according to research, it means accomplishment throughout history which relates to their journey in succeeding to live a long life. Furthermore, after researching, the phrase "golden years" implies a period of fulfillment, happiness which are feelings that I hope my target audience can have in mind when they think about Bali and therefore, are persuaded to go to Bali. 

Images (min. 4)

1. Long shot of sanur beach 

2. Medium/long shot of 2 or more elderlies enjoying their time in the beach where they would be laying down on the sun beds chatting/laughing happily together. The second option is a medium shot of them laughing/chatting happily when eating together in one of the cafes in the beach.

3. Long shot of kuta beach 

4. Close up shots of Bali's traditional foods and seafood in the beach 

5. Long shot and close up shots of Puri Lukisan Museum

The ideas that I have for my main cover image are firstly a medium/long shot of 2 or more elderlies enjoying their time in the beach where they would be laying down on the sun beds chatting/laughing happily together. The second option is a medium shot of them laughing/chatting happily when eating together in one of the cafes in the beach. The elderlies happily chatting/laughing will be the main attraction of the image as I want it to be a reflection of how my target audience will be if they do come to Bali after reading my magazine. Furthermore, I hope for it to give off a sense of positivity and warmth towards people who sees it, preferably my target audience, and make them want to pick it up with the reason that they would like to be like that too. This idea conforms to the conventions of travel magazines where some typically includes people in it, whether it'd be tourists or locals. Also, this will be quite easy as Bali is full of foreign tourists including my targeted age range. Not only that, I go to either Sanur or Kuta Beach once every week, therefore It won't be a hassle for me. 

Reflection

In the making of this task, I found it really fun as I was able to explore creative words, meaningful idioms, and play of words that helped to make unique and attractive ideas of names of the magazine and main coverlines. Not only that, my teacher allowed me to create 5 of the 10 ideas for each section from Chat GPT which made the process easier as I had a foundation to the ideas of what i want the name of my magazine to be and the coverlines I want to display. It also made it less complicated for me to the rest 5 on my own. I laid the exact names of the name and coverline, therefore in the making of my magazine, I can just go back here and copy paste from the idea I chose. Not only that, because I had to make 10 ideas, in the case where I start not liking the one I chose, I can also choose another one from the list of ideas I gathered. Because of these reasons and since i did this prior to the making of my magazine, It will be less time-consuming during the time I have to make the actual magazine as there is the absence of having to brainstorm those ideas in the time when I should be prioritizing putting everything else together such as the images and the article. 

Below are my research and preparations my teacher told me to do in order to make the development of the front cover smoother as I'll already have the ideas planned out. 

My teacher told me to lay down 4 of my thumbnail sketches, choose 2 and develop digitally with the sample photos I took at school, choose one of them and experiment a lot, make evidences on all the changes I made, and add comments on what I like and what I think I can improve next to or under the sketches. 

Thumbnail Sketches

Here are the 4 thumbnail sketches I chose:

Here are the 2 thumbnail sketches that I chose to develop digitally with sample photos I took at school:

Experiment and Development

This is the process of me developing them digitally:

I chose the 1st sketch and sample photo to experiment a lot on and these are the results:

Research

I researched multiple minimalistic travel magazines in Google and Pinterest to find their genre conventions and similarities in order to gain ideas for my own front cover magazine page as I plan to follow their genre conventions. These are the result of my research. 

After looking at a number of minimalistic travel magazines such as the ones above, here are the things that I noticed: 

1. During my research, I noticed that almost all minimalistic travel magazines have a certain noticeable amount of whitespace (I mistake white space with negative space beforehand) and I figured that it contributes to achieving a clean and simple look. My magazine will therefore also conform to this genre convention since the presence of white space has already become a stereotype of minimalistic magazines as well. 

2. Secondly, I noticed that most of their typefaces are simple bolded fonts such as San Serif or Vidaloka that gives off a sharp strong look. There are no italics, outlines, and other typefaces present to preserve the neat and clean look. 

 

3. Not only that, the color of the masthead are usually in black as it stands out strongly especially against the white background compared to other neutral colors that may be used to match with the image more. However I will subvert to this convention as when I experiment using black compared to neutral colors that matches with the image, the neutral colors looks more pleasant to the eye. 

4. There is nothing overlapping the main image such as coverlines where they're all placed out of it to give readers a full picture of the main image that is not disturbed by any text. This results in a cleaner look instead of things clashing against each other and making it look crowded.

5. The producers really often displays certain destination or landscapes as their main image as it also gives an idea towards the readers of the contents of the magazine. This then has become a stereotype that allows the readers to notice right away that its a travel magazine. Though, I will subvert to this convention as my main image is a person instead of an image of a place, with the objective to stand out against other travel magazines. 

Final Development

After planning and researching, I will now start on developing my final front cover. Here are my front cover development process. 

Here's a canva link as the image is unclear: 

https://www.canva.com/design/DAF7_fyYX8A/Cg6LDUhRb7VQLAZ6z0K7Pg/edit?utm_content=DAF7_fyYX8A&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Self-Reflection 

I started my entire research and development for my magazine with this front cover development, therefore it was quite overwhelming to do as during the development process, I was just taught about the use of borders, hierarchy of type, type faces, and colors and in the process of getting used to taking all of them into account when making numerous development draft. Because in some cases, I was just constantly improving or changing a few things in certain versions of the drafts, even though it was quite fun at first to see my ideas come together, the repetitiveness made me loose motivation to continue at one point. My teacher then advised me to take a short break to clear my mind first rather than continuing it and seeing it as a burden instead of enjoying the process and during my short break, I looked around to see my friends that have similar genre conventions in which this helped me in receiving ideas on how to improve the drafts I made.