Brickell City Centre

 One of the places I went to visit was Brickell City Centre. I previously went with my family in December for the first time, just one month after its inauguration, and had the opportunity of getting to know the place first before shooting for my magazine. This time I went with my mom, who drove 45 min all the way from Weston to Miami, just so I could take the picture. Thanks mom!

I got there around noon of this past Saturday. It seemed to me this was the perfect day to take picture; the sun was shining at the top of a deep blue sky, which set the perfect lighting to capture this site.   

When first entering the building, what immediately comes in sight is the larger-than-life sculpture that hangs as a ceiling. The Climate Ribbon, designed by architect Hugh Dutton is one of the largest permanent horizontal sculptures in the world, which has the purpose to shelter, shade, and cool the shopping center. Yes cooling. And it's because this sculpture aims to make the whole building, energy efficient by capturing the salty ocean breeze blowing in from the southeast and use it to cool the building in those hot Miami days. The intricate, white, abstract curves of the structure, clearly steps away from the traditional Art Deco architecture and blends into Miami’s 21st century dynamic minimalistic architecture.  But more so, The Climate Ribbon transcend art and strives to embrace and better utilize the powers of nature.     

I noticed how the architectural features of the building paired with these high-end stores, such as Giuseppe Zanotti, Stuart Weitzman and retail department store Saks Fifth Avenue, created a contrast  which helped establish a high lux environment where shoppers could spend a nice weekend afternoon.

The pictures were awesome, and everything went just as I expected.

-Viglucciaviglucci@MiamiHerald.com, Andres. "The Vice Effect: 30 years after the show that changed Miami." Miamiherald. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2017.

-"Miami's Architectural Guide." GMCVB. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2017.

-"TIME LAPSE." HDA Climate Ribbon. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2017.

Polisphilia

Finally I took my pictures!!!

Not only I feel a GREAT relief, but I also feel proud of myself. It not about getting it done. It’s about getting it done and making it right.  In the course of this weekend, I literally went down from Weston to Miami FOUR TIMES, in order to get all the pictures done. Four times I went down to Miami and I still don't get tired of that city. I don’t know if I would risk saying that it’s my favorite city in the world, cause i still have a lot to see. But there’s sure something special about Miami. It’s architectural landscape juxtaposed with the blue sea, is a perfect reflection of the diverse cultural and artistic development that has transformed the city throughout the decades. At a small scale, the diversity in this area has contributed to a transformation that can be seen in the kitchen of Miami’s most acclaimed restaurants. The art of combining different culinary elements from cultures around the world and fusing them into one single plate is the so called Fusion cuisine, which has quite literally turned Miami into some sort of “Taste Capital”.  This and SO many more things make me fall in love with that city every time I go.  

Throughout the weekend these visits to Miami were certainly reinvigorating. They helped me to reset the focus of my mind and allowed me to rethink how I wanted to portray the city so that the audience can feel their getting the best of the city.  On my next blogs I'll give more details related to each stops.

Urban Spots sample

Hey guys!!

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I was going to start working in the layout of my cover based on the information I gather from my previous case study. Below is the sample of the cover I worked on. Before moving into discussing the design and arrangement of the elements, I must clear that fact that this is a sample, I have not yet taken the picture that will be displayed as the cover image, so I worked with some internet pictures. This sample represents what will figuratively be our next city edition after Miami: Los Angeles.  

First of all let me clarify that we changed the title of our magazine. It was mainly due to some technical difficulties we were going to face when creating the “i” of “Cities”, with a magnifying glass. We were afraid it would look odd and therefore we came up with “Urban Spots” a name we believe is going to fit more into our theme and into the broad characteristics of cities around the world. to design the cover I used the software of Canva, which I found extremely easy to use and surf through.

For the cover image I chose a picture of LA’s downtown area at night, where the city lights are being shown reflecting on the clouds. The clouds are impregnated of an orange light, which makes white the perfect color for the font in order to create contrast. Once again the font is rigid and straight, portraying a sense of formality. Just below the title, we name the city edition, so that the readers know what city is being issued on. Following our sketch, I then proceeded to locate “Top things to do…” the name of an article in my two page spread, in the left edge of the cover. And then the name of the other two articles in my two page spread, “Most visited” & “Trending Restaurant”  at the far right edge. Again, I made use of extreme language and made sure that the extreme words were colored in a different color, in order to make them stand out even more and effectively grab the reader’s attention.

SOMETHING BIG IS COMING!!! Stay tuned.

Traveling Magazine Case Study

Good morning guys!!

