Mariella Goodman's Blog

I sketched a few little drawings that I could add to my table of contents or article about what people put in their gym bags. I like the pencil drawings, but I wasn't sure if this would translate over PNG, so I ended up photocopying the drawings and then outlining them in gel pen. I have some glittery Posca markers that are super cute, so I tried adding some outlines to make the drawings pop, but this doesn't match the elegant design of my magazine thus far. I could keep a plain pen-lined version of the bag drawings for my table of contents or alternatively make my article more bright and colorful. I could also change the colors of my magazine to be less brown and beige. The drawings actually look pretty cute on a more vanilla-toned background, so I think I will change my table of contents to be this color. Now I have to determine how I'll get my drawings onto the magazine. I could always print out my magazine and trace my drawings directly onto the pages, then scan. I trie...

I originally wanted to make my two-page spread involve an interview of student-athletes at my school about balancing school and sports. This could've been an interesting topic, but after further thought, it seemed kind of boring and uninteresting. I thought about topics I would be interested in, and one topic that popped into my mind was the Vogue "In the Bag" videos on YouTube, where celebrities show the camera some of the daily items in their bags. I thought this could be a super cute idea if I made it more of a "What's in my gym bag?" approach. I could ask my friends to bring some of their must-haves for sports or the gym, whether it be sunscreen, hair gel, scrunchies, lip gloss, Biofreeze, portable charger, etc. and add little blurbs of each girl and the products they like. I could also draw out some of the products for cute details. My track team has a really funny hair gel culture where a lot of the girls swear by hair gel and use it for all the meets,...

I really like to draw, and I had a good idea to draw different elements for my magazine. For my table of contents, I could draw pictures pertaining to the articles, like food products, gym clothes, or workout machines. This would be more practical than trying to take aesthetic pictures of many different products, which I am not the best at. Since I don't own an iPad, this could be a little bit complicated. I'll try to use pen and paper and use my iPhone's sticker-making feature. However, I am aware that I need at least four images in my magazine, and I will also need a picture for my cover. This is one little design I made with a border so that it's easier to crop, although I'm not sure I will easily be able to make a PNG out of this. I am not the greatest at coloring, but I would prefer the sketch to be in color.

 I completed the cover page for my magazine. My mom helped take a picture of me in gym wear against a plain wall. I took inspiration from fitness magazines, which usually have a person taking up a lot of space on the front cover. I also added little graphic designs and color changing, since a lot of magazines do this. This also helps make the magazine appear more interesting. I also added a bar code.

I have made several changes to my table of contents. My original table of contents looked like this: It looked pretty unprofessional, and I had to get to the bottom of how to fix it. In the examples above, the titles are a lot smaller and much more dynamic. The color was also very bland and beige. The titles were also very boring and didn't grab attention. One example I found of a table of contents from an issue of Women's Health put the title of the article in bold with a description underneath, which I thought was a good idea: I also found an issue of Woman's World, which separated the content of the magazine into subcategories, which I think makes the content more digestible and organized. Therefore, I decided to separate my content into subcategories too. I chose the categories Nutrition, Workouts & Fitness, and Lifestyle. Woman's World example: With this in mind, I decided to condense my titles, organize them into my categories, make them more interesting, and ...

I noticed some slight errors in my editor's note and some wording that I could change. I also looked at a reference editor's letter from Women's Health and noticed that there was a lot more depth to the graphics and organization of the page. My edited text: I have to start thinking about pictures to take/include in my magazine. I think that the pictures on the editor's note should be gym/fitness related pictures of me, as this is a fitness magazine. I wanted to add a signature, but this actually proved challenging. I don't have a tablet or stylus, but I do have a touchscreen laptop. I was able to find a pen with a silicone stylus at the end, but it was still hard to write with since my laptop cannot be folded down. I tried using the Canva draw tool, but it kept weirdly lining the signatures I made. I decided to screenshot a blank piece of the page and then screenshotting it and using Microsoft's screenshot markup tool, which was much more effective. I really wan...

      Today I will be building my editor's note. I'll be writing as if my actual self is the editor of the magazine, true to my own experiences in fitness. Editor's notes often talk about the editor and their own experiences, so I will talk a little bit about myself. I decided to write as if this was the first edition of the magazine, which had just been created. Editor's notes also tend to mention contents of the magazine, so I will be alluding to some of the articles (I'll be going back and adding to the letter as I write). This is what I have managed to write so far:      I also decided to add a gradient to my table of contents:

For my table of contents, I will be restating my magazine's title at the top of the page as well as providing a page guide to the articles I plan to write. For now, I will come up with a rough draft of article titles I would like to create. I will adjust my table of contents later as I go into the writing period. I will need to include graphics, which will constitute of photos I take myself. Generally, magazines have three font styles, so I've decided to make the body text in the style Josefin Sans. I've titled my table of contents using Metanoia, but I may change it later. Ads are not included in the table of contents, but they do count as numbered pages. I would like to design a swirl design for my table of contents that looks like this: I will have to try to buy a stylus for my computer or borrow someone's iPad to create the digital design. This is my table of contents rough draft (with an image from my mood board that I will replace):      I would like to include mo...

      Today I started building my magazine. A typical magazine is either 8.5 in by 5.5 in or 8.5 in by 11in. So that I am able to better fit graphics and text, I will be using size 8.5 by 11 inches. In many magazines I have seen, the title is streamlined and classy with a person slightly in front of the title, but I'll take my images later. Some good fonts I found are Metanoia (with 129 spacing), Perandory, Sefira March, and GFS Didot. I'll be staying away from anything cursive or illegible.  Here, I have created part of a template for my title page using one of the images from my mood board, which I will be replacing with an image of myself or one of my friends. I have used the font GFS Didot. Next, I will be brainstorming some article ideas to put around the subject. 

    I have to brainstorm title ideas for my magazine, but I want to stray away from anything too conventional, being that magazines like Women's Fitness , Women's Health , and Women's Physique World already exist. Nike would have been a good name if not for the existence of the brand, but Bia is a goddess of strength that could work as a magazine title. The only issue would be the compromise of recognizability that comes with a clear name like Women's Fitness .