Editorial Design: Final

I took some photographs of my finished final and wanted to share them: though I am awful at mounting them, often leaving glue marks and rarely keeping them straight, I think they look quite nice side by side.

I'm glad I managed to incorporate sharp lines into the page which contrast the soft, roundness of the circles which manage to show everything I want them to show of the photo. Despite this, a few of the black line joins were off centre, though hardly noticeably.

I should have been much more careful with the page numbers, as when it was printed, many were cut off. I placed them too far towards the edge, but feel I have now learnt and will be more wary of this next time. I'm thankful that none of the content was cut off.

After my last module, I checked the resolution of all images used, and google searched large files, alongside downloading original size files from flickr, to make sure none were blurred or skewed. Again, learning from my past mistakes.

I think I could see this in a magazine, and feel I hit my target audience well. I feel I've made the pages flow well together and look on part with each other, and therefore am extremely happy with how it came out.

Editorial Design: Final

I really enjoyed this module and feel it has strengthened my hope of specialising in the area. I must admit that I am quite pleased with the way my spread looks, and though I was only asked for two, I created 8. I think this was necessary as I wanted the spread to be complete, and feel had I stuck to the two I was required to create, a lot of aspects would have been missed out.

I think the front cover looks quite smart. After all of the development I produced, I finally settled on a very simple horizontal black line growing across the page, and the headline being on top of the number, in white. I felt this drew interest to the place and the number, without being conventional and boring. I also used an arial image of the London skyline, as I felt it was quite beautiful: with the blue of the number matching the blue of the Thames. 

The second page again incorporates the blue amongst black lines: the image spans across three quarters of the page, with the rest of the page being black. I wrote an introductory paragraph for the article, and placed this half way in the black background part of the page. The writing was left white. 

On the first page of the actual content, I decided to have the images in circles as I felt this was quirky and matched the modern style of the spreads. I also decided to keep the black lines as a recurring theme throughout the article, tying all the pages together. 

Similar to the first page of the article, I used the exact layout but this time flipped horizontally: I also used a different image of an iconic piece of London. 

Instead of using diagonal lines, for the middle page I used the same layout as the cover spread, a horizontal line. I think the circles being bigger than the line is quite quirky, and I also added a pull quote to disrupt the blank white space. 

In keeping with the rest of the spread I added another page to interrupt the article. Whilst researching for the article, I found many tips and hints, alongside apps for travellers to use to have a similar experience of a local and felt it would be quite a nice touch to add them. On this page, I wrote down certain apps and their qualities, such as AirBnB. 

Finally, if you count the amount of places I used, it was in fact 12. I didn't want the page to be too empty, and I also wanted to use the same layout style, so therefore added two extra places from the content research. I added the line of "two more for good luck." but feel I could have chosen something more in keeping and wittier now in hindsight. This page was laid out similar to the first page of content.

On the last page, I added the conclusion of the article. I wanted it to signify the last page of the spread, but I also feel this wasn't necessarily needed. In looking at most other spreads, conclusions are scarcely used especially in this context, but I felt it important to have something to break up the article and the next in the magazine.

For my first Editorial, though there are a lot of things I would change and do differently, I feel quite confident in what I produced. I think the next time I produce something of this nature I want to experiment more strongly with typography and contemporary designs, but I began this module wanting to create a modern article that would appeal to my target audience, and I feel I achieved that.

London.

For my birthday I headed to London for the first time. I've got to admit, it couldn't have come at a better time due to my Editorial module being on London. I tried out a few of the restaurants I chose for my content, and also headed to the Tate Modern to check out some beautiful pieces of artwork. Below are some photographs I took in the gallery.

As I used to live in Spain, a lot of our art modules were based around Spanish artists, including Salvador Dali. I'd never seen any of his pieces up close, only through a screen or what I had printed, so I was extremely fascinated to see his original artwork. The colours were much more vibrant than I ever thought. 

I also got to see Monet's Water Lilies, which I had actually studied in GCSE Art. It was incredibly stunning and much bigger than I ever imagined. 

There were a lot of photographs which caught my eye. There was something incredibly nostalgic in these images. 

Another of the fixtures was made up of light: the whole room was dark apart from these shining from one side. It was fascinating reading what these pieces meant, Dan Flavin's sculptures are quite controversial. 

I've never been a big Gallery visitor, and one of the only others I have visited is the Baltic. I did go to a few out in Spain but it was more of a "school day out" than anything else: but I was extremely intrigued here. I want to one day head to the Louvre. I think seeing all London has to offer has really helped me in terms of my Editorial piece, mainly as I actually know what it is I am talking about, and the feelings this big city gave me. I went with someone who was experienced in all things London, so a lot of the experience I actually had was quite similar to a local, and I understand now why others would want the same. 

Editorial Design: Ideas pt ii.

For my initial ideas for the content pages I created a brainstorm, documenting the different styles I could use. One I felt would be quite interesting was inspired by Paula Schers work, who creates maps using typography. 

Paula Scher cuts up pieces of typography from different mediums and lays them out to create the outlines of countries, similar to an atlas. It's quite significant and strange, applying her flair and love for larger scale designs into her work. In some pieces she incorporates vibrant colour, whilst others such as the second image above of Africa, use sepia. 

