New Visual Language Form Follows Funtion Research Document Annabel Grant
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Modernism/Post-Modernism/Art/Movement/Design History/Form/Follows/Function/Impressionism Post-Impressionism/Symbolism/Art-Nouveau Expressionism/Fauvism/Cubism/Futurism Dadaism/Constructivism/Bauhaus Art-Deco/Surrealism/Pop-Art Conceptual-Art/Minimalism Neo-Expressionism Performance-Art
The Brief This brief involves creating and submiting design proposals for a new graphic publication entitled, New Visual Language. The first issue will focus on Form follows Function - an exploration of Modernism and Post Modernism. For the first part of this project I will need to research into Modernism and Post Modernism which will generate a body of work which explores the origins and philosophy of the movements. The visual work I produce should be an expression of the movement and not a pastiche. I should aim to convey the essential nature of the movement and gain a clear understanding of the social, industrial and political concerns which influence both movements.
Within the proposals for the second part of this project I should include designs for a broad sheet which should be based on my personal and original visual research from my first year on this course. I need to include edited versions of the following projects; Streetgraphic, Cabinet of Curiosity, Earth Artifact, type transcription and my manifesto. I should also produce a masthead, cover design, contents page and inner pages. The masthead should be ‘New Visual Language’, with a sub heading: Form follows Function- an exporation of Modernism and Post Modernism. Additionally I should include the date and the issue number. Finally the size of this publication should be A3.
I aim to explore a range of Artists, Designers and Movements which have significantly influenced design during this period. With Post Modernism being my favourite art movement, I am going to look into Modernism to help broaden my understanding of both eras. In order to achieve this, I will need to understand the social, industrial and political concerns which have influenced both movements. Within this project I hope to explore the layout and grid systems found within designs from both eras which will help me create my magazine.
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Initial Research Form Follows Function Modernism Post-Modernism
Form Follows Function
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"It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law." Form follows function is a principle that states that the shape or form that something takes, should be chosen based on its intended purpose and function, It is often a principle associated with modern architecture and industrial design in the 20th century where the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose. The phrase “form follows function” was coined by the American architect Louis Sullivan in his article “the
tall office building artistically considered” that was published in 1896. Sullivan presented his approach to the emerging building type he referred to as ‘tall office building’ soon to be called the ‘skyscraper’ that we know today. In design, form is both the overall look and feel of the design as well as the shape and look of each individual component such as the typefaces and the graphic elements. Form is also the format whether the design is a poster, a business card, a logo, a website or a piece
of packacging. Whereas function is the practicality of the design. It is the purpose of the design whether is it to sell, to inform, to impress, or to entertain. It includes the copywriting message, the audience, and the cost of getting the project printed.
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Mod
dernism
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Modernism Modernism is the term used to embrace a diverse range of art movements and ideas that emerged during the first half of the 20th century during the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, a period when the artistic avant-garde dreamed of a new world free of conflict, greed and social inequality. It profoundly influenced the subsequent development of art, architecture and design. There was also a widespread utopian belief that merchanization and technology, if properly channelled, could produce a betterm less divided society. The art and design movements central to Modernism are Cubism, Futerism, Constructivism, Page 8
De Stijl and Dada. These all had a profound influence on the practise of graphic design, typography and photography. Collectively, these movements advocated a stronger link between art and industrial production and encouraged the move towards bold geometric forms, the elimination of decoration and the use of asymetric layouts. It was not a style but a loose collection of ideas. Many different styles can be characterised as Modernist, but they shared certain underlying principles: a rejection of history and applied ornament; a preference for abstraction; and a belief that design and technology could transform society.
Bauhaus
Its origins and aspirations relate to many ideas pursued by the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Deutscher Werkbund. Founded in Weimar in 1919, under the direction of the architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus produced a manifesto that declared, ‘The complete building is the ultimate aim of all the
visual arts.’ This overriding commitment to architecture encouraged the exploration of new ideas associated with De Stijl and Russion Consstructivism. On the right is a piece I created inspired by the Bauhaus movement.
