& the Second Reflection

My writing is always improving.  Constantly I create a piece of writing that amazes myself, and this last piece is no exception.  I improved on a lot of things in the last article for the magazine, and these things all really made it more interesting and relevant.

The biggest things I improved on was various grammar and word choice tips such as rarely use "ing"verbs, as it takes away from the impact being a passive verb, and rarely using sledgehammer words such as really and extremely, because using them frequently loses their strength.  I also improved on all encompassing article formatting tricks such as the loop method where you start out now in the timeline, then go back in time to the beginning of the articles subject and come foreward in time from there, ending in the future.  I also learned to always have a strong intro and conclusion in order to have a fact heavy but not so interesting center.

I think I need to improve on research, at least with this article.  There was a fact that I left out of this that could have given it more evidence, but because I didn;t research it enough, I didn't have it refined enough to use in the article.  The only real way I think I could improve that is by spending more time on it, or try to refine my searches more in google.

I think that I have learned a lot about writing during this project, and it has really shined a light of knowledge onto me, in a sense enlightening me to an amazing technique to always have your article be interesting and never be really weak.

& the Reflection

This magazine was a huge process to go through.  My article alone went through 4 drafts, which aren't really that many, but it could be counted as 5 if you include the original blog entry.  The drafts helped a lot, and through it I helped a lot of other people improve their drafts.  After that was all over, I, being an editor for the magazine, formatted various articles into their pages for the magazine.  This came along with a lot of work on Photoshop and InDesign.  The articles ended up turning out great after a few good ideas by other teachers and peers, and numerous revisions.  After all of the formats where finished, they were compiled and sent off to the printer.  The next day, we got proofs back and had to work on tons of revisions.  I went through a large section of the magazine with a partner and fixed various pictures contrast in order to bring out both the whites and the blacks.

This whole process went well and was very fun to take part in.  I do feel as though my InDesign skills have gotten much better, because now I can fly through creating layouts and the likes with little effort, whereas with the last project we used InDesign I was sort of flopping around on whatever I would get a grip on.

All in all I think that the whole team did a great job with the magazine.  All of it has a distinct look, yet is personalized to each person based on the formatting.  I think that the whole magazine in itself is a perferct model of a perfect project, because everyone who worked on it worked to their fullest, and it shows.