Good Golly! My Cover Lines Are Showing!

UPDATE ALERT! BREAKING NEWS! UPDATE ALERT! I finished my magazine and I am all done with my project! Hooray! So, it saddens me to say that this will be my last blog...April Fools! In recent years, I have not been an avid participant in April Fool's Day shenanigans; however, I could not resist writing a simple, easy, comical statement in this case scenario. Nevertheless, what actually happened (but not really), after his big tea party, the Mad Hatter came by my studio so I could continue working on his outfit, and he certainly looks great! Take a look:

I just think he is so magnificent; I am really happy with the outcome so far, and I cannot wait to finish him the next time I go to my art class (I just need to do a few more little details here and there).

Anyways, the other day, my teacher had each of us look at blogs from other students in different class periods, in which we had to comment on their blog and provide our thoughts as feedback. I found this assignment to be very helpful, because the students who commented on my blog gave really wonderful compliments and useful advice. For example, one of my commenters (a shout-out to Baldwin) wrote, “I think it would be convenient to establish the tone of the magazine early on…I love the idea that you're drawing your cover image but I think you should be very careful with the subheadings you put on your front page as they may change the whole mood of the magazine.” I had never really thought about that before, so that got me thinking about the other stories that I would be including in my magazine, which stories I would place as cover lines, and how that creates the tone for my magazine. As a result, I jotted down story topics that I wanted to include under each category in the Compass of Contents:

    New:

        1. Presidential Campaigns 2016 Updates

        2. Oil price fluctuations & international ramifications

        3. Weird weather patterns across the U.S.

    Entertainment:

        1. Johnny Depp: The Unacclaimed Man of Many Faces

        2. New Season of Game of Thrones

        3. Disney on a roll in releasing successful films

    Science:

        1. Robotics/Education/Modern Robotics

        2. Tesla Model X/Gigafactory/Electric cars

        3. CRISPR-Cas system breakthroughs/Controversy

    World:

        1. Brussels Terrorist Attack

        2. Religious conflict & Nationalism in Scandinavia, U.S., and Europe

        3. Nuclear weapon proliferation

I chose these topics because I felt that they were topics that appealed to my magazine’s wide-ranging target audience and my magazine’s purpose to thoroughly delve into the variety of stories that fit under each category. Due to the fact that my cover image is a drawing of Johnny Depp, my main cover line will be the story on “Johnny Depp: The Unacclaimed Man of Many Faces.” As for the other cover lines, I was thinking of including one story from each of the other categories. Because my main cover line falls under the category of Entertainment, I will include one cover line that falls under the category of New, one from Science, and one from World. Since my two-page spread is going to be about the story on “Robotics/Education/Modern Robotics,” I believe it would be strategic to place it as one of my cover lines, as it also falls under the category of Science. Even more so, I plan to include the stories on “Presidential Campaigns 2016 Updates” and “Brussels Terrorist Attack” as my other two cover lines, which fall under the category of New and the category of World, respectively. I feel as though these topics are quite popular and well-known among majority of individuals and they help establish a tone for my magazine that it is about covering the stories that the people, specifically my target audience, are interested in and want to read more about. I am very glad that I was able to receive comments on my blog and my magazine because not only provided me with excellent feedback, but it also allowed my project to move forward towards the right direction.