“Typography is a tool of communication. It must be communication in its most intense form”
Bauhaus is a German design school that attempted to create a new unity between art and industry by rejecting any division between decorative and constructional techniques. The Bauhaus was the most important educational enterprise underpinning the development of the modern movement in architecture.
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Russian Constructivism Constructivism design is a movement within modernism that redefined the role of the artist. The movement saw the conversion of design laws into practical solutions through the use of strict format principles that favoured a non-figurative visual vocabulary that exudes cleanliness and order. The design from the movement is characterised by bold lettering, brightly coloured shapes made from materials such as glass and cardboard and the designers commitment to composed and refined work that committed to the common weal. El Lissitsky is a designer contribution to the modernist movement was Page 10
based around Russian constructivist ideals and philosophy. Dynamic layout, changes in scale and the positive use of white space was just a handful of characteristics that challenged typographic conventions. His work had a profound influence on the modernist movement but also is still impacting design today.
El Lissitzky El Lissitzky is a Russian artist and designer who had an influence on modernism, through movements like cubism and constructivism, and his work heavily influenced the iconic Bauhaus company. His Russian style was influenced, and was used, by the Soviet Union. He believed, like the modernist viewpoint, that the artist could be an agent for change, which he later summarized as a ‘goal orientated creation’. He was heavily influenced by his study as an architect, and was most known for creating pieces called ‘Prouns’, which were abstract pictures that he described to be ‘the interchange station between art and architecture’.
His style definitely follows a modernist movement as it favours abstraction, and it rejects any historical or religious reference or meaning. It is self-centered, and achieves itself through individualism. The forms of the shapes are very sharp; we can tell what sort of shapes have made up the image, and most of the designs seem to follow a particular direction; all shapes are usually aligned equally along one diagonal. The design also has particular depth over meaning; Lissitzky tells us his ‘Proun’ collection relates to architecture, and this sense of meaning is something modernism follows. The designs are restricted in typeface as the designs including type use Russian-style fonts, and
they are also restricted in colours, as each piece has a specific colour scheme only ranging from two or three colours.
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Dada Dada was an anti-war movement which moved into the at world through poetry, literacy, art manifestos and eventual visual arts like Höch. The movement itself origniated in Zürich, Switzerland and moved across Europe and ended in the United Stated where
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many writers sought refuge during the First World War. Hannah Höch was a Dada artist who was one of the origninators of photomontage art. Höch was one of only four women who were allowed to join the Berlin Dada organisation
and for the reason her work is important and influentional in the Dada movement.
De Stijl De Stijl (1917-1931), also known as neoplasticism (the new plastic art), was a Dutch artistic movement. Founded in 1917 by Theo van Doesburg who was a leading figure in the international avant-garde of the early 20th century. His many endeavors included
artist, architect, designer, writer, publisher, organizer and promoter. De Stijl, the Dutch word for ‘The Stye’, expressed a new utopian ideal of spritual harmony and order, created by the geometric forms and primary colours.
They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colours along with black and white.
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Paul Rand Paul Rand is one of the world’s most famous graphic designers, he’s best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, etc. His core beliefs in Modernist Design is what drove his career, this is why his lasting influence, was the modernist philosophy he so revered. Paul Rand celebrated the works of artists from Paul Cezanne to Jan Tschichold, and constantly attempted to draw the connections between. Rand was a versatile designer whose career can be divided into three periods. From 1937–1941, he worked in media promotion and book design; from 1941–1954, he focused more on advertising Page 14
design; and from 1954 on, he began to concentrate on corporate identity programs, producing some of the most iconic logos and identity marks of the modern age including logos for IBM, Westinghouse, UPS, and ABC television.
