Fawn Magazine Stage 2 - Week 6

This week I had an interview and studio tour organised with the Distillery, a letterpress studio found in Darlinghurst. I had my heart set on featuring a letterpress studio for this section, so was thrilled when they got back to me confirming it all. Letterpress is such a beautiful underrated art, I really wanted to give it more exposure. Gaia and I went to meet with Jen Fontaine the Operations Manager there. Jen was so lovely, she answered all of our questions and let us poke around through their samples and the old lead type they still had lying around. We also got to see a few demonstrations which was insightful. It's a very precise art that takes a lot of patience and skill.

A lot of time this week was spent preparing for the shoot that would be happening next week on Wednesday. I had confirmed all the resources for the shoot and just had to go and pick up the clothes from Faddoul's PR agency Sweaty Betty, as well as the clothes I was going to borrow from Evyie. 3 days before the shoot I got an email from Evyie saying due to unforeseen personal circumstances she would no longer be able to provide clothes for the shoot. In a last minute panic Sweaty Betty saved the day by providing me with some extra filler pieces and jewellery to shoot.

In addition to all this I also managed to do a little bit of designing. I lay out a few of the page that required no content, such as the masthead and stockist pages. I also designed 2 different banners for the website. These banners were to be place holder banners for the site until I get real advertisers on board. I had the idea of using a sky writing plane and a hot air balloon that would have 'advertise with us' written on them so that people knew that they were able to contact me in regards to advertising within this space.

JB

Fawn Magazine Stage 2 - Week 5

This week I followed up with Faddoul, as I was still quite interested in doing a shoot feature on them. I got an email back from Jessica the head designer at Faddoul saying that she hadn't initially seen my email and would be very interested in loaning product for our shoot. With that in mind I started planning the shoot.

The garments were very sophisticated and sleek, so I thought the look needed to be high fashion. I decided I wanted to shoot it in a studio to achieve this look, which worked well as Cheryl was shooting a shoot on location for me so we would have one of each appearing in the magazine. I came across some images in Surface magazine that I fell in love with, and decided I wanted to achieve a similar look in the editing process of my shots. It was almost like a blurred high contrast effect that added a point of interest to the images, and really made them stand out.

I finally found a hair stylist for the shoot, a lady named Nicola Johnson that worked with a friend of mine. As well as doing hair she is also a make up artist, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the make up artist I was originally going to use was not available on the day I wanted to shoot. Gaia worked her magic and managed to get in contact with an amazing photographer Ben Scott, who on top of agreeing to shoot for us also offered up his studio as the location.

In addition to all the shoot preparation I also managed to go and shoot graffiti art walls this week in St Peters. There is a cute little alley way called May Lane about 5 minutes walk from St Peters station that was full of incredible graffiti art pieces. I got some great shots from my trip there.

JB

Fawn Magazine Stage 2 - Week 4

I spent a lot of this week following up on emails I sent in week 3. After getting good initial interest form both Emma Mulholland and Violet & I, I did not get replies from my following emails which caused me to worry about the shoot sections.

I decided to contact a few more designers that had interested me. These designers included Faddoul and Evyie. I had a great response from Evyie, saying that they would love to be involved. I did not receive a any response from Faddoul.

During the week I posted an advertisement on Pedestrian TV looking for a hair stylist for the shoots. I had already found a model willing to work with me, as well as a photographer and makeup artist, although I was still missing a hair stylist.

I got a lot of response from the ad about people interested in working with Fawn, however none of them happened to be hair stylists. One email in particular had caught my eye from a lady called Cheryl Tan. She was a freelance fashion stylist trying to get her work into publications. By looking through her portfolio it was easy to see she was incredibly talented. She had a couple of shoots that were already produced that she said I could use. Unfortunately the shoots did not fit my winter theme, so I contacted her and asked is she would be able to put a shoot together in 2 weeks for Fawn Magazine's Winter issue. After confirming that she would be able to, I was able to check that item off my agenda to free up more time to focus on the business side of things.

As for the emails I sent to advertisers, I got responses back from Qantm and In.cube8r saying that they would be happy to advertise. Qantm said that they would be happy to contribute a monetary amount to me while In.cube8r were interested in doing an advertising space swap on our website.

In addition to this I continued to work on my layout and created a post for the website to start generating interest in the site.

JB

Fawn Magazine Stage 2 - Week 3

This week I spent a lot of time contacting people in regards to content and advertising. I spent hours looking through the designers on Young Republic, an online store for emerging Australian designers. I bookmarked quite a few that I liked, but there were two in particular that I found that really stood out to me.

