Portfolio: Travel Magazine Tokyo at your Fingertips

By Kerrie Tong

Contents
Introduction Magazine Proposal InDesign Travel Magazine What makes a good magazine? Design Elements Photography Inspirations Impacts on the Environment What have I learnt? Financial Consideration

Evaluation

Introduction
Assessment Task:
Design a travel magazine using adobe InDesign. Target audience is the Sydney travel industry.

In this assessment task I have created a travel magazine using Adobe InDesign. I have chosen to do Tokyo, Japan.

Aim:
To create a magazine that stands out while able to inform and persuade people that Tokyo is a great place to visit. I want to make it clean and simple with but most importantly stand out using different design elements. While creating this magazine I would like to learn new skills in using InDesign as it is not an easy tool.

How will I achieve this?

I will achieve this by first watching more tutorials on InDesign as it is not an easy program to use and to make a use of it watching tutorials and learning new tricks is the best choice. Also I will do some research on magazines especially E-mags and travel magazines and take a look at their layout and articles. After analysing the magazines I will use them as inspiration

Magazine Proposal
TOKYO What do I know about Tokyo? Why do I want to do Tokyo? Why is it so special?

Tokyo is a city of Japan which fascinates everyone with their unique culture, delicious food, amazing technology and many more. For this unit of multimedia, i would like to do Tokyo, Japan as the city of my magazine because the city and country interest me itself. I strongly believe that it would captivate many more people from around the world after knowing how great the city is. What do I know about Tokyo? Although I havent been or done much research about city I know that city is very unique and is one of the most visited cities in the world. From what I know Tokyo is known for their ultimate technology and has many new gadgets than other countries. Tokyo also has a wide range of youth fashion department stores and most of them I believe are in Harajuku. Why do I want to do Tokyo? I have chosen to do Tokyo for this assessment task because I havent been to Tokyo or Japan and I would love to go. The city interests me in many ways itself thus I would like to learn and know more about the city as well as letting people know more about the culture, food and life in Tokyo. Tokyo is wonderful inside but is also beautiful outside with their stunning streets and night life; therefore I would like to put their gorgeous pictures in the magazine to show people how beautiful the city i Why is it so special? Tokyo is so special because it is very different to other Asian countries. They have their unique culture and manners. They also have very fresh air and a clean environment which differs from a majority of Asian countries. It has distinctive type of tree or flowers known as the cherry blossoms. The cherry blossom is only found in Japan attract thousands each year already. Japan is an earthquake prone country but because they always have mini earthquakes, the people of japan are not scared at all when it is happening. This makes Japan yet another special country.

There are many more points which make Tokyo a special city which I am positive to attract many people once they know about it. I would like to use Tokyo as my city for my tour magazine because I would like to learn more about the city and country and let people know more information about it.

Introduction to InDesign
What is InDesign?
Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe Systems. It is a newer version of the Adobe PageMaker. This program enables you to design and develop your own publications. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. In this assessment task we had used InDesign to create a web magazine.

What is a Web magazine?

Web magazine also known as E-mag (Electronic magazine) is simply an online electronic equivalent of a paper magazine. An e-Magazine is an effective marketing tool designed to reach audience through a modern and fast growing form of media. Consumers are increasingly using the internet to conduct their own market research before calling up or going to the store. Web Magazines can able to have buttons and other items placed within the magazine for easy reading. Advantages of an E-mag: It is easily disseminated through email, Facebook, social media or USB sticks Provides accessible orthodontic and practice information 24/7 Saves on printing and distribution costs Can be viewed on most media sources including computers, IPads and IPhones

Travel Magazine
A magazine is a publication that usually contains an assorted collection of articles, stories, recipes, and images. Magazines are typically directed at the public and are often published on a weekly or monthly basis. There many type of magazines such as magazines based on fashion, food, entertainment and so on. A magazine can range from just ten pages and twohundred pages! Magazines are a great place to advertise products and services in fact most magazines have more advertisements than article insides. Some examples of popular magazines are Time and Newsweek

What is a travel
A travel magazine is the articles and images of They can introduce a one particular place. magazine talks about Tokyo, travel magazines aim is people to visit a particular

magazine?
same except it has places around the world. number of places or just Whereas in my the capital of Japan. A persuade and encourage place by introducing

them their attractions, culture, food and many more. They would normally include advertisements relating to travel or the place it is introducing such as hotels, restaurants, flight centres and so on.

What makes a good magazine?

