I came across this magazine over break right after we had completed our magazine projects, and my eyes were catching every little layout mistake. This was one of the big ones and I took a picture of it to share with a friend in graphics who I knew would understand my disbelief that someone was allowed to send this to print! The pictures in the magazine were also very overexposed and it was just overall a bad layout job.
This photo uses the typography in a really interesting and clever way. It caught my eye instantly as I was looking through different magazines to help inspire me for our last project.
For those who want to use a dark background with text on top, this is a great discussion of which fonts are most readable in that type of situation. I definitely needed some guidance on what fonts are legible in white on black for my magazine, and I think this could be helpful for the web design project as well. The discussion thread can be found here.
For the magazine project, I tried to think of something that I could get excited about designing. While watching TV one night, I decided that I would enjoy addressing the issue of Michael Scott’s, aka Steve Carrel’s, departure from NBC’s hit show The Office.
For my title, I decided on Coliseum, as it would be an entertainment-oriented publication. I used the Trajan Pro font because I liked the regal tone it gave off. For the headline, I used Courier New, the font used in the opening credits of the show. Through this use, I feel a potential fan would feel more connected to the story. These fonts are carried throughout, and are joined by Times New Roman for the body of the text. This was accomplished simply through trial and error in determining which fonts I liked the best.
I tried to use pictures that depicted the many faces of Michael Scott. On the cover, he is trying to be serious and business-like, while on the first spread he appears more innocent and eager to please. In the photograph on the second spread, the characteristics of Michael and the two people most likely to replace him as manager appear in ways that demonstrate their personalities.
My sidebar was meant to represent a bulletin board that an office would have, complete with the post-it note I designed in Photoshop as its title.
Though extremely time consuming, I found the magazine project the most enjoyable task in this class thus far.
Magazine Rationale
GRA217-2
Jianglin Gui
To be honest, this is a rush work. I changed the theme of my project twice: from lamp design to a Singapore singer and finally to Leehom Wang. I dropped the formal ones because I tried so hard to find good pictures both eye-catching and with really good quality, but I failed. I really loved my topics so I continued searching and didn’t change the themes until the last minute.
I want to deliver the Asian culture via my magazine for people who are favor in Asian culture. I narrowed down the topic to just focus on music. That’s the general idea about my magazine.
This particular issue is introducing Chinese American singer Leehom Wang who is a shining star in Asian especially music market but is rarely known in the U.S where he is from. Leehom is a perfect example to emphasis Chinese culture since it is also his vision to combine his work with Chinese culture and he has made several albums concerning Chinese traditional culture.
It’s easy to find his pictures with Chinese traditional culture elements like dragon, Peaking Opera and the Chinese traditional wooden chair that I choose to use to keep a consistence of the theme. But the pictures I choose actually don’t provide perfect pictures for immediate use. All of them have website logos or watermark and are a little smaller to put in the right positions. I had to open every file in Photoshop and use tools like clone stamp and color sampler. The work really took time but the result was quite pleasant since the changes I made fit well into the original.
The article I chose is a CNN interview with Leehom Wang. I originally planned to put Leehom’s profile into the side bar but I found out that it is quite difficult to arrange the context in that side bar, so I put the faces of some his albums instead, adding more balance. All the colors of the text or the background were chosen within color sampler tool so the group of colors together doesn’t look interrupting.
This project was the most cumbersome for me, as I’m sure it was for everyone else in our class. I decided to choose a topic for my magazine that I could actually relate to, and that was traveling during the night. My magazine is called “Red-Eye” in reference to the last flight each evening at airports (which is often called the ‘red-eye’ flight), and if this magazine were to be put in publication, it would contain content exclusive geared towards an American traveler who wants to get to know worldly cities once the sun goes down.
With this in mind, you’ll notice that I have only used photos from dusk until dawn, and all my photos were taken off of Google Images. I picked Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, because it is once of my favorite cities in Europe, and it is often overlooked by many tourists when they visit neighboring countries like France and Germany. The sidebar (or something similar to it) discusses smartphones that are essential for any world traveler, and I feel that it complements the article because many foreigners on vacation do not realize that their phone may not work outside of the USA without first taking some special precautions.
The photos I chose are powerful and use bright colors to contrast the darkness of the rest of the world when they were taken. I used the purple from my first spread and carried that color swatch throughout my magazine, and I also pulled a shade of green from the photo inside club Karlovy Lazne, as I thought the green and purple looked great together. The type used in the feature’s body is Adobe Garamond Pro at 10pt, while I used Cochin and BlairMMT as my additional fonts on the cover page and feature title.
Overall, I’m satisfied with my magazine project, but I wish I had more time to work on it. I found text wrapping to be more tricky than I expected it to be, and I hope you can see how much time I put into my feature (40+ hours). The final product, in my opinion, is easy-to-read, flows logically, and uses large, striking visuals to break up the otherwise large amounts of type in the feature.
I know everyone hates Miley Cyrus, but I don’t. I’ve been obsessed with her since high school. I think she’s beautiful, charming, funny, and has one of the most unique voices out there, even if it is not traditionally what you would call “amazing.” So when you told us to do our magazine on something that we are passionate about, I knew Miley would be someone I could bear spending hours after hours and days after days in the computer lab with.
The next question is, why did I do what I did for this magazine? Miley has undergone an undeniable transition over the past few years from the cute little girl everyone knows from the hit show Hannah Montana to a surprisingly over-sexualized 17-year-old performer. The general consensus I’ve gotten from my peers, the media, etc. is that Miley has grown up too fast. She is only 17 (18 as of today!) and the outfits she wears, the dance moves she does, the songs she sings are all way to raunchy for a girl of such a young age. She is following the same track is the Britneys and the Lindseys that came before her. She started out as a wholesome member of the Disney team, and very quickly matured into what people like to call “a slut.” In essence, people frown upon this, think it is terrible, and an abomination of what a teenage girl should be.
