IGN Magazine
For my Capstone project, I decided to create my own 26 page magazine titled “IGN Magazine”. This magazine is based off a real-life website called IGN that is operated by IGN Entertainment.
IGN is a video game and entertainment website that is popular with teenage and young adult gamers as an online source for the latest news on video games, entertainment, and video game reviews.
The goal of creating a magazine for IGN is to create a visually appealing magazine that gives IGN fans a seasonal update on all of the latest news related to video games and entertainment in a new and enjoyable way.
In addition, creating this magazine will also allow IGN to be seen out in the real world, displayed on a shelf to be discovered by new, potential fans and not only within the online world!
Planning
Discovery Document
To begin the process of planning for my Capstone project, I started my research and began writing a ‘Discovery Document’. This document allowed me to plan out my project piece by piece and get a general idea of the project overall and the context. I used the ‘Discovery Document’ as a starting point and continued my research from there.
Plotting With a Vision Board
In the next phase of planning, I created a Pinterest board to help get my creativity flowing. During this phase I began to figure out my content plan and social media strategy in the form of a ‘Planning Document’. To sort out the magazine’s pages, within the ‘Planning Document’ I decided to create a simple flat plan. This allowed me to sort out each section, article, and advertisement to their designated page in a way that would be easy to refer back to in the production process.
Filling Out a Gnatt Chart
Once concluding my ‘Planning Document’ I began filling out a Gantt Chart that allowed me to create a set timeline for myself. I used it to plan out my tasks, the weeks I should be working on those tasks and when they should be complete. I also used it to help me estimate the hours I’d roughly spend on each task, calculate how many hours I’d spend throughout those weeks and sum up my possible weekly income.
Creating a Gantt Chart helped me to manage my tasks, time, and budget using Google Sheets, Asana, and Toggl Track.
Production
The Mood-board
In the production stage, I referred back to the vision board I created and used it to put together a mood-board to visualize the theme I was hoping to achieve. The process of creating the mood-board helped me to put into perspective the branding I wanted to implement for IGN Magazine.
Designing a Brand Book
I put together a small brand book that highlighted the branding guidelines for this magazine. Not only did this help me get an understanding for what I wanted my magazine to look like, but it also allowed me to assess how I’d use the colour scheme, typography, images, and the logo.
Creating the Magazine’s Cover
After laying out the major details of my production plan, I set up my document using Adobe inDesign and placed all page footers with their proper titles and numbers.
I was ready to start on my magazine’s cover, table of contents and editors page. Starting with the cover, I decided that the main feature of this magazine would be an article about the upcoming movie “The Batman”.
The Table of Contents
For Table of Contents, I wanted it to be visually appealing to the reader without being confusing.
The Editors Page
Keeping the same consistent style, the Editors page displays two rows of sixteen IGN employees who contributed to all of the articles and reviews within the magazine.
Creating Suitable Ads
The next step of the production process was researching and coming up with ideas for suitable ads for the magazine. I created an ad for a gamer energy drink called “GFuel”, an ad for mobile movie ticketing app “Atom”, an “Xbox Game Pass” ad, and an ad for computer hardware company “ASUS”.
Completing the Sections
Once the ads were done, I was ready to start working on the sections of the magazine. IGN Magazine has four sections within it:
- Upcoming Games – Features articles about upcoming games and what to expect of them.
- Entertainment – Highlights the latest news related to movies and tv shows.
- Video Game News – A small section that quickly goes over big news related to video games.
- Reviewed – Features IGN expert reviews of select video games and their rankings out of ten.
All of the sections within IGN Magazine contain single page articles that are laid out in either a two column style layout or a three column style layout, allowing layouts to be consistent throughout the entire magazine.
Social Media Strategy
To promote the release of IGN’s first ever magazine, I created social media posts for their YouTube and Twitter accounts.
Starting with their Twitter account, I mocked up a post where IGN tweets out – announcing the release of their brand new magazine that’ll be coming out soon.
And for their YouTube channel, I created a mock-up of a YouTube video that is intended to be an announcement video with a voice over, announcing IGN’s first magazine. I built this mock-up all the way from the YouTube page itself, to a few of the suggested videos using screenshots that I took all with the help of Photoshop and inDesign.
Deployment
To check out my entire project click here.
