This exercise firstly wanted me to identify a magazine and and work out the grid theyve used when constructing it, I don't really have many magazines in the house so I chose an online magazine to review.
This was the magazine I chose.
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| Cover |
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| Page 1 |
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| Page 2 |
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| Page 3 |
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| Page 4 |
I chose to review the cover and the 4 subsequent pages to truly get a feel for the layout. The page is standard A4 with 20mm for the margin, this is pretty common for magazines as Ive found. Because it being a digital magazine, there isn't any need for the inside margin to be slightly larger to account for the binding process. From a glance it appears that the gutter width is about 1cm and they use at most 3 columns, however these are very small columns possibly even just a paragraph.
Page 2 focuses massively on imagery, most of the pages do however page 2 uses 5 images, these images are arranged really nicely so they fill the whole sheet up bar some small elements of white space so branding can be easily visible. All images use the same colour scheme to ensure consistency and to make it visually look good. I like the use of the black strip to place the text onto, this is offcentered to play into the rule of thirds. This gives the images a different feel because they aren't all the same size and the variation helps to make it more appealing and less boring and static.
Page 3 heavily uses imagery, in fact the whole page is one big image. They then chose to have a green strip to display the text on, this is effective as there isn't much text therefore it isn't over whelming. Images is in my opinion the most visually appealing elements of magazines. Good photography can make or break a spread.
I then selected two of the pages and the cover and then created a grid for them.
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| Cover Grid |
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| Page 1 Grid |
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| Page 2 Grid |
These were the three grids I created, I used different colours for the images and placement for the text.
I decided to base my magazine on the Earth and solar system, this way I can have a varied amount of subjects to cover. This allowed me to create variant covers quite easily after creating my original one on space. The thing I loved the most about this magazine layout I chose, was how It was centred around imagery. I love photography and this would be the style of magazine I would design if I had the opportunity.
I created my magazine grids with separate blocks of colour in photoshop, this allowed me to overlay separate images using clipping masks. The first theme I went with was Space. I found some high quality stock photography to use in the magazine. I then generated some lorem ipsum for the body text. However I chose to create my own header and sub header text as I feel like these really set the tone and vibe of the magazine.
The obvious difference is the colour and theme of the magazine, with the galaxies it changes the whole feel of the magazine, it makes it a deeper purple. I think that the images can have a different physiological feel on the reader, I'm not trying to manipulate the brain with colour techniques, such as the ones used in marketing. However it definitely changes the dynamic of the magazine, it makes it darker and there is less white space. Light images have the same effect as lots of windows in a house I feel it makes the publication appear open and expansive. Darker colours make it feel more claustrophobic and contained, this is ironic given the images are of space though. This cant be helped in magazines especially when its relative images to what the magazine is about.
Ive tried to be very impactful with this magazine, the images Ive chosen all feature heavy planetary destruction. My header for the magazine is "Slowly killing our planet". This will change the readership I feel to possibly a more conscientious reader who would want to take care of the planet. These are also more thought provoking images that could spark conversation amongst readers, its shedding light on issues that we can too easily ignore. Whenever I change the imagery on the page I always change the colour choice. The second page is a prominent example, I have a strip of colour which changes given the theme of the magazine. Ive tried to not use colours found the in the images rather relative colours, they're always light colours as well as this contrasts better with the black text.
I really liked how this one came about, this is the rain forest issue of the magazine, Ive done the same thing as with all of them and found appropriate stock photography to use. What I found with this one was that there was more big landscape photos, there was so much going on in each and different elements that are often missed when its a smaller size. I probably would change the design to a double page spread to accommodate this.
This is how that design change turned out, I feel like this has improved the magazine and I feel like it was warranted, It just looks seamless over the two pages and I'm happy I experimented with it in the first place.
I decided as well to incorporate some of my photography into the magazines, In this last unit I want to experiment with different medians and photography is one of them. I chose to do an issue on Lincoln. I went to Lincoln recently and took some photos of the castle and cathedral.
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