Hectic Week of Design

This week my plate runneth over with designing. I've had alot of designs due this week on top of the meredith design. But I think that the Meredith design really pushed me over the edge because I stayed up really late to finish it. I can't believe that I stayed for a full 24 hours without sleep. Yet it seems like I'm about to do this all over again.

*sighs* First off this week, I had to design a spread and a half for Global Journalist.



I was trying to come up with something simple but eye catching. I decided to use a drop cap to try to pull the reader's eye to the article. I also wanted to run the heading pretty big to try to attract a reader. I also wanted to use hierarchy. I think that it came out pretty well, though I believe that more could be done to it to make it more interesting. I was homing that making the two minor words "miss this" wouldn't attract the reader too much since it is a different color than than the rest of the heading. I ran the image at the top to try to keep the photo in a spot in case it runs on the left side of the magazine.



On the second spread, I wanted the photo to stand out from the rest of the spread so I ran the photo close to the top of the page and arranged the text around it. I also noticed when I switched these pdfs to jpegs that the second red line didn't come out on the layout. There is suppose to be another red line under the pullquote. Looking at it again before posting, I realized that I probably decreased some of the line spacing, run the font bigger and change the color to gray. I think that would make the design pop out more. When I can get back to computer with CS3, I'm going to change to make those changes and see how it works out.


On the third page, I decided that the text was a little too overwhelming so I decided to run another drop cap in the story about half way down the page. To also try to break up the overwhelming amounts of text, I decided to run the sidebar through the center of the story. I was also trying something new to see if it work for the design. I think that for right now it turned out pretty well. Much of my inspiration for this spread came from Mother Jones, Newsweek and other newsweeklies. I started to design some motifs into the spread to try to make the story look good but I decided that they would probably be too overwhelming for the story and would take away from the seriousness of the issue.

Like many of my fellow classmates, I had to design my Meredith prototype. I was really burning the midnight oil with this project. I tried to start on it early but my flash project took up so much of time that I was unable to get the project started any earlier. I will have to start improving that aspect of my life. I need to stop procrastinating.

I am in Readymade group one. The name of our magazine is ReMake. My group decided that we would redesign the magazine to target the audience of young adults that just moved out of their parents homes and into their own digs. The magazine has to target those groups of consumers but it must also get them ready to transition into the parent company, Readymade later shortly after college or whenever they decide to move on to their publication. Like many female readers do when they are switching from Seventeen to Cosmo once they get to college.

My prototype is as follows:



In the midst of a second wind early that morning, I realized that I could use Urban Outfitters photos from their catalog at least for the prototype. I didn't realize how big their photos are. They seem to have a pretty high resolution. Even though right now, there is alot of dead space in the photo, I think the type made up for that. My group wants a magazine that will entice readers who shop in thrift stores and resale shops. They like doing DIY things but they aren't necessarily homemakers or may not aspire to be that one day. I thought that using different colors and making the cover mimic a collage would reflect the grass roots attitude to that type of reader. That's also why I ran the square background behind the "Re" in remake.



With this cover, I was trying to keep with the same idea. Although I wanted to bring a little innovation to the cover, so I stretched the logo to the edges. I ran the motto underneath the logo this time instead of inside of the letters. I tried to shrink it down to where it would run inside of the letters but it proved to be too small to read. This time I ran a thinner font on the cover because I thought it would be easy to read if one was passing by it in the supermarket or bookstore. I decided to differentiate the larger story at the bottom by running in a larger font with an outline on the letters. I like it but I can't decide if there is a way I could improve it just yet.







Much of this layout was inspired Esquire and other male magazines. I was also inspired by cubism. I can't say how many times I was tempted to put a light motif or design on the page in order to make it look visually appealing but I had to constantly remind myself that we were trying entice more male readers to want to pick up the publication. I still think there were probably better ways to incorporate rules into the design. But I will work on that more later.

I am also currently working on my first feature spread. I will post photos of it a little later.