AICE Media Studies Project

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3xUFQ3ehts&feature=youtu.be

    This is the entirety of my magazine for AICE Media Studies AS Level. The title is Weather or Not, as it's an informational magazine about the weather.

 

      The title of the Space Weather article, though the entirety of the design is a 2-page spread, is going to attempt to make a page its 'own' while not taking up too much space for the article or too little space to seem significant. It will probably be in a muted yellow/gold font, maybe with a cool-temperature green for the subtitle, and the rest of the text may vary in color (from black to white on a possible grayscale) because of the difference in lighting in the background. The background is a modified image of the sun taken in a mirror to make it appear as it if were in space.     There will not be any additional/secondary images, as ones I have don't pertain to the article. Regarding the appeal to a target audience, this article has the job of setting a light-hearted yet professional tone. My writing can be irreverent and attempt to be comedic at points, so using that while transitioning to informational segments may or may not be a challenge for this t...

     For the story on Typhoon Tip and Hurricane Patricia, the spread lacks a dominant or secondary photos, since I couldn't take a picture of a hurricane or hurricane-related conditions while planning the magazine. The headline is meant to be part of the article, possibly indicated by the addition of a comma to help the audience comprehend this while still keeping it at a larger font on a distinct colored background for it. The byline of articles in the magazine would indicate the sources as well as the writer, as these are informational articles, and would be placed at the end of each article. Rather than one 'feature story' (due to my varied interests and the wide variety of meteorological events that can occur in Spring in the U.S., there are planned to be two; this one, and one on Space Weather. Secondary content might include definitions and long-term forecasts. The Space Weather article will have a sub-section of information, as will the Tip v. Patricia article. ...

     The central image is the background of each page, which may or may not challenge the idea of having them in the foreground vs background, and mastheads are less cohesive than they could be due to the wide variety of topics portrayable in meteorology. There is no puff or puffery of any kind, as the scientific nature of the information in Weather or Not is meant to be factual and disregard opinion to be as factual as possible. Pugs and ads are exempted because this magazine is not meant to be promotional; rather informational with a professional facade that makes it distinctly different from other magazines. Conventions are mostly challenged by the color and lack of clutter in this magazine's design that most magazines don't have, most evident in the cover and the visibility of the vivid background imagery. One social issues are challenged in this magazine, as no other humans than myself worked on it, and the information, while being from a scientific area, only refere...

     The product has limited engagement with audiences, as it is a magazine article rather than an interactive medium, but the tone of the writing in the two articles it has is meant to make scientific information comprehensible while still true, appealing to weather geeks and everyone else that hopefully would have a greater interest in weather by reading this. Regionally, this is limited to English-speaking countries, but could have altered versions per language, and is far more accessible in other nations than I thought it would initially be due to non-U.S.-based content. The forecasts would be difficult to implement without forging that barrier, but it is possible that different regions could have different forecasts if marketing for Weather or Not would be that ambitious. Per the technological usage of today, the magazine would likely be electronically copied for online reading, and might stay that way for saving resources. A new magazine would come out every month o...

     My production skills likely mostly developed in creating something visual that balanced creativity and color with appeal, lack of clutter, legibility, and relevance to the topic, the latter of which is still difficult without the necessary images for that depiction. Regarding writing, my efforts in the first article were rather confused and lackluster, as I was attempting to write in a way I hadn't in a while while attempting to stay professional and comprehensible (which I had never done before simultaneously). Editing the first one helped me understand what I wanted these articles to look like, but I'm not sure if that directly helped the quality of my second article's quick creation (it didn't hurt it, but I don't think it influenced it due to the time difference between making them). Making the second article quickly (but not rushing it) proved better than taking a rather long time (multiple days) to piece together the cyclonic article, as my thoughts were ...

     I used Blogger for logging my progress and keeping ideas for continuous revision, and then changed each version until I had what I wanted for the project. The images were taken with a generic phone camera, which used videos and slow motion for attempting to capture more dynamic images, as well as panoramas and lighting adjustments for certain illusions and capturing larger-scale things (such as clouds or the sun), with the graphic for the Space Weather Article made in Scratch, the cover designed in Scratch add made in Pages, and the rest of the magazine made in Pages. I had to use Lunapic to make the Scratch graphic transparent, which was a flaw in the plan, but the design was relatively easy to create in Scratch rather than it might be by another method.

     While I didn't change the Space Weather draft due to more active editing and time constraints, I made several changes to the Tip V.S. Patricia article, mostly for conciseness and coherence. Many sentences had grammatical errors, disrupted the flow of the article, could be combined, and/or didn't say anything useful.      The project was rather fun to create. I had the most fun attempting to take pictures and subsequently figuring out what my articles would be about, and I was nearly able to write about tornadic activity due to a tornadic thunderstorm that passed a few miles northeast of where I was in early April. I thought the designs for the articles and cover was gradually improving over time when I returned to edit, and I think the best artistic work I did was for the cover.      I'm least happy with the article designs, especially the one about Tip and Patricia, since it lacks a table and was heavily restricted due to available foot...

     Weather or Not you think this sounds a tad...non-existent..., that’s what it is and that’s what it’s called.        (It’s also what this article is about.)      Space Weather is quite different from Earth-based meteorology; it’s the study of events beyond our atmosphere that, ironically, are monitored in case they do happen to have an effect within the realm of our atmosphere. Focuses vary from asteroids/meteors to solar flares, sunspots, geomagnetic storms, and radiation. It’s incredibly rare that anything considered Space Weather would be dangerous to us, since the sun’s behavior at about 93 million miles away isn’t often strong enough to even cause minor radio blackouts, and asteroids less likely become meteors that aren’t that common (in our area) and, much more often, are small to begin with.       Although Space Weather events often lack a threat to us, which we owe greatly to the protection of the E...