There is nothing amusing about a velociraptor attack.

Magazine brief redux.

This will hopefully compile all the of the information I need for the magazine brief (and I was one of the unfortunate majority), I've also reread the brief and the unit because I was fairly sure I covered it all, but I've realised that I haven't.

I started by looking at existing magazines, unfortunately this consisted of the few that my family reads, first of all my Dad;

• Shooting Gazette.
• Classic Military Vehicles.- Whilst this is well laid out (done by a professional after all) it's still pretty ugly.
• That is it.

My mum reads very few magazines, though she occasionally picks up Woman's Weekly or Heat or some other godawful glossy aimed at middle aged women (no offense mum), so, using the magic of the Internet I looked up a few existing magazines for analysis;

• Twenty inspiring magazine layouts.

Analysis of magazines

1. Modern Design Magazine issue 13, July 2008

With the contents page, the hierarchy on the left hand page draws your eye to the large contents header, then towards the images down the right hand side of the page, then on to the text on the left hand side. With the right hand page the eye is drawn to the pictures first and then the text, with the black background creating a pleasant contrast and easing the eye slightly, although this would cost more to print.

Both pages on the Zero Carbon House use a two column grid on the left hand page and a three column grid on the right hand page, the left hand being used for the body copy, the right hand page uses its columns in a fairly unusual, with a little bit of information in the left hand column, and the middle and right hand columns being reserved for a large image.

2. Dwell Magazine

This is my favourite of all the magazines I looked at, it uses columns in an unconventional way; for example, it uses a three column grid for most of its pages, but uses two slightly out sized text columns and leaves small amounts of visually pleasing white space (I think perhaps that the designer was influenced by the Bauhaus, and whilst I would love to emulate this, I suspect that I wouldn't be able to pull off breaking the rule of thirds whilst still making my magazine look good)

It also makes use of the Golden Rectangle on its page titled "Clearly Canadian", and whilst it uses a large amount of colour, it really seems to blend them together well, sort of like a charming patchwork, rather than an overly busy distraction.

3. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine

Of all the magazines I looked at, this was the most poorly laid out (which is strange seeing as they're all being designed by highly paid professionals). One thing that I have noticed with magazines (specifically gaming ones in my experience), when the artwork is important, but not central to an article, the designer never seems to know quite what to do with it.

The other thing I noticed about this magazine is the lack of positive space, they seemed determined to fill up as much of each page as they could, doing daft things like having unnecessary photos (everyone in PlayStation Magazine's target audience is going to know what a PlayStation controller looks like) and large splashes of eye jarring colour, combined with a poor use of hierarchy create difficult to read pages whilst upping print costs for no reason.

4. MM Magazine

This one doesn't seem to work oddly enough.

5. Modern Design Magazine issue 13, July 2008 (again?)

I think the link to this one is broken and going to the wrong place, but the pages displayed have some simplistic but very nice layouts, with the use of large images and large amounts of positive space.

6. MAP Magazine

This is a very rare thing, a magazine (or any kind of design work really) that manages to be busy in a good way, even though Dwell achieved this too, it doesn't go to anywhere near the the extent that MAP does.

It also makes wonderful use of block images and walls of text, but these seem to add to the charm, the designer consciously making it look like the type of magazine aimed at an older audience, with the content keeping it interesting for its target.

Information on printing costs and various things like that were hard to come across for a time, this is where moodle (the college database) and google come in, whilst I've linked to some of this before I shall now do it again comprehensively (and delete the old post);

• This is a link to the Gloucester College website. It has a lot of information on printing costs and the technical terms for printing, also their is a quiz, although you can only access it if you have a log in.
• An interesting article on starting a magazine on a shoestring budget.
• An enormous list of various publications that are doing something different with their layouts.
• The one thing I really listened to; a fantastic little article about laying out a magazine front page by Brad Hammerstron.

The next step is to compare methods for production and printing your magazine, then compare it to to PDF or POD (print on demand) magazines;

Now of course I didn't know very much about this, I've already looked at costs for printing but that's not too much help, it was clearly time for a quick google;

• Info on full colour magazine printing. For costing.
• Normal Printing
• The pros and cons of PDFs
• Print on demand Magazines.
• An online magazine that is either pdf or print on demand (saving massively on costs whilst limiting its audience).

