Body Text Selection

I experimented with a mixture of serif and sans serif typefaces to ensure I had tested out a variety and have a good amount to compare together. I also adjusted the tracking and leading for each paragraph to improve legibility.

3 Favourites from research:

Devanagari Sangam MN- This is a sans serif font and I think it would be effective for body text because it is clear and legible to read and can be scanned quicky and easily for faster readers. The stroke is quite fine and although this keeps it looking very clear and legible, I want something a bit bolder for my magazine to make it look edgier and have more of an impact as all of my headlines and images will be quite bold so it needs to fit in with all of those and not get too drowned out.

Georgia- I like this font because the style is quite bubbly and it is legible and easy to read so would work well for body text. It is serif which gives it a little extra styling and makes it look elegant and classy. Although I like it and think it would work for body text, I don't think its right for my magazine because the style of mine is edgy rather than elegant and classic so I want something bolder and with edge.

Futura Medium Condensed - This is a sans serif font and I like it because it is quite bubbly which makes it easy on the eye and it flows nicely. It is also very legible and easy to read because of the bold stroke. The bold thick stroke also means that this will be the perfect font for my magazine because it makes it bold and edgy suiting the style of my magazine along with the fact it won't get completely drowned out and overpowered by the other bold and high contrast elements on the page.

Good and Bad Magazine Covers

Good Examples

I found examples of magazines that I personally thought were effective. This will be very helpful when designing because I now know what makes these covers effective and apply this to my designs. From this research I found that it is best to keep additional typefaces simple and keep the amount of fonts to a minim to avoid it looking cluttered and uncoordinated. I also found it is effective to integrate the text around the images by placing it in front or behind the blend them together and make the page flow better. Colour schemes should be kept simple and should be stuck to, and this stops the magazine looking busy and stops the colours distracting from the content and taking over the page.

Bad Examples

I also found bad examples of magazine covers and this helped me to see what to avoid when designing so I could make sure I didnt make these mistakes. From this I found that patterned backgrounds should be avoided because this makes the cover look cluttered and makes it hard to read the text. Colour schemes should be kept simple because too many different colours is very distracting and doesn't give the cover a clear and cohesive feel. The variety of fonts should be kept minimal because lots of different fonts becomes confusing and give stye cover no clear style as well as making it hard to know where to look and the cover just won't flow very well. I also found that the layouts where the page is halved doesn't work well because there is no clear focal point and the page does not flow well and looks very cluttered and confusing.

Headline Activity

For this activity we were given some existing headlines and asked to recreate them accurately by finding and using the same fonts and recreating the layout and colour schemes.

RIGHT SIDE: Original                                                                                      LEFT SIDE: Mine

Font: Bodini XT
To create this headline I had to decrease the spacing between the letters and increase the A's in size

Font: Bodoni XT and Gills Sans Ultra Bold
To create this headline I had to align the letters so that they lined up diagonally and alter the spacing so that the letters were closer together. I also had to change the spacing between lines so that the lines at the top and base of the letters were connected.

Font: Helvetica Neue Ultra Light
To create this font I had to decrease the space between the letters and between the lines and line them up to reflect the original. I also had to create my own W using the line tool because this was a custom change the designer had made and was not part of the existing font.

Font: Upper Case - Helvetica Neue Medium + LowerCase - Helvetica Neue Regular

For this headline I had to use a mix of the uppercase and lowercase letters to match the original. The uppercase letters had to then be decreased in size to match the lowercase and had to be done in helvetica medium instead of regular to match the stroke. I also had to add a 0.5 black stroke on the uppercase and 0.75 on the lowercase to match the stroke of the original headline. I changed the spavin between the letters and aligned them so that all the 'e's lined up straight. 

Font: akaChen

For this headline I had to decrease some of the spacing, align the letters to match the original and add a 0.75 stroke to match the thickness of the original. 

Font: Courier New

For this headline I had to decrease the spacing between the letters and add a 0.25 stroke to the font. I also added the lines above and below the letters using the line tool and created the spirals using the spiral and pen tools. 

Font: Futura
To recreate this I first made the background using the gradient tool and made various lines that matched the stroke thickness of the original using the line tool. I then positioned the font in-between the lines and sized it and changed the spacing to match the original. The original was a custom version of the futura font and the designer had added little flicks on the ends of certain letters so I added these in using the pen tool.

Font: Hand painted by me
This headline was hand made and was not a font so to recreate this I used a purple paint to hand paint it, trying to mimic the lines of the original as best I could.

Haiku Poems

For this task we created Haiku poems with a different brief for each. From doing this I learned the importance of spacing, colour, and letter styling (bold, italics e.t.c.) for emphasising words and this will be helpful when creating impactful headlines for my magazine.

This is the haiku I chose to base all my designs around. I chose this because it was quite descriptive so I thought it would be easier to fit the style of type to it and use them to illustrate it.

Image 1: Placing one word in italics

For this design we had to choose one key word and emphasise it using italics. I chose 'stars' because I think it makes the statement stronger and is the only word in the haiku that makes sense in italics. The effect of using italics in the statement makes the sentence stronger and have a bigger impact on the reader.


Image 2: Changing size to emphasise a word and playing around with white space

In this design I chose to increase the size of the words to almost fill the page, and then decrease the size of 'whispering'. The massive difference in size makes a big contrast between 'whispering' and the other words making the size of the text relate to the meaning of the word.