So before we get into the nitty-gritty part of this project, early this week, I decided to buy two traveling/ tourism magazines and use them as a case study. This would help me decided upon the final details of displacement and arrangement of the different components of my magazine.

                                                                              

Lets first start with the cover. We can see that in both magazines the title is centered at the top and font the editors chose lacks curvatures and is a mainly characterized by straight lines and rigid edges, which gives the audience a sense of seriousness and formality. On the other hand the font is counterposed with very attractive landscape photography, displayed as the cover image, which is really the catch of the magazine. When making some research about magazines in general, I came across a website that studied the different type of covers for the different types of magazines they suggested that, “With a travel magazine obvious choice can be some beautiful landscape photography,”

Moving on into the cover lines, I identified two main characteristics: use of extreme language and use of numbers. Traveling magazines mainly rely in the use of extreme language on the selling and cover lines, but they’re not only limited to single words such as “unique”, “exquisite”, “best”, they also expand to the use of interrogative phrases, like “Why we’re all obsessed with this Lowcounty gem?”. This type of selling line entices the reader to wonder inside the magazine and find out the answer for the question. Numbers are the most efficient way to catch your reader’s attention in a short period of time. We must remember that our magazine is going to be displayed among many others, therefore we must strive to grab their attention the quickest way possible.   

For now, this information is enough to start working on the layouts of my own cover. Later, I will continue this case study in another blog, digging into the the science behind the displacement and arrangement of the main article’s info.

See you soon!!!

Very busy weekend...

Overall this weekend I’ve been working in my “Things to do” section. I decided I was going to do this section of my two page spread on the Miami Music Week, most specifically, Ultra Music Festival, which is the biggest event of this whole festivity.

Ultra Music Festival is one of world’s most famous electronic music festival. The festival has a duration of three days that traditionally go from Friday to Sunday right after or before Spring Break. Ultra attracts tourist from all around the world, who gather at Bayfront Park in Downtown Miami, to enjoy live music from world known DJ’s.

During this weekend I mainly went down to Miami to take pictures of the event and its organization.

I’ll talk a little bit more about what I saw on my next post!!!

Defining the design

Days after we gathered to reconsider the theme of the magazine, my group met a second time, but this time to start discussing things more related to the layout and design of the publications.

Obviously our three magazines share the same title, but have different content. The layout has to share certain similarities. This similarities are going to be in the presentation and arrangement of the content, font and colors. Here is a sample of cover.

The cover is going to have the title “Cities” centered at the top. “Cities” is going to be written in cursive font, and the “i” is going to be a magnifying glass. The magnifying glass represents the detailed content we are presenting on every city and sector. Below the title, the name of the city edition is presented.

The layout is might vary a little, but mainly this is the rough draft we are going to be using as a guide when building our magazines. The two page spread is going to contain, in one page, the “things to do” article which informs the viewer on activities that are going on in the area around the release time. On the right page, three small horizontal articles are going to be displayed. First one displays an acclaimed restaurant of the zone, second one the most frequented area/ activity of the zone, and third is going to include and individual activity/ area fitted to the zone. For example: Anabela is doing Miami Beach, as a choice for her individual article she might choose the beach, as it is something that’s unique of her zone.   

Constructive Criticism from our peers:

Hey everyone!!

Updates on this past week: my peers and I gathered up to discuss improvements in each others project and exchanged some ideas. So the groups we choosen by our teacher and they were mainly 6 to 8 people from our same class, but with different groups and projects.

When I went ahead and discussed general things related to my magazine, there was a uncertainty among my classmates: how were we managing to create a traveling magazine just for Miami and how many editions could we plan to make in the future with such a limited space? Apparently I wasn’t the only one to be asked that, my other partner Maria, who was in a different group, was asked about the same ideas.

After the meeting Anabela, Maria and Me decided to gathered separately in order to discuss the feedback we received from our peers. Based on that, we decided to make important structural changes to our magazine.

Among the most important changes we made to the magazine, was the fact that we expanded our theme from a “local Miami” magazine to a “cities of the world” magazine. That way we could ensure that our magazine brand can continue to produce copies of different cities around the world without being restricted to one in particular.  Secondly, we decided to release 3 editions per city, dividing the city in 3 different sectors. When dividing the cities in three sectors and releasing individual contents about that sector, we ensure that our audience gets detailed information about that area of the city in specific. In the case of Miami, we are going to divide it in: Brickell, Miami Beach and Wynwood. Same as we previously decided.

Now we can continue with the production of our magazine, with a more clear view of our product.

Keep you guys updated of what’s coming!!!