The first was Emma Mulholland, a quirky young designer who has just recently broken onto the fashion scene in the past year. I thought her design would be perfect for a shoot as they are so out there and different from anything else I've seen.

The second was Violet & I, which designs were quite opposite to Emma Mulholland's designs. These designs were feminine and pretty. It would be quite a contrast if we had them both featured in the magazine.

I ended up contacting both designers about being featured in the magazine, and got a good initial response from them.

In addition to this I started looking into which advertisers I could contact who might be appropriate for Fawn. There were a few that firstly came to mind; Qantm College, Capital L (a boutique where I casually work), Young Republic, The Finders Keepers and In.cube8r.

I sent emails with attached media kits to all these companies, with a proposal for advertising with Fawn. Through this research of advertisers I had an idea to include an article on In.cube8r in our Fawn Feature section. There was quite an interesting story behind the company and thought it would be perfect to include. I added this into my email to Isy the Founder of In.cube8r, asking if she would be interested in a feature as well.

JB

Fawn Magazine Stage 2 - Week 2

Taking advice from my first meeting with Leonard, I began to research possible delivery platforms for the magazine. The first possibility was to export the magazine as an SWF file to be used on the website. This meant no external operator was needed. However this method required my web page width to be quite large, as there would be no zooming capabilities.

The only other suitable platform I found was Issuu, an online publishing platform used by many of the other online magazines I researched. This seemed like my best option as all you needed to do was upload your PDF, then use the provided code to display a read on your website. It also included an element of interactivity to the magazine, as any URL's or email addresses would automatically link for the reader. It also means that my magazine would become a part of the Issuu online database of magazines, which means people searching that database would be able to find my magazine easier.

I set aside some time this week to meet with my friend Gaia. Gaia had helped me with my initial phase on Fawn, and was going to come on board for this second page and help with the marketing and content development of the magazine. During our meeting we discussed where we had left off with the project, making notes of all the areas of the magazine that still had content missing.

During this meeting we clearly defined what we wanted from each section of the magazine. Through this we came up with ... distinct sections. Fawn Bits, Fawn Loves, Fawn Features, Fawn Illustrations, Fawn Talks, Fawn Style, Fawn Studios and Fawn Jobs.

Here is a quick run down on what each of those sections would include:

• Fawn Bits - This would include a seasonal calendar, in particular showcasing upcoming events.
• Fawn Loves - Items or news that the Fawn team personally love.
• Fawn Features - 2 feature articles. This was to be the graffiti article shoot and one other undecided.
• Fawn Illustrations - This would include a spread of illustrations from my friend Candice.
• Fawn Talks - 2 designer interview. This was to be an interview with designer Kiran from Kid., as well as one other undecided.
• Fawn Style - 2 fashion shoots.
• Fawn Studios - An image heavy spread and interview on a local studio.
• Fawn Jobs - A featured creative job interview

Lastly I started creating mock up layouts for Fawn. Leonard suggested I design the magazine first then input the content when I had it as it would be easier. I took inspiration from other magazine layouts and started creating layouts for the Fawn Studios page and Fawn Illustrations page.

JB

Fawn Magazine Stage 2 - Week 1

After taking some much needed time off I got back into the swing of things with a fresh outlook on the magazine.

During this time off I decided I was not happy with the original design concepts I have created for the magazine, so in this first week I began to create new style sheets for Fawn. I wanted to style to be quite simplistic, focusing heavily on designing original layouts. I took inspiration for other magazines such as Frankie and Yen, as well as online titles such as the ASOS magazine.

In my first week I met with my new supervisor Leonard Sii. As Leonard was taking over as supervisor for my project, I spent this time going over my plans for Fawn Magazine. I filled him in on my plans to redesign the magazine, and also mentioned that I wasn't happy with the design of the website anymore as it reflected the design style of my previous magazine design. I also discussed the fact that I was very serious about turning Fawn Magazine into a business and would be continuing on with it after my time with Qantm was finished. He suggested I start looking for advertisers as soon as possible, even if they were only able to contribute little every little bit would count.

This suggestion changed the direction of the magazine slightly, not only would I need to focus on creating content and an eye catching layout for the magazine, I also needed to think about the business side of thing. This meant looking at things over the long term, not just short term goals to complete my project.

JB

Fawn Magazine Website Progress

After much frustration and hours of work I have finally produced the basic structure and design for the Fawn Magazine website. 

Below is a snapshot of the Wordpress theme I used as a base to design my theme, and under that is a sneak peak of the Fawn Website home page.

I implemented my own HTML and CSS coding into the original theme to create this design. The black sections are for proposed banner advertisements.

NU BLU THEME

FAWN MAGAZINE THEME