Taking this style into account I decided to look into other illustrated maps of the place I have chosen. As London is a capital and holds a lot of attention it was easy to come across these: I thought this would be quite a cute idea to distinguish a whimsical style to the page, though it needs to be in keeping with the cover spread, which could be through the use of a colour scheme and typography.

When creating these on the computer I used google maps to understand the layout and style I would like to use, especially as this is just the experimentation phase. I spread the map across the whole of the page, leaving only the margins: I also added circle images on the page to highlight the places, alongside the text below. 

Experimenting more on the map idea, I followed a similar idea with the page as the cover spread, using furniture to highlight the article content. I also continued to add the circles which show photos of the places I have chosen. That being said, I feel that these pages don't fit in to my final idea for a cover spread as I feel it will be difficult to create a running theme throughout, which is something I feel is important.

When looking at trends, I came across a lot of usage of geometric shapes and pages similar to the one above: I find it visually striking with the different images mixing colours, disrupted by the white of the borders. I wanted to recreate this style. 

My first attempt at imitating this was to recreate a similar style, using triangle shapes orientating the page.

I then added furniture and used the images to frame the article content. I personally feel this looks quite effective, though spacing between the triangles may have looked better. I didn't want to settle on this idea, though I do like it and feel it looks quite pretty on the page. 

Again, I like the way the colours go together, and the way the images flowed well but I also felt that the shape didn't give everything it could to the image, often cutting of certain aspects so you couldn't see specific details and couldn't tell what they were of. I feel possibly a square or circle might show more and be stimulating. 

Looking more into different shapes for my images, I created a similar spread to a roll of film, with the images cut off and adding movement. The different sizes create a really nice dynamic but again there is something missing: It doesn't seem to flow well with the front cover. 

Scrapping all original ideas, I decided to try with a black background and a white stripe vertically. I thought this looked very similar styling to the cover spread which was something I wanted to achieve. I added the images of the content in circles, overlapping the white line. Though slightly reminiscent of a certain football team, I really liked the way the page came together. I used Ever After as the type, but felt a lot of it was lost with the difference of white and black.

I adapted that design to create a singular black line horizontally across the page. I liked that the circles were bigger than the line and overlapped, and the typeface was quite contemporary, and not something often found in Editorial design. I think this would look good in a very modern, urban magazine.

Editorial Design: Ideas pt i.

After looking through my research and experiments I decided to start looking into my initial ideas and producing them on a computer to see how they look and come out on screen.

I wanted to mimic the background image, so I created circles of different sizes and colours and changed the opacity, to create the effect of Bokeh. I also experimented with the typography choices I looked at earlier, using Significa which adds to the ethereal, whimsical feel of the spread. Significa is quite a lovely handwritten, italic and cursive font.

In contrast I created a very minimal spread using a black and white image of the eye, alongside a huge number ten. I felt black and white lacked something, though it did look effective: I thought adding content or quotes about London to the image and playing with the curning and tracking of the text would add more dynamic, but after experimenting I felt it looked quite messy.




Similar to the above with bokeh, I decided to look into different shapes. I have seen this style, an opaque shape with text inside (drawing attention to the text from the page) quite often used in blogging and magazines, and it is quite a trend, though usually with a blurred background. It reminded me of snowflakes and christmas, and I felt using a time or season would leave the article looking outdated when viewed later in the year etc, and didn't want it to lose it's touch so quickly.

Another of my ideas was a front cover in which the image spans three quarters across the spread, with the addition of a simple headline and furniture decorating the introduction to the article. I searched around on google images for aerial images of London and found the photographer Jason Hawkes' work, which was stunning, and wanted to use these images in my spread. I like the way the furniture decorated the article and made it stand out, though I also felt something was missing.

Expanding on this, I added a column of black rather than the furniture, and changed the headline to match this: with certain letters in black and others in white, to match the contrast of the background. Again I felt like something was missing, and found that the difference of background colours and columns complicated the page too much. 

Despite this, I decided to add a layer of geometrics on top of the image to experiment with current trends amongst Editorial. I didn't really like the way this looked as I felt it took away a lot of the nice colours of the image and was distracting from the article, making the page look too busy.

Scrapping that idea completely, I kept the image of London, expanding it across the whole page this time, and revisited the earlier idea of opaque shapes to draw focus to the text. As my article is very content based, I felt it would be a nice touch to take the actual article away from the front cover, and focus mainly on the headline. I kept the shape and the title in white.

I didn't really like the title being white as I felt it needed something to connect with the photograph, so I then decided to add the number 10 quite bold and big (similar to the black and white spread I created earlier) in blue. I thought this looked quite a nice touch especially as it actually overlapped the circle, but wanted to experiment further with shapes and lines, though I feel this was one of my strongest ideas. 

Experimenting further, I deleted the circle and added a black line spanning diagonally across the two spreads. I felt the black looked more striking than the white, and the sharpness of the line contrasted the circular shapes of the text. I thought it looked quite nice opaque as you could still see the iconic London skyline, especially the tower bridge through the shape.

Finally, I decided a full black line spanning horizontally across the page was much more effective at creating a focal point for the headline. I left the "10" opaque, and though I lost some of the London skyline, I felt it was still recognisable. I wanted something compelling and unusual, and feel I accomplished this.