Now the issue with normal printing is that most of the magazines won't be bought, as the last link says only about 40% of printed magazines leave the shelves, but the simple fact is that a magazine needs as much exposure as it can get if it wants to survive, hence why normal printing is the only viable option. Simply put; 40% of 1,000,000 magazines is much much better than 100% of 1000 (say for Pod or pdfs).

The Internet is massively popular, and this creates the problem of over saturation, if you simply see a magazine in Marks and Spencers that catches your eye, when you see its on your chosen study topic or how you make a living, you're more likely to pick it up than randomly searching for design magazines online (also who does that? No one, that's who).

After looking at all this I started sketching up my own ideas, which I have written about in the post below this, and once I'd gotten a fairly good idea of what I was doing I went on to create my magazine layouts.

Computer thumbnails for the cover.

Cover.

I chose the purple to contrast nicely with the cream of the artwork, and also because it's a fairly unusual colour to see on the header of a magazine colour, the title is paraphrased from a quote by "David Carson".

I've realised that this needs to be improved, it's got a little but too much information, and the image needs to be on the other side, as well as the fact that the grey doesn't stand out enough, I'll start by rearranging the layout and see what I can come up with (it turns out that long the way it's going to get much worse before it gets better).

To get my head around the problems that I'd created for myself I decided to really mess around with the layout without using the grid, the result is this cover which looks more like a book than a magazine, a badly designed book, I went on from this with a bit of a clearer head.

The cover is still far too busy, by this point I was struggling to find a way to fit all four cover stories on the front cover, I eventually realised that this was not to going to happen, the main headline was bothering me too, until I eventually figured out just what to do with it;

Using the Golden Section really helped the layout of the front cover, and whilst I've pruned off a little too much text I felt like I was getting close to a final piece I could be happy with.

The final cover! With a bit more jiggling about of the font and colours, and removing the bottom rectangle to make it look more like a magazine rather than a book, with the combination of Rockwell and Century Gothic finally working well together with the use of only two colours.

I used Rockwell and Century Gothic, as this creates a nice contrast between serif and sans serif fonts, whilst I could have used a more Gothic font for the article on John Heartfield I feel that this would have made it much harder to read, possibly stopping those with sight problems from reading the magazine or even purchasing it in the first place.

Sketch thumbnails.

Sketch Thumbnails.

With the background writing being completed along over the next few weeks, I recently moved on to doing the drawing up of thumbnails and experimenting with layouts, arguably the most important bit of this brief, and I've scanned these in (because it makes my life easier).

The X's represent pictures whilst the grey lines represent type, with white spaces being white spaces, the first few I did were taken from existing magazines before I started coming up with ideas myself.

These were the few semi professional ones I tried, but I'm not sure I want quite so much white space on them.

I liked the three on the left and have decided to use those as my editorial (feature) page and double page spread.

I also liked the double page spread I'd done, although I was originally planning to just stick two normal pages together I decided to go with this.

The rest of the thumbnails were experimental once id come up with the layouts I liked.

One day long magazine cover design brief.

Just to get this over with; DISCLAIMER: I do not work for Computer Arts, their logo was used entirely for learning purposes and I do not own any of it, all trademarks go to their respective owners.

I suppose I should put the bad up with the good on here, yesterday we were all given the task of creating a Computer Arts magazine cover using our own artwork.

I had several techinal issues along the way (printer, photoshop, colour modes and velociraptor attack) , which was nothing compared to some issues other classmates had (I've never heard such inventive swearing James).

Paul Rand

Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum, (july 15, 1914 – March 2, 1995) was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs’ NeXT. He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design.

Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 - 8 January 1948) was a German painter (with incredibly cruel parents, apparently) who was born in Hanover, Germany. Here is a link to a biography.

Schwitters' artwork immediately caught my eye when I took a quick glance through the artists works (using the magic of google images), now his friendly, mildy psychopathic grin has made me want to base my brief around him even more. I seem to be being drawn to the more serious artists with this brief, which makes a bit of a change from my normal approach.

Feeling Blue template.

