This was a very interesting project for me because personally I am very interested in layout design and how it works to engage with the reader and keeps them interested in the article. In terms of starting a new project, I felt that transcribing was a good way to get into the flow of things because it wasn’t a difficult job but necessary, almost relaxing actually and I was gathering research at the same time so I was very motivated.
I found the talks by Briony Hartley and Luke Lobley very inspiring; they talked about the design industry in a realistic way and shared the problems they had throughout their career, which was comforting. In addition, the trip to Dayfold was also very interesting; we were shown the techniques of printing and binding and given beautiful samples. Though I didn’t I completely understand the process of printing and binding completely because it was a lot to take in and I learn by engaging and doing.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find Liam Donnelly’s talk as interesting. It wasn’t as engaging and useful than the previous editorial design talks. I think this was because it wasn’t technically that relevant to our project. Possibly the idea of coming up with a headline is important, though generally we were shown more advertisement pieces rather than magazine layouts.
I did numerous amounts of research on magazine layouts and found that more is less and the designer should arrange the text and image to make it interesting and easy for the viewer to read. Generally the more successful layouts had larger images in comparison to the amount of copy, some even taking over the whole page or part of the whole double-page spread. Using more negative space allows the copy to breath and makes the whole article less taunting for the viewer to read.
Armed with this new knowledge of layout design, I progressed onto coming up with my own layouts. This was not a difficult task, but pin pointing what would visually express my designer’s personality was. I went through numerous techniques and images to try and connote the right character but failed a number of times to get the right layout to suit the designer completely.
When I began creating my own layout, I wanted to get the feel of Anette being an open-minded character, one which looks up to her parents, almost like a child; care-free and at peace from the problems of the world. From this I tried a layout, which used quite a lot of negative space and made it so that the copy was laid freely across the page in almost random positions, still using the grid, but I wanted to portray the idea of being free and flexible in terms of where I placed my text and imagery. I also used big quotes, which were laid over the copy and imagery, but watermarking it so that it became part of the background. This at the time seemed like a good idea, but when I had a crit which made it evident that this layout did not work well because it was to crowded and difficult to read because of the overlaying. I used Monoprint to create 2 illustrations of a girl walking and a girl picking flowers to create an innocent personality for Anette, but the method of illustrating didn’t seem to go down well and the grungy effect just contrasted with the light, relaxed feel I wanted in my final piece.
So, after researching into children’s book illustration, I began using a technique which produced more subtle colours in my imagery and by not fine lining it, it became like a watercolour representation of the story and feel I was looking for. Instead of having harsh edges to my images, which cut into my copy, I subtly blended my illustrations so that they faded into the white negative space around the copy. This worked well to connote a free, relaxed layout. After receiving another crit about my latest layout, I realised that I had yet to develop my typography. Up until that point, I had only used black for my typography. I then began to realise that this made my copy quite daunting and difficult to want to read. So I began playing with colours and how I could juxtapose the titles and copy so that it would be more inviting to the eye. I went through a number of different typographic alternatives for my front page and ended up changing it altogether. I included a colour change in one of the words and used this style consistently through to my article title and quotes, highlighting the important words from the quotes.
If I were to re-do this project, I would definitely experiment with the typography more, possibly hand-rendering children’s type or cutting up and scrunching the type and then re-scanning it to see what results I get much like what Luke Lobley did in Wonderland Magazine. I felt that I needed to use more typography elements in my layout, possibly use type as the image to keep things simple but still get the point across. The expressive Typography activity made me want to hand-render my type in my final layout design, as it is a more hands-on approach to the project, which makes it more personal, and I can really experiment and play with the type.
I may also want to steer away from making my illustrations look so much like they were from a children’s book. Somehow make it more formal and fit for a design magazine, possibly try-out using vectors. Though at one point I did try using vectors in my imagery and it became evident that the style was too bold and harsh and didn’t fit with the personality of Anette Lenz I was trying to get across.
Overall I am very happy with my final layout and I enjoyed every aspect of this project, especially getting to grips with new software I’ve never come across. In addition, the designer talks were very interesting and has inspired me to think twice about having editorial design as a future career.
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