A good front cover Careful font usage Good layout of text and image No clipart Appropriate use of colours Good articles
A good front cover A well-designed cover can get your magazine noticed. In my front over I have used a ratio of 5:5 for the name of the magazine Tokyo at your fingertips and a set of images of Tokyo. I have chosen photos that are interesting to my potential readers and gives them a straight forward idea of Tokyo. Careful font usage The choice of fonts can have a major impact on the overall professionalism a magazine conveys. I have only used one to two fonts in my articles; one for the headlines and subheads, one for the body text. My fonts are serif fonts since I believe that they are easier to read than san-serif fonts. I avoided using ALL CAPS as they are difficult to read. Instead to emphasize a word I have used bold versions of that font as an alternative.

Good layout of text and image To make the article easy to read I tried not overcrowding the information and images together. Some articles are out in columns as I feel that it looks cleaner and give enough space of the images. Instead of filling every black space with information or photographs, I believe that leaving it is a better option. Appropriate use of colours Avoid using colours that does not go along with each other or too many colours as it makes the page messy and difficult to read. It is important for the information and photographs to stand out from the others so picking contrasting colours from the back ground is a good idea. Good articles The articles are the star of a magazine but as my magazine is a travel magazine I wanted to keep the articles short and simple and focus more on the images. The articles are straightforward and every pieces of the information should be clear.

Design elements
Photography (see next page) Buttons Layout Colours background Buttons
As InDesign is a very difficult program to master, I have only learnt how to make simple buttons. In order to allow the pictures to al fit on one page I have many the title of each location or information a button which allows the specific image to pop up when the title is clicked. However there is only one heading or subheading for each piece of information and there are more pictures I would like to show, I have made buttons which are numbers so that once clicked another picture would pop up.

Layout

I tried making my layout as close to a magazine as possible which includes columns down the page and numerous images on the side, top or bottom. To make the heading of the page stand out I have used a specific font size so that it could be easily seen once looking at the page

Colours/ background Although I have tried using Tokyos flag colour- red and white, it didnt turn out as I thought it would because the red would be too bright. Instead I used a specific background for each page so that it can relate to the information on the page, for example a dark background for nightlife to represent the night and pink for shopping to represent the cute fashion in Tokyo.

Photography
Market research has shown that cartoons do not sell to adults. It is proven that photographs and images engage to customers than text alone making it necessary to include imagery on your magazine to help get the message across, therefore making it crucial to use good quality and engaging images that is suitable for Tokyo. Therefore to make a stylish travel magazine I have only used high definition images. This allows the audience to see the how beautiful Tokyo is and lure them to travel to Tokyo to see it in real life.

I believe that it is extremely important for a magazine to have many visual elements. Thus in my magazine I have used over 40 striking images of the different places of Tokyo. Having a

lot of images in my magazine I believe that it can appeal to the audience more because the city of Tokyo is so beautiful that words cannot explain its beauty. Also it can give the audience a better understanding of Tokyo as the pictures are taken straight from Tokyo. And so I have put at least one picture after every introduction of Tokyo for example their top attractions, accommodations, food and even their weather and currency.

Inspirations
After receiving the assessment I have researched a number of cities to see which one attract me the most, coming down to Seoul of Korea, Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia and Tokyo of Japan. After a long consideration I have chosen Tokyo as I had fallen in love with their night view, food and cherry blossom trees. After reading a few more magazines both relating and not relating to Tokyo I had a basic idea of what my magazine should look like. Some magazines I have taken a look at are Vogue, Ceci, Nylon and Elle Girl. Not only flipping through pages of magazines I had downloaded travel apps for Tokyo to get an idea of what information should be on my magazine.

I was inspired by the magazines slick and sophisticated layout and the apps clear and straightforward information on the place. I loved the way they used the background colour to contrast the salience. For example the black background in contrast her pale face or the white background in contrast to Mirandas tan body. With this I have learnt that the choice of the colour is very important. I have also learnt that the font and its size and colour are just as important to the colours of the magazine. I was deeply inspired by the magazine tokyoJounal. This is because I loved the colour choice they have made such as the red for the background which also symbolises the red on the Japan flag. As I have said before the photographs of a magazine is very important in a magazine so on the far right magazine, I loved how they placed the image on the first half of the page and the information on the second half to allow people to take notice of the picture first. Using these inspirations I have made the perfect travel magazine.

What have I learnt?

