Thursday, November 29, 2012

Photoshoot

The reason why I chose Wojceich as my model, its because he has the "indie" look as stated in my target group look profiles. He plays and owns his guitar, write his own songs. This makes him a legitimate acoustic artist.  

Friday, November 23, 2012

Masthead: ReDesigning Selling Lines

I was not very happy with the look of my previous selling line so I redesigned it. 

1.
2. 
Realized that cursive font was not very good as a selling line because it was not very readable from far.  

Below are my final choices. 
3.
4. Final:

More readable than the last one and I like the simplicity. 

Photo Ideas for Indie-Acoustic Shoot

However, I think I'm going for a little more fun look. My magazine is going to have a poster-style cover  because I want my customers to treat the magazine like a piece of art that they can put on the wall. 

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Research for Magazine Layouts

Domino Magazine
My Comments:
The neon yellow complements the black very well. They immediately grab your attention. 

 
Geiger Magazine



Alex Honnold: ' Death is No Big Deal'.

Concept:
To depict free-soloist Alex Honnold's playful way of challenging death and the danger of climbing Yosemite's mountains. 

Design:
Gabe Ferreira

Photography:
National Geographic

My Comments:
Small details such as the page number gives the 2 page spread an extra boost to the design. 


Mod Magazine (Above)
Brief
Source and redesign articles covering topics such as art, design, architecture, photography, music, fashion, travel, culture; fashioning a masthead and 20 page prototype for the non existent magazine.

My Comments:
Small details such as the page number gives the 2 page spread an extra boost to the design. 




SOS Magazine (Below)
Environmental magazine

My Comments:
Great concept and shape of the magazine. Excellent choice of wood for the front cover, as well as the masthead- directly links to what the magazine is all about.  



Redesign of Who's Jack Magazine (Above)

My Comments:
Good use of typography. 


U Magazine ++ and Other layouts (Below)



Poster Magazine (Below) 

Designer:
 Toko

My Comments:
The editorial design of POSTER is playfully sophisticated. The use of typography is edgy and experimental going hand in hand with fantastic photography as they interact on the page. Toko has done excellent with the design and communication aspect of the magazine. 

In a magazine there are usually a basic format, style, layout throughout the pages. For example, the colors used are the same, fonts. These help to make the pages of the magazine have a nice flow and connect to each other. 
A successful two page spread to me is that the page looks visually pleasing as a whole, one page, and as two pages. The title also goes straight to the point about what the context is about. Furthermore, if the picture gives enough focus and an idea to what the context is about and also draws the audience attention to want to read the article, to me it is successful. A successful two page spread to me also means that it is different from the rest, yet it seems as if  it follows the norms of how an article in a magazine looks like. In addition, it is successful if they can make a whole bunch of text: readable, engage-able, pleasing to the eye, and most importantly the content is good. Photos and typography balances out well.   

A successful content page to me is one that can turn a lot of information to something visually engaging and still put all the necessary information in. 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Marketing of Magazines

PS3 Official Magazine


Here is the presentation that I created with Alice on Adobe InDesign. We wanted to create a very simple presentation, yet one that contained all the information. It should be easy to understand and shouldn't need too much text. We chose a black background because we thought that it would really make our presentation stand out and because it worked really well with the magazine cover and the screenshots. We first wanted to write the keywords in speech bubbles to give the presentation a comic like feeling (since it's about magazines, animations etc.), yet sadly it didn't work too well. Instead of the speech bubbles we created white rectangles that we slanted each individually, creating a 
3-dimensional effect. Yet we chose a comic like font to keep that comic feeling. I think we achieved a very easy understandable, interesting presentation presented in a fun way. 

The first page is an analysis of the cover page. The top right one is one on their official web page, the bottom left one is an analysis on their Youtube page and the bottom right one on their Facebook page.

Special thanks to Alice. 



Sunday, November 18, 2012

Masthead: Designs

Designing the Masthead using illustrator. 


1. Trying out different fonts



2. Getting rid of the holes in letters 'B' and 'R'. 



3. Moving the letters around. 



4. Thinking about using woody fonts because wood to me means nature, something in a natural state. 
Acoustic to me means, real and pure. 
While Indie to me, too, means natural because due to their music being independent, it is not "distorted" by the music norms of majority of society. 
Hence, I think the element of wood would fit my Masthead well. 



5. I changed the word 'timber' inside to 'tamber' because that is the way you are supposed to pronounce it. 



6. Adding a selling line: The Indie Acoustic Magazine. 



7. Creating another design of my Masthead. 
Being inspired by the font, I changed the font of my selling line.



8. Rearranging the position of the selling line.


9. Final Masthead and selling line.






Masthead: Name

Masthead: TIMBRE (pronounced as Tam-ber)

Masthead: Research


Wired Magazine



Newspaper Mastheads:


I realized that the best, smart and most effective mastheads are those that you can understand what the magazine is about straight away, visually. Both the masthead name and design relates entirely to what the magazine is about. The selling line just helps to further tie it in and summarizes the content of the magazine. A good Masthead to me is that if it is one-of-a-kind. You can differentiate it from the other magazines from the same genre but at the same time it still relates to the genre. Also, a good masthead are those fonts not just downloaded from the internet and just stuck at the top of the magazine. They should at least be tweaked and improved to suit the needs of the magazine.  

Researching Indie-Acoustic CD Covers

Indie-Acoustic CD Covers:


Friday, November 16, 2012

Researching Indie CD Covers


Indie CD Covers:

Researching albums of some of my favorite bands. 


Researching Acoustic CD Covers

Researching music magazine covers wasn't really what I was looking for in my magazine cover. So I started researching CD covers of acoustic, indie and indie-acoustic to hopefully draw inspiration and concept of what I want my magazine to look like. 


Acoustic CD Covers:

The manipulation of images makes the composition more interesting. 

Second Project, Music Magazine: Researching Music Magazine Covers

Researching general music magazine covers:

Love the simplicity, energy and graphics put on the front cover. 



Researching Indie and Acoustic magazine covers:

I'm trying to merge indie music characteristics with acoustic magazine characteristic's to form an indie acoustic music magazine.
I'm going to an indie concert next sat and hopefully I can have an interview with one of the bands and get a good photo for my front cover and 2 page spread! :) Thinking about using a lomo camera to get this result.

2nd Edition Peek Front Covers



Photographing Better Quality Image for 2nd Peek Cover

Task:
Better quality image
Medium frame Closeup


First Photoshoot:

This wasn't actually taken for my magazine, it was more of an experimental piece using objects found in the studio.  Then I thought, I am the one photographing this piece of art so its kind of a peek of what ISCA students are doing. Since sarah, alice and I were ISCA students, why not use these images as the front cover. This photoshoot, of pure spontaneity, to me was about capturing the true soul of the person though their eyes as they hide in layers of what we thought of was always their true selves.  



2nd Photoshoot: 

This photoshoot, too, was not meant for my magazine. It was for Alice's magazine and I was lucky enough to be asked to help her take the photos of what she visioned for her magazine model to look like. We were kind of looking at facial pieces again. I thought it was very interesting with the gold face paint, which didn't work out very well so she put gold hair spray on her face. The texture of the face paint and the hairspray formed very interesting textures on her face so I decided to try it out in black and white to make them stand out even more. I also started experimenting with shadows.