I felt really inspired this week. I think it helped a lot that we’ve experimented with content for the magazine last week, the next steps are way clearer now!

I’ve started this week by diving into the world of teen magazines to look at what’s in it now and how it’s structured. I loved the Dutch ‘Linda Meiden’, because of its various different subjects and themes. What’s really characteristic for their magazine is ‘Linda Favorites’, 5-6 pages about all new and cool gadgets. But yeah, it’s all focussed on consumerism instead of actually adding something useful to the lives of young girls. Magazines like these are usually unconsciously training teenagers (who are actually still children) to buy and always wanting more, which isn’t a good thing. So I’ve tried to collect some products that could have good impact on your life. Products that are environmentally friendly and will last for a long time, but also who books that can help these teenage girls to change something in their lives.

We’ve made big steps as a group this week. In the beginning it was hard to work together because we didn’t know each other at all and we also live in different places and were not comfortable to travel because of the corona virus. We still haven’t seen each other in real life, which is super weird since we work together so closely, BUT things are starting to get waaaay better. We’re more used to the situation and made it work for us. This shows also in the group work.

We’ve also talked to Rosen and Amy about our project. These conversations were really helpful for the process, they gave us insights in what to do next and how to use our skills and differences to complete each other in a sense. Rosen gave us the insight that we have in fact the perfect combination of backgrounds for a magazine like this: Fashion, branding, communication, photography & writing, we of course knew this but we’ve never realized how this could actually help us. She also gave us a lot of tips and recommendations for the magazine itself. Amy told us we should see ourselves as ‘the Powerpuff girls’, which was quite funny, but of course had a grain of truth in it as-well. Because of this, we’ve made two about the author pages where we explain our background and interests + a visualization of ourselves as an emoji.

Meanwhile, I tried to update my essay based on Teana's comments. I've talked to Julie about how I could at the situation of Victorian England in the essay without breaking the structure and main subject. She recommended the use of footnotes, which worked very well. I didn't have to ad a lot, so this was quite an easy part of this week's to do list!

The 'Favorites pages' experiment

Hi! I’m Ann, I’m a 21 y/o Dutch girl living in the North of Amsterdam. I grew up in the east side of The Netherlands and my favorite things in the world are cooking, arthouse films and long hikes in the woods. I also love getting to know new places and new people, to gain some new perspectives in life. I’ve always been a very social person, I’m in my best place when I’m around my friends playing games all night or discussing our thoughts, while enjoying a good glass of natural orange wine. Actually, the characteristics of orange wine are very much like the characteristics of all my interests. It’s layered and intense, but it also has a lot of freshness and it’s filled with surprises. It never tastes the same.
I’m also very, very clean and neat, because if my surroundings are cleaned up, my mind can be. I need that to keep some room for creativity and clarity, which I mainly use for doing research, gathering new insights and connecting the dots. My radar is always on and that does really well for my creativity. Within my branding studies, I've learned to get insights in people's needs and desires, I also learned how to apply zeitgeist and new developments into a product or project. I like to think this is an unique and useful combination that will be very useful when it comes to creating the zine.

MY 'ABOUT THE AUTHOR' PIECE

Okay, so the idea of this favorites page is pretty nice, but it's still under construction. The design of the pages should be more flashy bright and with a lot of colors, so that our target audience will like it. I want to write all the descriptions like the one with the serum bottle: funny, light and with a dash of sas. There's work to do!

CONTENT IDEAS FOR THE MAGAZINE