After some work in photoshop I've created an image which I feel is surreal enough to turn into a painting (why a painting? Because I haven't done one in ages, and it'll look nicer than this five minute ps job, that's why);

John Heartfield

John Heartfield (19 June 1891, Berlin – 26 April 1968, East Berlin) was the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld. A link to a biography.

This was the first designer I looked at for this brief (I decided to just pick a random name to start with), choosing to base my work around this guy would give me a solid structure to build around, the man had an incredibly interesting life, and produced many extremely strong pieces (which are made even stronger when you consider the times he produced them in).

One out of two so far, that isn't bad!

A.M Cassandre

Adolphe Mouron Cassandre (January 24, 1901 – June 17, 1968) was an influential Ukrainian-French painter, commercial poster artist, and typeface designer. This is a link to a biography.

I've always quite liked Art Deco, which is what drew me to this chap in the first place, but it is proving difficult to find much information on him, other than the boring stuff that you can find on wikipedia.

It also doesn't help that his official website is totally nackered, so that's the first of the few artists I found interesting written off.

Initial Idea 2

A rough idea that I can actually see developing into something cool.

And unit 22 itself.

Assessment criteria
To achieve each outcome a learner must demonstrate the ability to:

1 Research, evaluate and demonstrate a clear understanding of text and typography tools. understand the function of typographic tools. Select and use the typographic tools necessary for the design of text material.

2 Use skills imaginatively to explore methods of representing illustrated text material effectively, produce imaginative and effective representations of illustrative, photographic and graphic imagery within page layouts. Use text material techniques effectively

3 Produce an imaginative range of rough ideas for page structuring and organisation of text/images. Create rough ideas for design solutions using illustrated mass text, make decisions about designs based on aesthetic and practical considerations and create a fully finished presentation rough of an effective design solution.

4 Produce effective and creative design solutions, evaluate the effectiveness of rough ideas for page structuring in terms of visual effect and creative impact, produce an imaginative and effective design solution.

Editorial Design Brief

The body of text;

"The aim of this brief is to identify and solve the problems involved when arranging information (text and visual information) on a page. Magazines require different priorities of elements such as images, headline type, running heads, pull quotes, captions and info boxes. You will examine the concept of the grid and evaluate its usefulness. Text setting for readability and style, decorative elements such as drop caps and rules should be discussed. By the end of the assignment you will be able to identify the different elements and combine them effectively to produce creative and readable layouts.
You are asked to use one of the designers from the list supplied as a basis for the style and possible content of your magazine
You are required to look at methods for production and printing your magazine. You should produce in-depth investigation into the pros and cons of using this method over as opposed to PDF or POD (print on demand) magazines."

What I need to do;

Unit 22 Editorial Design
Research files containing your preparatory notes. In addition you will need to source a text file and images about a leading graphic artist of the 20th century (list attached.) for use in your layouts.
Idea development sheets showing many different layout approaches. Use appropriate and recognised methods to indicate images and grey marker or "greeking in" lines for text areas.
All development work should be presented in a suitable format
A magazine “dummy" comprising of: a contents page, a double page spread followed by a single page editorial plus any other pages you feel enhance your design ideas. The design will show consistency over the pages, showing how selective design elements combined create an overall "look". The article must be about a graphic artist of the 20th century. Produce your page layouts in InDesign, print out and mount on foam core.

Herbert Bayer- Created experimental typefaces.

Paul Rand

David Carson

El Lissitsky

E.McKnight Kauffer

Abram Games

Herb Lubalin

Malcolm Garrett

A.M. Cassandre
- Very cool artwork.

Jamie Reid

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy

Piet Zwart

John Heartfield- Admirable, interesting images too.

Why Not Associates

Peter Saville

Saul Bass

Chip Kidd

Chris Ware

Kurt Schwitters- I like this guy's work.

Alexander Rodchenko

Initial Idea 1

This was very easy to put together, and there isn't much of a thought process behind it, it just sprang into my head.

Feeling Blue.

"You have been given an idiom that uses colour to help describe something...your task is to use this idiom to produce a piece or pieces of art work You have 2 weeks from the date you receive this envelope."

Last week everyone in my class was given an envelope with this message along with a phrase involving a colour (such as "Tickled Pink" or "Paint the Town Red"), it seems like I'll finally have something to use this blog for! Now I'm off to take emo looking pictures of myself (a poor model is better than no model).