In this assessment task I have learnt: The basics of InDesign The basics of a magazine What makes a good magazine The city of Tokyo and it beauty Design elements colours, photographs etc. Photography InDesign Making a magazine Creating buttons Adding images

The basics of a magazine Layout Colours Articles

What makes a good magazine? Tokyo Attractions Culture Food Fast facts about Tokyo Colour usage Good articles Appropriate photographs Simple layout

Design Elements Photographs Buttons Layout

Impacts on the Environment

Results show that printed magazines use a massive amount of paper to produce millions of magazines and that the process of getting paper produces a large amount of carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas that helps cause global warming. It is also found that servers hosting digital magazines uses a large amount of electricity, that the common source of energy to get electricity is coal, and how environmentally harmful coal is. Electronic magazines do not use paper thus will save our forests and eventually help the world against all the other nasty things printed magazines do to our world. However instead of relying on paper, electronic magazines rely on electricity because they are stored on servers that are constantly on. That way, readers will always have access to an article but this will cause energy to be used more greatly.

Financial Considerations
There are many considerations to be thought for magazine and this includes financial considerations. Some financial considerations I have made for this magazine includes magazine subscriptions, competition and advertising on the magazine. Tokyo is a very popular which many people visit each year but due to this there are also many travel magazines out there which also introduce Tokyo. Since this is our first and only magazines I was afraid that people would choose to look and download other travel magazine that are more experienced and have more reviews. Thus we have chosen to make our magazine a bit shorter but still giving all the information you would need as well as having a cheaper price than other magazines. Although many people prefer E-mags these days there are still some people who like to read a hard copy of a magazine. Thus another financial consideration is the number of people actually reading our magazine and subscribing to it. Of course the more the subscribers the better but if we take long periods of time to upload something again readers will forget about us and might as well unsubscribe to our magazines. To prevent this I have thought of

updating magazines frequently for other places around the world or even volume 2 for the same city/ country as new things are being made and changed every day. Another way to earn money from magazines other from people buying and subscribing to it is allows businesses to advertise their products and services in the pages of my magazine. For this magazine, Tokyo at the tip of your fingers I have placed many Japanese advertisements on it such as, Tokyo fashion, sushi and teen music. These advertisements are not random as they are all based on the city itself so even if we havent talked about it in out magazine itself the advertisements can also educate the readers what Tokyo is like.

Evaluation
this assessment task I had to create a travel magazine using the program Adobe InDesign. In my opinion all Adobe programs are extremely hard to use and this was the same. While creating this task I have learnt so much more about the program, magazines and Tokyo. Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe Systems and is a newer version of the Adobe PageMaker. In the beginning of this assessment I had never heard of InDesign and know what it is and what it does. I found it very confusing and difficult to use at first because of the number of things it can do. Although after watching numerous tutorials of the internet I have slowly educated myself in using the program. Towards the end of creating my magazine I have come to realise that InDesign is such a powerful program which allows you to do some much. While using InDesign I have learnt the basic skills in making a magazine such as creating frames for images and text, creating buttons and making multi-state objects. Although they seem to be a little confusing and difficult to do at first, once you get the hand of it, it is actually not that bad. In

I have learnt that electronic magazines do save paper a lot which means saving trees from being cut which means that we are saving the world. In contrast printed magazines use up to millions of paper so that everyone could have a copy. This is not good for the world as trees are being constantly cut down and makes a massive amount of greenhouse gas. However electronic also have it downs. Electronic magazines use up a lot of energy since they are stored on servers which allow readers to read them any time. This requires an abundance of electricity. From previous tasks I have had in multimedia have already taught the basics of design elements which is colour, layout and font choices. However it is different with different things such as a magazine should be clean, easy to read and understand therefore choosing the right font and colours as well as the layout of text and pictures are very important. Throughout the task I have flicked through numerous magazines to get see how they manage to keep their magazine so great. Once again I have come to learn that time management is extremely important. At the beginning of the assessment I did not understand what we were doing and how we are supposed to use InDesign. This caused me to avoid doing it until it was close to the due date which caused me to rush the magazine and may have not done a better job. However I still believe that this magazine is wonderful because I know that I have tried very hard during the creation of the magazine. On the other hand, I have still enjoyed making the magazine since I found Tokyo a very interesting place. At first I was not as interested in Tokyo as now after I have finished the magazine. After this period of time of researching and writing information about Tokyo I have come to loving its culture, food and scenery unlike before were I only knew about the cherry blossoms trees. Now that I have finished in making this magazine I have learnt more facts about Tokyo and hoping to visit the city one day. In conclusion, while doing this assessment task I had many issues and did not like it at first but after knowing what to actually do I finally saw the fun of doing the task. I have learnt to manage my time so I will not have to rush it at the end which causes my work to be not as good as it could be. However I enjoyed doing this assessment task very much because I felt that I have learnt so much more things such as aspects of a magazine, creating the magazine and using the program InDesign despite I still dont know everything the program can do.