Unit 12

I am intending to create a hard copy magazine for my FMP project. I want to do a magazine because I feel that this suits my skills. I can name Neville Brody as one of the graphic designers that inspired me throughout the first year and second year studying multimedia.

This time, I want to manage my planning better than for the last FMP. I will try and find a good website where I will be able to do my planning to save time and also make it easy to read and see if I am doing progress or not. I was thinking to do my FMP based on Fitness as it is one of my hobbies. I might choose a subject such as how the fitness has changed throughout the years, for example how was fitness seen by people considered during the 1920s, and how it was seen during nowadays. Obviously, fitness has changed a lot and in my opinion, everyone nowadays considers fitness as one of their "daily tasks" because it has been promoted being very healthy for humans. Of course, it is healthy for humans because by doing any fitness activity your blood flow is pumping and running throughout your body

My research will consist in fitness magazines, fitness websites, any articles related to people into fitness from the past years (from the past years as I will compare it to nowadays). I will do surveys/interviews with people that have any experiences with sports/fitness as they are probably informed of the benefits of fitness in someone’s life. I started off with some research on “Muscle and Fitness” magazine as I found an online website with the magazine and I don’t have to pay for it. Therefore, about the magazine "Muscle and Fitness" and I found out that the conventional number of pages is somewhere between 140 and 150 pages per magazine. I also found out that there are somewhere between 20-30% advertisements of the magazine.

The printing methods used are web printing and sheet fed. Web printing is a fast way of printing stuff but if there is any mistake it will take a long time to correct it, another disadvantage of web printing is that the set-up is very expensive. However, the sheet fed for example is the opposite of web printing, the printing process takes more time but if any mistake is being made, it can be corrected fast and easily. CMYK is a printing process that refers to four ink plates used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black).

This is a spread sheet from Neville Brody. I like it as there is very good alignment and good color use. The words are nicely spread out with the right font size. Also the contrast between white and black looks really enjoyable even though it is simple

Neville Brody went to London College of Communication and Hornsey College of Art and he is well known for his work in the Face Magazine between 1981 and 1986, Arena magazine between 1987 and 1990. Also he is known for designing record covers for artists such as Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire, The Bongos and Depeche Mode.

This is one spread sheet from "Muscle and Fitness", a well-known health magazine created in 1935 by Joe Weider. It is published monthly by American Media Incorporation. The price for this magazine is 99£ per year (subscription), or £4.50 per issue; it comes as digital issue. What I like about it is that on the left, is a large picture and down below there is a description about the benefits of jumping rope and why you should do it. However, on the right side there is easy tips on how to improve your technique and also there is training sessions you could use in your own workout. I might do the same in my magazine, I might show up an exercise and throw in some facts about it and then explain the technique on the other side of the page.

Even though I was thinking to create a magazine for my Final Major Project, yesterday I watched a video and I realized that I could do a small book about a topic in fitness. For example, I was thinking to create a book about “How to build muscle efficiently”. This way I can combine one of my hobbies with the FMP and I will be more efficient in creating my FMP as I will do something that I like. By doing research on finding out how to build muscle I will also help myself with knowledge as it is something I am interested about. I already know the basics about it and also I know some people that might be able to help me with photos that I will use in the book or with any information about my topic. However, I have to think more if I really want to create a small book or just an article about this topic in a magazine.

It will be a good topic to write an article/book about it as many people nowadays hit gym and they all want to know how to build muscles efficiently. It will be beneficial for me to do it as I bought some e-books in the past and it will help me with the research. Also there is lots of videos on social media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram that could be useful. As a structure of how I will do the layout, on the left side I will have a picture with an exercise for example, and on the right side of it I will have the benefits of it, muscles worked will be highlighted on the picture.

I can get my content from the e-books that I bought, online articles, health & fitness magazines, people such as personal trainers, bodybuilders etc. My primary research will consist of online surveys and maybe I will print a small questionnaire to bring it in my GYM to ask people around to complete it; I will try to get answers from all age category people.

To keep up with my research I will create a Harvard bibliography and I will not do it the same as I did in my previous projects; I will have an alphabetical bibliography to be easier to track down from where I got any resources in my project. Something that really went good in my previous projects was the reflective logs throughout the project. This will be an important “piece” in my Final Major Project as it will help me bring my thoughts together and to see if I am going towards a wrong direction. Once I completed my magazine and I finished every material that I wanted to create for my magazine I will begin to work on my evaluation. I am intending to create a productive evaluation as I will benefit from it and in future projects I will not do the same mistake for example. By doing an evaluation I will manage to see what went wrong or what things I could have improved, it does not have to be only materials that I produce such as posters, photo edits etc., it can be even time management, planning, software used and so on. 

Any small details that I want to improve in this final major project will be that I will verify any information that I found online in more websites to see if the information is correct so I will have a very accurate research results. I will also try and do my reflective logs daily and I will try as much as possible to always mention any negatives that I might do during the FMP but always to mention how can I improve it next time and how can I avoid doing the same mistake next time. I will also save a file of my blogger each week so there will be less chances of me losing any work or deleting anything by mistake. I will also think to do my front cover for my magazine withing the GYM and I might ask a personal trainer to pose for me but I am not 100% sure about these details yet because things might change throughout the project.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

https://www.muscleandfitness.com/
https://www.famousgraphicdesigners.org/neville-brody
https://www.americanmediainc.com/
https://inkbotdesign.com/neville-brody/
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-living/the-mental-health-benefits-of-exercise.htm