I love everything about Italy. The food is delicious. Around every corner is something historic and beautiful. The Italians know how to live: they do the things they want to do (like eat and spend time with family) when they want to do them. After six weeks there, I became obsessed and now I’m longing to go back.
The magazine presented an opportunity for me spend a little more time in my favorite city. One of the benefits of spending time in the city is that I have a TON of pictures. All of the photos except for two (the bridge on the first spread and the gelato on the back) are pictures I took while abroad. I also scanned a rose that someone had given me while I was there. The advantage of using my personal photography is that they all have a similar look and feel to them. The quality reflects my perspective of Florence – aging slightly, but altogether timeless and beautiful.
My sidebar is a wine bottle, which is a key metaphor for the Italian way of life. Fun and enjoyment are two of their core values. It’s also an important part of their culture – we had wine with dinner almost every evening. Most of the wineries are places I visited and I filled the rest in with places I’d like to visit if I go back.
For the typeface, I wanted something that was clean and elegant, but also had an antique feel to it. The body is perpetua and the headline is calfish. Perpetua gives the magazine a classic, antique feel and perpetua provides a raw, but elegant feel.
I wanted to have a balance between text and images. I decided to do one full image spread, and two text heavy, but interrupted spreads. The image seemed to be the best way to bring the reader into the magazine. The next two spreads have more type but have a scrapbook feel to them to keep the readers’ interest. My original idea was to use all of my ticket stubs, museum passes, and brochures to create more of scrapbook feel, however the result was cluttered and messy. By interspersing a few rose petals, the images seem to pop off the page.
I used the color red from the bottle throughout the magazine because it complemented the rest of my images. Red is used widely in Florence (cobblestone, roofs, the flag), so it was essential that it be incorporated into the magazine.
On the back page, I created an advertisement for one of my favorite gelato places in Florence. I scanned their business card for the logo.
This project allowed me to reflect on my time in Florence while creating a deeply personal magazine layout. There is a lot of “me” in the magazine – my design, photographs, and my overall perception of the city. It is a reflection of my experience and hopefully gives readers an idea of my favorite place.
For the redo for this project, I added in the technical aspects that I was missing beforehand. I fixed the baseline grid and made sure everything was snapped to the grid. That changed the way the type appeared because I decreased the size of the leading. I also added in the columns that seemed to be missing before and made sure that the textbooks within the columns were all the same width. I made sure the pictures were right aligned to the columns, too. I fixed the pull quotes by removing the closing quote altogether and putting the opening quote in a different box. That gave me more control over the pull quotes. I decreased the size of the captions a bit, too, because they were over-powering the body text. I filled out the body copy to the end of the page so that it was more symmetrically and balanced. The only real design change I made here was making “Human” in the headline on the firs spread the same color as Lil’ Wayne’s skin, as per recommendation of Professor Harper. I think this makes the text and picture flow together more nicely. In the end, this version of my magazine includes a lot of important technical aspects that my original magazine lacked. The rest of the spreads can be seen in the PDF.
The inspiration for my magazine came from model, Gisele Bundchen. She is one of the world’s most famous fashion models who has been the face Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Victoria’s Secret and many more luxury brands. My magazine is called “Fierce” and it is an edgy fashion magazine whose audience is contemporary women who buy luxury items. I had a hard time choosing where to place the images on the spread of my last page. I did not want the spread to feel cluttered which is why I only decided on one dominant image on the left spread.
I wanted the design of my magazine to be very clean and simple which is why I did not want to clutter the front cover with text. The image I chose is very strong and I think that is enough to draw in the reader. The title page of my spread also has a very strong image which is why I wanted to make it the size of the whole page. The motorcycle theme of my spreads also gives the magazine an edgy feel. The rest of my spreads follow in that very clean format. For my sidebar story, I decided to highlight Gisele’s time as a Victoria’s Secret Model. I used a Louis Vuitton advertisement because Gisele was the face of their campaign and readers would be interested in that luxury brand.
On the front cover I used Flood Std for the title of the magazine. I thought this font was very edgy and worked with the image of Gisele in motorcycle inspired clothing. For Gisele’s name I used didot, which is a popular font used in fashion magazines. I continued the use of didot as the headline of my article. The text of my article is Futura Std Book 10 pt, which is a very clean sans-serif font that is readable. My leading is 12 pt and my tracking is 20.
This is from a dated book written in France. I love the old school vibe and the simplicity that the two page spread offers. The type is very light and flows with the motion of the skier. It’s funny I found this on a wordpress blog. Check it out: http://publish.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/how-to-ski/
Here is a website I found when I was designing a layout of my magazine. It shows you how to wrap the text around an image you want and cool ways to do a pull quote all in InDesign.
When I was looking online at magazine spreads in order to generate some ideas, I came across this website: http://bestdesignoptions.com/?p=4076. The website contains 20 different examples of creative magazine spreads. All of the examples I think are extremely well-done and effective. Hope this helps !!!!!!
Because I’m an advertising major, I thought it was really interesting when I found an article on the best magazine ads of the year. While looking through the ads, I noticed that all of them had stunning, high quality visuals that really stood out and grabbed my attention. This just reiterates how important it is, especially in magazines, to have great visual images. There is a reason these are considered the best ads of the year, because all of them draw the reader in with a great image. Check out the rest of the ads in the article!
When searching magazine covers and spreads, I came across this Rollingstone magazine cover of President Barack Obama. I thought the magazine cover was extremely effective and unique because unlike the majority of covers which are filled with text and headlines for various articles, this cover is able to capture the attention of potential readers solely due to the image. The image itself is so powerful that it is placed over the word-mark of “RollingStone”.
For this magazine project, I really want to bring out my Chinese side. I want to incorporate Chinese characters and use Asian models/celebrities. I’m going to approach this magazine project with the mentality that I’m working oversees in Hong Kong or mainland China. I think these covers are captivating and a select few are better than its American counterparts (sorry, America).
Seriously, how AWESOME is China Vogue Men’s cover???? Look at the “V” in “Vogue” and how the sharp line aligns ever so perfectly with the background. The text’s placements and the model guides me where I should be reading and what I should be focusing on.
This website has a lot of very interesting and inspirational layouts to help jumpstart the creative process on the magazine project. Though there are a couple websites, books, and posters in there as well, most are magazine spreads that have a definite graphic focus. I’ve found that although originally I had a bit of trouble getting inspired, looking at other magazines is the best way to get over that and start laying out my own magazine spread.
