For my final major project, I decided to create a multi-media magazine targeted at teens and young people (Gen-Z). The theme of the magazine was heavily focused on mental health and navigating the way through life as a teenager/young adult. My project goals were to create a bold, engaging, and interesting magazine that covers slightly heavy topics in a way that teens can read without feeling bored or finding the topics daunting. The literature in the magazine is designed to encourage young people to get involved in writing and explain how it can be beneficial to their mental health.

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Five Strengths and Five Weaknesses

Strengths

1. Visual design - I found a lot of enjoyment when creating the front cover of my magazine, as well as the inside layout. I found this to be an important part of my creative journey as it allowed me to express my ideas in an alternative way, aside from writing. I noticed that I managed my time well when designing, as it wasn't too much of a lengthy process. I used Canva as my software of choice which is something that I am confident in using and I navigated it with ease in order to create a design that was eye-catching and well-structured.

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2. Poetry - Poetry was another one of my strengths during this project as it is a style of writing that I am comfortable with. I find the creative freedom something that helps me when writing them, which led to me easily being able to write a range of poems and drafts without too much struggle. The feedback from my tutor regarding my poems also aided this strength, as I was able to get a second opinion and make edits when needed.

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3. Feature writing - I found writing my feature article to be a strength of mine as I feel like I effectively portrayed important information in a way that appealed to my target audience. I feel like I achieved this by the language and writing style choices, which conveyed a point in an engaging way..

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4. Plot structure - The plot structure for my short story is something that I put a lot of effort into planning out, as I felt like I wanted my story to flow effectively and make sense to the reader. I found that having a structured plan was a good practice for planning other elements of my FMP and simultaneously aided my time management skills.

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5. Show and Not Tell - I felt like my use of Show and not tell was another strength of mine, especially when it came to my poems and short stories at allowed me to portray emotion and speak to my audience without telling exactly how they should feel, therefore leaving my work up to interpretation.

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Weaknesses

1. Time management - I found time management to be an issue during this project as I sometimes didn't leave enough time for important elements and spent too much time focusing on my cover design rather than the actual content.

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2. Amount of content - I struggled with coming up with enough writing to put in my magazine, and would have liked to included another short story and article.

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3. Feature article - I had trouble writing my feature article and determining what it would be about and how I could make it sound interesting and engaging.

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4. Technical issues -  I came across some technical issues with my design software and laptop which overall affected my time to get things done.

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5. Sensitive topics -  Due to my magazine talking about sensitive subjects such as mental health, I struggled with making these topics sound interesting to young people and not too dark.

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Was there a theme for the design ideas? Can you describe it? Reference any influences here? – authors, stories, characters, films, TV, art movements, designers, media companies/campaigns etc.​

My theme for my design ideas came from a range of different magazines that I found online, predominantly on Pinterest. Specifically a combination of early 2000's music catalogs and 70's style teen magazines. I found that both of these genres contained bold, bright colours, large text, and cutout, scrapbook-style images. These kinds of ideas screamed 'Teen' to me, and as a young person myself I found myself intrigued by them.

I tried to back away from minimalistic designs as they didn't compliment my style of writing. I have inserted some images below as a visual example of pieces I was inspired by:

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What experiments and exploration did you do?

My main experiments and exploration came from my use of visual design for my magazine. I used the software 'Canva' and used their features to create a unique design that encapsulated the ideas that I wanted to portray. I did initially struggle with perfecting my design and created many drafts of the front cover. This was a part of my experimentation as I played around with different formats and design choices. I also explored the idea of creating shorter pieces of writing that would fit into a magazine, which meant shortening some pieces of work and making them more eye-catching.

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How did it affect your development?

This affected my development as I found that I was more motivated to create a perfected final cover by combining my ideas and range of drafts. It also sped up my writing process as I had to ensure my writing didn't drag out too much as it would fit into my teen magazine format.

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Find a similar type of project/ professional work  - place it next to your own - what comparisons/difference can you identify? ​

I decided to compare my work to the published online teen literature magazine called 'Teen Ink''. It is a national teen magazine devoted entirely to teenage writing, art, photos, and forums. Teen Ink has offered teens the opportunity to publish their creative work and opinions on issues that affect their lives – everything from love and family to school, current events, and self-esteem. This is similar to my magazine, as it has a key demographic of young people, and uses writing as a form of self-expression, as well as having pieces of writing that revolve around the importance of mental health. The differences I can identify is the fact that Teen Ink is a communal online magazine that allows submissions and the writing is done by young people, as opposed to my project which is written for young people.

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Review your proposal - what changed, what developments did you make, did you manage to complete everything you set out to?​

When reviewing my proposal, I can identify what changed when it came to creating my final project and what stayed the same. The ideas that I kept included my project being a multi media magazine, that had a target audience of young people/teens. I also stuck with the idea to include poetry in my magazine, which I thought would add a unique spin to my project. The things that changed was the amount of content, as I originally said I would include more short stories and articles. I didn't end up doing this due to my time running out, and I didn't want my content to become too repetitive.​​