2/22/17 New Orleans Picayune Research

The past few days we watched a video and read an article about the struggles the New Orleans Picayune has encountered over the years. The first question we were asked to consider was how did this newspaper contribute to the common good. It explained in the reading and video that this newspaper exposed many government conspiracies and gave the public the whole truth. After this we were asked to explore the ways in which the newspaper cut cost and increased revenue and how these changes contributed to changing the quality of the newspaper. They cut costs by deciding to only distribute print newspapers 3 days of the week instead of everyday and creating a 24 hour website that reported all of their news. Along with this they laid off thousands of employees. They increased revenue by allowing for a deal of 10 free stories if an online subscription is bought, increasing price of the newspaper, and creating online news apps. While these changes may have been necessary to keep the newspaper alive, I believe it resulted in a decrease of the newspapers quality because instead of getting important news everyday, we were left to search for the "boring" stories and only being provided the entertainment stories. The news began to focus on celebrities and sports more so then the important stories about government and political problems that needed to be public knowledge in order to have informed citizens. All in all I think this opened my eyes and showed me that while I am going to have to make some of these decisions with my magazine, I should never compromise the integrity of my magazine just for better ratings and more money. I need to be sure to keep my magazine on the path I set it out on in the first place. - Hope Bumgarner

2/15/17 Font Revision

While looking over my 2 page spread, table of contents, and cover page, Mr. Elsbree and I discovered that I didn't use the same font for my page numbers on the two page spread. While this may seem like a small oversight, it disrupted the stylistic continuity within the magazine. In order to keep the magazine appealing to the eye of the customer, stylist continuity is extremely necessary. In some fashion, you could say it makes the magazine balanced. It ensure that everything matches up correctly. By having a different font for the page numbers it made the two page spread look a little messy although the page itself was organized nicely. The font I have used for the magazine name and article name is the one I also used for the page number now. It is called Lithos Pro Regular, and it has a very distinct style, therefore making it easily distinguishable. Now it is clear that all the fonts match up well with no oversights. The old two page spread is the top two attachments and below is the revised pages. - Hope Bumgarner 

2/10/17 Superbowl Commercials

 Yesterday in class we watched some of the most popular Superbowl commercials. We took notes on the product, marketing technique used, and who we believe the target audience is.

Hyundai 

• Selling a brand of cars 
• Uses appeal to emotion  and patriotism - they took 4 service members into a 360 degrees room where they encountered live video footage of their families watching the Superbowl with them 
• The target audience was car drivers, family oriented, parents (ages 24-54) 

Mr. Clean 

• Selling a brand of cleaning supplies 
• Uses comedy - Has the Mr.Clean man and women singing and dancing together while cleaning and then Mr.Clean turns into her husband and she then runs over to kiss him - uses the logo that women love men who clean 
• The target audience is men and women who own a house 

Coco-Cola 

• Selling a type of soda 
• Uses appeal to emotion and patriotism - shows people of different kinds all drinking coke - uses diversity - shows that coke binds us as Americans 
• The target audience is everybody 

Our magazine is based on health and fitness. We want to appeal to the younger and middle generation (ages 15-45). We want to include high school athletes in order to keep teenagers interested, while also including professional athletes, fitness/workouts, and healthy eating to keep the adults interested as well. An idea we had for a commercial is having a girl starting off in bad shape, start eating right and participating in a sport so that she becomes very healthy. This would appeal to emotion by seeing someone work hard to better their lifestyle. Also, we may want to feature a professional athlete such as Micheal Jordan, someone who started off bad at their sport but beat the odds through practice and hard work. This would appeal to popularity because others would aspire to be like him. - Hope Bumgarner 

2/8/17 Cover Page Revision

When getting feedback on my original cover page, Elsbree had a few ideas for me to incorporate. First, he explained to me that the text on my cover page was covering Nick a lot so we should try to find a way to space it out so the picture is more prominent. We spaced out the writing near his face, the magazine name, and the Baseball section so that the writing would be more along the outer edges, revealing Nick more.  Along with this, he told me that the section under the word Baseball was a little hard to read because it was small and skinny font. We decided to bold the font so it would be easier to see. Lastly, we Decided to put a gray outline on the magazine name because the black text was hard to see in the upper and lower corners of the page where the background blended with the letters. Comparing the two cover pages, you can see this one is a lot more organized. The new cover is on top and the old one is below it. - Hope Bumgarner 

2/6/17 First Revision

 After thinking over everything that Elsbree and I talked about I decided that the first revision I am going to make is changing the background of my 2-page spread from black to white. In terms of printing, the black pages would cost a lot more for no reason. My font and pictures look just as good on the white as they do on the black. Since our assignment is to create a realistic magazine, we have to take prices into consideration and in my opinion this is one cost that we don't particularly need. I plan next to edit my cover page bit and to possibly collect more of a variety of pictures if I have a chance to schedule more time with Nick in these next few weeks. For right now I decided the page color was the pressing issue so it was the first major revision I made on my magazine project. - Hope Bumgarner