Question 1
How does your product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues?
The cover page of Buzzed magazine was crucial. It's the first thing my target audience (active 16-40 year olds interested in fitness) sees, so it had to instantly communicate both "performance" and "wellness." I constructed this layout entirely in Adobe InDesign, ensuring every element adhered to professional magazine conventions.
Dateline: MARCH 2026 | provides essential information for the consumer.
Barcode: Placed discreetly in the bottom right, the barcode is a fundamental technical code of print media, signifying its retail readiness.
By arranging these elements in InDesign, I aimed to create a cover that is both visually dynamic and functionally effective, drawing the reader in.
Instead of using a big camera, I used my professional gear in my pocket!
In order to create the "Grit and Glory" theme for Buzzed Magazine, I would need to have equipment that could handle fast movement and editing. While most students may be able to use a regular DSLR camera, I decided to use the iPhone 15 Pro to show that mobile technology can be at an industry standard for print media.
In order to create my cover and feature spread for this assignment, I did not use the regular "Photo" setting. I went into Settings > Camera > Formats to turn on Apple ProRAW Max (48MP).
Why? Photos are compressed into small sizes by default. ProRAW captures all of the image data from the sensor. This provided me with the "editing latitude" to increase the shadows of the gym scene and sharpen the textures of the athlete’s muscles without the image becoming "pixelated" or "grainy."
Timing is everything in sports photography. For the "Performance" section of my TOC (Image 1), I had to capture the perfect moment when the athlete is in peak tension.
Technique: I used the volume button to enable Burst Mode, which allows me to take 10 frames per second. I could then choose the perfect frame where the athlete's form is in perfect shape. In my production log, this is represented by "deliberate selection," which is a key convention in magazines where only the most heroic image is used.
For the "Wellness" shot (Image 2), I wanted to have a "soft" background to convey a sense of relaxation.
The Tech: I used the Telephoto lens, which has a 3x zoom, in Portrait Mode. The palm trees in the background became blurred, which made the subject stand out. This is known as "shallow depth of field," which is commonly used in high-end lifestyle magazines like GQ or Vogue.
The lighting in the gym is quite harsh. To control this, I tapped the screen to open the exposure controls and moved the sun icon down to achieve a darker exposure. This gave my "Sage" and "Red" tones in my final design a much more dramatic look.
In using the iPhone 15 Pro, I was able to quickly move from the gym to the outdoor locations without having to carry heavy equipment. With the 48MP resolution coupled with ProRAW, these images looked as sharp as those in any sports publication on the market today when I imported them into InDesign.
Hi!
In the second half of my Table of Contents spread, I wanted to take the reader from the "Grit" of the gym to the "Flow" of recovery. This meant that there had to be a complete shift in the visual language while staying within the Buzzed brand umbrella.
Hey y'all, I just logged into Adobe InDesign, and now I'm approaching the production steps of my process for my table of contents.
The Performance Side of Buzzed
For my left-hand side Table of Contents, I wanted to replicate the "grit" that comes with intense training for athletics.
Technical Tools: I created this design using InDesign with a vertical split. I used "Arial Black" for my "BUZZED" title because it's a heavy font. Heavy fonts are "loud" and "aggressive," which are desirable for a sports genre.
Typography: I used Andale for my article titles, such as "The Warmup." I liked how this font had a "technical" or "digital" feel to it. It resembles a stopwatch or a timer that you'd find at the gym.
Color Theory: I used InDesign's Color Wheel to select a "heavy," aggressive Red. Red is a "high-energy" color that evokes heart rates and adrenaline, which are directly connected to weightlifting images.
Photography: I placed my original photo of the athlete lifting dumbbells on this page. I used portrait mode on my iPhone. I edited my photo to have higher contrast to make the lighting in the gym appear "sweaty."
This is the Wellness side of Buzzed, so the tone had to change from "Work Out" to "Work Within."
I wanted to add "breathing room" with the design in InDesign. Although I kept the Arial Black for the "FUEL" part so that it still felt like the same magazine, I chose the Andale font for the "LAB" part of the title. This makes it feel a little more clinical and expert-led—like a lab report for your body!
I also chose to do the body text in All-Caps so that it felt clean and contemporary.
I took these photos in a yoga studio. I made very good use of Portrait Mode for these shots. I wanted the background rafters and fans to be out of focus, and the focus to be entirely on the form and balance of the couple. It’s a very serene and quiet scene that fits in perfectly with the "Balance isn’t found, it’s built" headline.
I think the hardest part was making sure the "Wellness" page didn’t look like a completely different magazine. I placed the Folio, or the page number and footer, in the exact same place as the gym pages by utilizing Master Pages. Although the color changed to a nice earthy brown, the consistency in layout keeps the whole project cohesive.
