Christmas came, and with it was a long 1-week break for all RMIT students and staff. Thankfully, while I did take my time slacking off, I was still able to get some work done on the magazine assignment. 

Rather than being a pleasant break week, the Christmas week started off with mountains of troubles for me. It was at 5 in the morning that I received a message from Ms. Chi Le - a person working in the tourism industry whom I interviewed for my magazine article - saying that she could not provide me with the right to use her image in our magazine. Not only was this a terrible way to be woken up on a no-school day, but it was also a major setback for our group.

Amidst drowsiness and panic, another name popped up in my head - Sonny Side. Sonny is the creator of the Best Ever Food Review Show (BEFRS), a Youtube channel with nearly 4 million subscribers specializing in uncovering exotic foods around the world. While the channel amasses a very international audience, its office is actually based in Ho Chi Minh City - perfect for me to reach. With diligence and speed, I wrote a long email asking to interview the team behind BEFRS, trying my best while expecting the worst. 

Fortunately, two hours later, an email came from BEFRS’s marketing manager saying that I could visit their office on Tuesday, December 24. I could feel myself shaking in joy and relief as I was reading that email. As it turned out, the BEFRS team’s work ethic was such that they took no Christmas break, and when I arrived each member was already busy doing their work. It felt like a privilege for me to even spend a meager 20 minutes with Sonny for my interview, but thankfully all went well and within that day I was done with the first draft of my article. 

After that, I spent the remainder of the Christmas week editing the articles and layouts of our magazine, which was then reviewed in week 11 by Prof. Felix. While he was pleased with the majority of the spreads presented, he did note that I needed to be more consistent with my 3-column layout across all the spreads. Furthermore, he also helped us refine the cover page, making necessary adjustments to help improve the hierarchy of elements. 

It was also during week 11 that our class had a chance to be guided through the principles of graphic design, which were to be detailed in week 5 had it not been for Prof. Felix’s business trip to Hanoi. While principles like contrast, patterns, and hierarchy are not necessarily new for me, it was great to be reminded of them by someone trained and tested in the profession of graphic design. Afterward, this session helped me realize some fundamental mistakes I made while laying out both my magazine and my previous graphic design products. Hopefully, with a refreshing dive back into these principles, I could better burn them into my memory to apply to future projects.