Kate Meyer Blog

I changed just about everything about my magazine except for the topic. I used a nicer camera for my pictures, and I changed the layout of my table of contents, so it looked more similar to popular sports magazines. I added more pictures into my articles and used Photoshop to make them look nicer. Overall, I am very proud of my new magazine.

How did you integrate technologies-- software, hardware and online-- in this project? I used many different pieces of technology for my product. For starters, I used Adobe In-Design and Adobe Photoshop for my pictures and to create my magazine overall. I was a beginner when I first started using those platforms; however, I am now skilled and I am confident in my abilities to use those software's. In addition, I also used my iPhone for the first set of pictures that I took, because I did not have a nicer camera than a 6s. After the first semester, I was disappointed in my product and I wanted knew pictures. I asked my teacher to borrow a very nice camera to take pictures at an upcoming boy's basketball game. He gave me a nice new Canon camera to use. I went to the game and took lots of pictures. The next day I took the memory card out, put it in the computer and began sifting through my pictures. I picked about ten pictures I thought would look good and that I believed were th...

How did your production skills develop throughout this project? My production skills developed so much during the course of this project. For starters, when I started, I had never used In-Design on Adobe before. My group had to teach me how to use it. I knew I did not want to use Publisher because I really wanted my finished project to look really good. I had to learn how to place photos and use the tools to make them look good. I also used an iPhone camera for my first draft, and for my revisions, I used a really nice camera (Canon Rebel T6), and my teacher had to teach me how to use that as well. In addition, I also used Photoshop more in my revisions, so I could touch up the pictures and make them look nicer so that the finished product looked the best. I also had no idea how to use Photoshop, so I had to learn how to use the layers and the paint buckets to find ways to make my magazine look more professional and crisp. One group member made the water mark and then saved it to all...

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? Our product was very engaging for a plethora of reasons. Our letters for the cover changed for each issue and mine was orange. Orange is a very bright and eye-popping color that helps catch the attention of a reader. The black border contrasts that and sets a common theme. This is also the colors for Sarasota High. However, I did not just discuss Sarasota High in the magazine, which engages with the audience because it opens up doors for more people to be interested in the magazine and so they will read it. In addition, the three feature articles that we put on the cover are designed to draw the audience into reading the magazine. If  someone sees an article they may be interested in, they will want to pick it up. In addition, I thought it would be a good idea to get people who are not very well known to be in the articles. For high school sports, it is usually the popular ones that ...

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? Our magazine uses the conventions rather than challenges it. For starters, we have the typical sports article. We have a normal sports font, using Onky. It was a font that we all easily agreed on because it was some what of a mix between the Sports Illustrated and ESPN. This was important because it related to our topic, sports. In addition, we also added a watermark in the top corners of our articles because we wanted to make our magazine look more professional. We decided to somewhat mirror the popular sports articles such as Sports Illustrated, especially in our table of contents. We had pictures from three different articles we were going to feature in our article, and under those pictures, we had a small description of what the article was/what it was going to be about. We did this so that it looked aesthetically pleasing, as well as get people to want to read those articles...

I changed a lot in my second page of the article. For starters, I did my draft for the second page in Publisher because I did not have time to finish it in class, and I don't have Adobe at home. My font was far too large, so I made that smaller and I also justified my text. This was so that it looked more professional. A problem I ran into was the amount that I had to write for it. Since I made my font smaller, I had to include more and so I branched out and started discussing other basketball teams and players in the area who have had success this year. This is so I could appeal to people other than just students at Sarasota high, and so that someone from Booker High would be interested in buying the magazine. I also changed my pictures because the ones I had taken before were not professional. This new article includes two different students and I really like it because it represents Sarasota High, but when you read the article, it discusses other players as well from other schoo...

The second magazine/website I researched was SLAM. It is a basketball magazine that also has a website. It has a paywall as well as many ads on their website to bring in revenue. The ads on the website were for the Army, sports drinks, and sports equipment. We would be able to utilize this for our website because since we are a sports magazine, it would be beneficial to do that for revenue. We could also have a paywall so that we could bring in revenue. We would use some of the money we have to put our magazine on other platforms, such as social media or popular sports accounts on social media, who would let us do so for a small amount of money.

Sports Illustrated makes people pay to view certain articles and also has people pay to put ads on their website. When technology came it out it was very difficult to bring in revenue from the newspapers because everyone turned to the internet because it was faster and much more accessible.  So now SI will bring in revenue through ads, which is a very common and popular way to get money. YouTubers get most of their money from that. They also put up a pay wall, so if I tried to bring read over 10 articles, I would have to subscribe in order to do so. This is another common way magazines will bring in revenue. The type of ads on their website will appeal to the audience that reads their articles, so a sports magazine such as SI will have ads about sports equipment and sports drinks.