Introduction

For our final project of junior year, we were given the option to pretty much do whatever we wanted. We were allowed to explore any topic that we were passionate about or interested in learning more about. Since I am very interested in marketing and the fashion world I decided to create a magazine cover that mimicked that of a Vogue magazine cover. I've always loved the creative and dramatic looks that are created to represent the magazine and all the steps that are taken to get the front cover image. I wanted to experiment and try to do all of the jobs it takes to come up with the cover, with the help from a friend as a model, I went to work on creating her overall look. I then used InDesign to create the formatting for the cover text.

Production

My first step was to find someone to model for the cover image, lucky for me I was able to find the perfect girl to be my model. I then had to brainstorm a look that was different, dramatic and would grab your attention. I looked at many different magazine covers and fashion photos for ideas, I decided I wanted to do something with flowers. Since the model had very blue eyes and semi-fair skin I decided peachy, golden tones would really make her features pop. I decided to make a sort of flower crown and work it into her hair. On the day of the shoot my first step was to do her makeup since it was for the cover I decided to go for a bold eye look and pretty natural face makeup. In order to tie it all in with the flowers, I added a lot of blush to make her cheeks very rosy and match the eyes and flowers. I then styled her hair and put the flower crown on. When I took the pictures it was a pretty overcast day with not much lighting so we had to use reflectors and an external flash to try and get good lighting. Since it still wasn't perfect I had to go in with photoshop and edit the lighting and fix any flaws. After the photo was all ready I created the Cover text to go on top of the Image in InDesign.

Infographic

For my Infographic I decided to relate it to issues in the fashion world and how it affects the media. I researched Frances new laws that state that any media that uses Photoshop to retouch a photo must say it somewhere on the page. They did this because many people in the industry are photoshopping models and celebrities so much and giving the rest of the world these unrealistic expectations of what "beauty" looks like. They are also making models get a doctors note before being able to take jobs to ensure that they are a healthy weight. Any agencies that are caught hiring underweight models can be fined up to $85k and 6 months in prison. Research showed that many agencies were forcing models to lose weight and trying to make them look "perfect" even though they are fine just the way they are. Much like the photoshop having these super skinny models posted everywhere causes a lot of self-consciousness among girls of all ages on how they thought their face and body must look to be "beautiful". Meanwhile, the US has taken no steps to correct the media on all of the terrible things they are doing.

This is a screenshot of my workspace in InDesign and my project in its earlier stages.

This is my final Infograph.

Reflection

I personally really enjoyed this project because we had so much independence and were able to do things that we were really interested in. I love marketing and fashion and loved being able to combine both into a project. I really got to see why there are so many jobs need to make just the cover, you need your stylists, makeup artists, photographers, assistants, writers, editors and so much more. It really takes a lot of work to come up with new original ideas that will draw peoples attention and make them want to buy and read the magazine.