My magazine spread says the opposite. Visually speaking,it celebrates Miley’s newfound sexuality, and the magazine’s title, “Edge,” (which, if published monthly, would be a magazine that focuses on a different celebrity each month who is doing something different and edgy, something controversial), goes hand in hand with the idea of Miley pushing things to the edge and surprising people each time she steps out on to a stage or puts out a new music video. One thing that was difficult about this was finding an article that was not completely anti-Miley (as most articles online are). I found one that reviewed her new album “Can’t Be Tamed,” and explains how while she is trying very hard to break out of her corporate shell (her being a “Robot,” which is the title of one the songs on the album), her over-sexualized nature is really just in line with what the corporation that runs her wants. It is what makes money. It is what Britney and Lindsey did, and were they not so busy doing drugs now, they would be making even more money than ever.
So with my choice of pictures I wanted to show off Miley’s sexier side, but I wanted to do it in a sort-of dark and edgy way. I made sure all the large photos of her had black backgrounds and that she was wearing black clothing in all of them. I made sure all of them were also a tad bit raunchy, whether it was because of cleavage, legs, or just very tousled hair. For the cover, I chose a very strong and what I would call a “fierce” look, where Miley’s gaze pierces right through you. I also used the color from the feathers as my color for the words on the page. I thought the typeface I used for “Edge” was perfect for what I was trying to convey (BlairMDITC TT). I also thought it looked really cool that I was able to get the feather to sort of lightly brush through the G.
As far as the first page of my spread goes, I liked the photograph because Miley was interacting with the other side of the page. I also liked the grainy quality of the image (not pixaly!) I took the pink from whatever was hanging on her shirt and applied it to the title of the article, “Just a Robot?” I made the R very large and bled it off the page because it went well with the fact that Edge from the cover was sort of bled off the page. I also made the o in obot sort of nestle itself into the crook of the R because I thought it gave the page a nice shape. I then wrapped the opening paragraph of the text around the shape of Miley’s hair to continue good flow on the page.
For the second page of the speed, I kept the same color scheme for the side-bar, which was black and that same shade of pink. I also incorporated that pink into the quotation marks. I also incorporated a large photo of Miley singing which I think gave the page the energy it needed, and also stayed in line with the black, dark color-scheme. For the body text I chose Adobe Calston because it was simple but still bold enough to go along with statement I was making throughout.
For the ad on the back, I chose something that went perfectly with the cover. The Blue and the black was almost identical to the black and the black on the cover. It also was an ad for alcohol, which complements the whole idea of celebrating Miley’s growing up well.
Overall, I was pretty pleased with the design of my first draft. Fine-tuning the details was the focus of my redo. For starters, I made sure my design was properly setup to the grid. From there, I minimized the width of all the columns to make sure they are more reader friendly. On the cover page, I re-cropped the photo and increased the kerning for the cover line and issue number, as well as change the stroke to match with the photograph. On the first spread, I changed the sub head and byline to white so that the page wouldn’t read like a gold blob. Finally, I decreased the amount of boxes that made up the sideline, so that it too is more reader friendly.
Whitney Clinkscales
So I must have changed my magazine idea hundreds of times. From a Greek tragedy of suicide, to beauty in the black race, to the Harry potter phenomenon, all the way back to Emma Watson. After realizing that this should have been m first choice I stuck with it and created a theme that stayed consistent throughout, which I hoped to be visually effective.
I didn’t use a real story because I didn’t fine an article long enough, but for my redo I’m going to write my own story. My theme is Emma Watson all grown up. We’ve seen here in the face of the media since she was just 9 or 10 years old, and now she is all grown up, more beautiful than ever, more confident, and more like an everyday person.
My cover shows an Emma Watson like never before. The title of my magazine is called Spotlight, which puts out an issue that gives a spotlight on certain people and or topics. This month’s issue features Emma as the headline article, as well as college trends, dating gossip, etc.
I really liked the colors of her dress so I incorporated that into my title. I know magazine titles don’t usually change with each issue, but I decided that my magazine would have the colors change, but not font, so that it gives off something easy on the eye, and something that incorporates the person on the cover.
My first two pages show a sterner Emma. Less playful, more serious, so that you know it’s the real her, and she’s all grown up and ready to shine. Another reason why I showed a picture where she was serious instead of her signature smile is because with the ending of Harry Potter, people are saying it is the end of her and her career, but she knows its not and gets offended by such comments. I chose pink to show a soft subtleness, and a font that seemed like a signature. This is the beginning of Emma’s new life thanks to the happy ending of her Harry potter career.
The next few pages show a vertical image of Emma, so I used vertical text that curved to her body. I also liked the color tone of the image so I used the color of her lips as her pull quote and made the body text flow around that with text wrap and oversized under opacity quotation marks.
The next few pages is one image of Emma, which shows a serious of poses she does all incorporating a different kind of body language, and mood. So I decided for my side bar to do a question and answer. Four questions for four poses, which give the theme of my magazine an enhanced effect because it relates, and explaining how she feels about the ending of the Harry potter franchise, as well as her new life without harry potter.
Then of course for my ad I chose the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows promo because people reading this magazine would be Harry Potter fans of course, and want to see the movie, or they’d be people who like Emma Watson and may see the movie just because they now know who she is.