Image 1: Experimenting with size, weight, shades of one colour, style (italics e.t.c), and letter/word placement

For this image I used three different colours to help emphasise certain words. I made night black to represent the darkness of night, and made whispering a lighter shade of blue to make it softer than the other words which makes it look subtler and quieter and illustrates the meaning of the word. I emphasised stars in italics as with the first design because this gives the sentence more impact when reading it. I also bolded it for added emphasis. I chose to keep the size of whispering decreased as with my last design but I moved the letters around to give them the effect of floating along the page to mimic the movement of a hushed whisper floating across the wind.


Image 2: Free Experimentation

For this design I was free to experiment with colours/sizes/styles/positioning however I wanted so i decided to recreate a nights sky as the poem is about summer nights. I also wanted the design to relate to the image of stars that the haiku describes so I wrote the words stars over and over again and played around with different letter sizes and scattered the words across the background to create the illusion of stars. I wanted this to contrast against the black so made it white to mimic stars and then made the rest of the text a dark grey so that it was just visible against the black but didn't fit for attention with the white text so that the design didn't look to busy and was easily legible. For the word whispering I made it a light blue to differentiate it from the other words and had the sizing going from large to small to mimic a whisper travelling across the wind and to show the hushed sound of it through the text size decreasing.

Mood Boards

Mood Boards


Style Moodboard
This mood board shows the graphic style of magazine I want to design. I would like the cover to have a fun and laid-back handrawn style to it with hand drawn style fonts surrounding the vocal point of model and possibly some other small colourful illustrations surrounding it to add a fun and informal style to the cover. I also found a couple of inside pages that stood out to me because of the 'cut and paste' style where the elements look chopped up and stuck together with hand written style type that gives it a more informal and urban feel than a clean layout and classic typeface.

Style Moodboard
This mood board shows more examples of the style I would like for my magazine. I can take the same points as the previous mood board from this but it will also be an inspiration for my double page spreads, especially the image on the far right. I really like the idea of mixing bold colour backgrounds with the image of the model and a funky typeface and small illustrations wrapped around it and this is definitely something I can take inspiration from.

Cover Typography Moodboard
This mood board contains some typography based covers that are similar to the style of typography I would like to try on my cover. My favourite is the bottom right cover because I think it is really effective the way the text lines and wraps around the image and lines have been used to fill in any empty space to make the cover fully illustrated. I can also take inspiration from the way they have managed to make the masthead stand out amongst all the text by giving it a thicker stroke allowing it be still be a main focal point.

Typography Moodboard
This mood board shows some typography that I can be inspired by for my cover and for the double page spreads. I really like the idea of using a hand drawn style of typography for the cover like the on the image of the cover below. I also found some examples of more colourful hand written style typography and I could try something like this for headlines on the double page spreads to link with the style of my cover. I also really like the bottom middle image of the bolder colour block type and I think this style could work well for the fun, laid back and urban edge I want to give my magazine.

Masthead Moodboard

This mood board is my inspiration board for the style of my masthead. I really like the idea of having messy hand written style typography surrounding the model on my cover and I think it would be in keeping with this style if my masthead is also in this style so I really like the style of the 'rebel' and 'interview' and 'lone wolf' and 'love want' mastheads. I also think an illustrated style masthead could work as I want small illustrations mixed in with the typography as well so the other three mastheads could be an inspiration for this style of masthead.

Theme Moodboard

This mood board captures the theme and feel of the style and images of my magazine. I want a more informal, edgy, and urban twist on a high fashion magazine and I think images like the ones below wold reflect this. These are inspiration for the style of images you will find in my magazine.

Copy Of Double Page Spread

For this activity we had to choose a double page spread from a printed magazine and then replicate it exactly on in design using the same fonts, colours, image placements e.t.c.

This is the double page spread we chose. It was quite challenging because there were a lot of images and we have to work out the exact measurements for each one and it was hard to find the exact images as some of them were probably one offs taken for the magazine.

First we measured all of the positioning and gaps by hand and drew out the basic layout of the magazine and added on the measurements to help us when recreating it. To work out font sizes and the leading we used a transparent sheet with the sizes on and placed it over the text, finding which fitted best.

This is our recreation of the cover. I think it turned out well because the position of the images is accurate, we found the exact typeface and leading, and all the sizing is accurate. Doing this task helped me to understand the importance of being careful and accurate with the sizes and positions of text and images, and to remember to take even the smallest details into account such as leading and tracking.

Tutorial

For this activity we chose a headline from a news website and some related images to go along with it. First we made the headline and chose a bold sans serif font that is very legible to make it stand out on the page. We also decreased the leading to improve the appearance. We then made a subheading and centred it, coloured it blue, and put it in italics. We added a drop cap on the first letter of the main article, and chose a simple serif font that is very legible for the body text. We placed two images inside circle frames and wrapped the text around them to integrate them in to the page. Doing this activity helped me to understand the basics of laying out articles and making the pages more interesting and creative by integrating the text with the images. I also learned how to create effective headlines and subheadings by playing around with leading and the style of the font e.g. caps and italics.

Type Exercise

For this exercise I drew out the Garamond typeface by hand creating my name and date of birth. I had to accurately measure out each of the letters I needed and make sure the spacing between them was accurate and consistent. Once I had the basic template traced out, I rendered them in black marker by placing the template behind. I think worked well because the spacing and sizes look constant and I think I did a good job of making the stroke of each letter even and consistent.

Initial Research

The first piece of research I did for this project was to find magazine covers and double page spreads that I thought were effective that were any genre or style. This helped me to see which covers I found most effective and why they were effective so that I could take inspiration from these when I start gathering ideas. It also helped me to decide that I wanted to do a fashion magazine because I found these spreads and covers the most interesting and visually appealing to me.