RATIONALE

The topic of my zine is Pet Birds and I used different shades of green on all pages because it makes me think about nature and reinforces my main topic. I also tried not to use a solid colour for the background to make it look interesting but not distracting. I used a variety of different fonts that were easy to read so that it didn’t look boring. I also used images where it wasn’t mandatory because I think images make everything look better, for example a textbook with pictures is always better to look at. On the about me page, I added pictures of my own two birds because I had discussed about them in the text on that page. Another thing I did was that I created a custom template to make it look the way I wanted it to. I made it easy to navigate and simple looking. I also used black text everywhere so that it would be easy to read over the light background. I used all these techniques to make my zine look visually appealing because the visuals are the first thing the viewer observes.

For the media page I looked up images of six different types of birds that you can keep as pets and added them and their names on this page so that the viewer will know what each type of bird is called and what they look like. I also added two informative videos about birds to give the audience a better understanding of what they need to know before they get a bird. I added a short story on this page because I noticed that almost everyone from the last year’s zines examples added poems. I thought that change is good and also liked the story that I added. It was a theme-centric story and used a pigeon’s freedom as symbolism from what I could understand. It is good because it’s not only based on the bird. I tried to space out every element as well so that it wasn’t cluttered and confusing.

On my links page, I included five different links to enhance the audience’s understanding on the topics. For beginners, I included a link for birds for sale so they can maybe see how much birds generally cost, and a link for training their bird if they already have one. I also added links for bird seed guide for bird owners who don’t really know what to give their bird to eat, and also added a link for bird toys. The last link leads to a bird veterinarian’s website which might be useful for bird owners whose bird is not well or they can bookmark it for when they might need it in the future.