Decision Day

 Decision Day Blog Post

Between studying the magazines and the movie scenes, one thing is very evident: both are

about telling a story in a creative way. For my final project, I’m going to choose the magazine,

because I would like to focus on a specific issue, yet to be determined, that is underrepresented

in real magazines. Both movie scenes and magazines could accomplish this, but in my opinion

it would be more clear to convey my point and response to an issue through a magazine. I look

forward to being able to tell a story through photos and articles, especially a story about a

person or group who has been under- or misrepresented in the past. As Wayne Cherry, author

of the first article, says, “As a school librarian, a father, and a lover of stories in all forms, I

believe with all of my heart that when anyone tells a story, that person changes a life.

”

For my magazine, I would like to tackle something that goes against the standard of magazines:

unrealistic beauty standards placed on women and instructions on how to appease men, even

today in 2020. For instance, editor Sophie Beck says “To me, this means going a little "glossy"

and giving people something to flip to--I'm not above a Cosmo-style headline like "Ten Ways to

Drive Him Wild in Bed." This idea of women constantly needing to please men is one I want to

denounce. The issue I’m leaning towards focusing the magazine on is the queer community.

The reason for this is because the queer community today is one of the most diverse, made up

of people of all genders, races, ages, and sexualities. Even queer ideals differ from those of

heteronormative society: acceptivity and self-love is valued, rather than the beauty standards

put into place by society and enforced by traditional literary magazines. Despite this diversity, in

addition to a rich history that has played a major behind-the-scenes role in our country, the

media as a whole tends to avoid them. My goal with this magazine project is to do the opposite

of this and put them in the spotlight.

I think that InDesign specifically will help me with accomplishing this by helping me create a

compelling title page image. This is because magazines draw people in with images, using them

as a tool to grab interest and compel the reader to continue. I think that PremierPro will help me

less because that software was developed to help with creating videos, and videos don’t have a

place within magazines, but it was very interesting to learn the very basics of how people are

able to create film masterpieces that compel audiences as well.