Jan Tshichold Jan Tshichold is a typographer and book designer who led the emergence of the ‘New Typography’ in Europe during the 1920’s and 30’s. Influenced by the Bauhaus principles, Tschichold created ‘Sabon’, the first linotype, monotype and hand composition. In addition he published his book ‘Die Neue Typographie’. The New Typography rejected traditional arrangement of type in symmetrical columns and established the importance of asymmetric typography principles in the design industry. This style had a rapid impact on the design industry as typographers and printers quickly adapted
to the principles and way of working brought about by the New Typography. Jan Tschichold has been celebrated as an early proponent of modernist asymmetric typography, designers have increasingly come to respect his earlier calligraphic and latter classical work. Tschichold’s body of work is an important precedent for today’s postmodern typography in that it represents diversity in ideology and style. It was one that ranged from craftbased calligraphy and machine-age modernism to neoclassicism.
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Armin Hoffman Less is more was a modernist design principle favoured by designers such as Max Bill. It symbolised a new aesthetic that was so radical, imaginative and what designers considered to be flawless. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to remove” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This utopian belief was a part of the modernist movement, where designers believed that in a “flawless” design there was nothing you could change about them. Many modernist designers thought that Helvetica was a perfect example of how a design could be flawless, white Page 16
space matched with Helvetica and that was all you needed for an effective design. Armin Hofmann is a Swiss graphic designer. Hoffman followed Emil Ruder as head of the graphic design department at the Basel School of Art and was instrumental in developing the graphic design style known as the Swiss Style. He is well known for his posters, which emphasised economical use of colour and fonts, in reaction to what Hofmann regarded as the “trivialization of colour”. He was an influential educator, retiring in 1987. In 1965 he wrote the “Graphic Design Manual”, a popular textbook in the field.
Univers In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry’s art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts — quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Peignot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype.
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Post-Mo
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odernism
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Post-Modernism Post Modernism is a design movement that evolved in the mid 60’s as a critical response to the dominance and perceived sterility of Modernism. Postmodernism is perhaps the most controversial art movement out of them all. Embracing art, architecture and design. It re-established interest in ornament, symbolism and visual wit. Unconstrained by dogma, post-modern designers regected modernism’s obsession with progress and challenged the fundamental tenets of order and discipline espoused by the Bauhaus and its followers. Postmodernism shattered established ideas about style, it brought a radical freedom to art and design Page 20
through gestures that were often funny, sometimes confrontational and occassionaly absurd. Most of all, over the course of two decades, from about 1970 to 1990, postmodernism bought a new selfawareness about style itself. Postmodernism was a drastic departure from modernism’s utopian visions, which had been based on clarity and simplicity. Postmodernism’s key principles were complexity and contradiction.
Müller Brockman Josef Muller-Brockmann was a Swiss graphic designer and teacher. In 1936 he opened his Zurick studio specialising in graphic design, exhibition design and photography. He was the author of “The Graphic Artist and his Design Problems”, “Grid Systems in Graphic Design”, the publications “History of the poster” and :A History of Visual Communication.” He is recognised for his simple designs and his cleanr use of typography, notable Helvetica, shapes and colours which inspires many graphic designers in the 21st century.
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The Grid System A grid system is a rigid framework that is supposed to help graphic designers in the meaningful, logical and consistent organization of information on a page. Rudimentary versions of grid systems existed since
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the medieval times, but a group of graphic designers, mostly inspired in ideas from typographical literature started building a more rigid and coherent system for page layout. The core of these ideas were first
presented in the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef M端ller-Brockmann which helped to spread the knowledge about the grids thorough the world.
International Style Also known as International Style, the Swiss Style does not simply describe a style of graphic design made in Switzerland. It became famous through the art of very talented Swiss graphic designers, but it emerged in Russia, Germany and Netherlands in the 1920’s. This style in art, architecture and culture became an ‘international’ style after 1950’s and it was produced by artists all around the globe. Despite that, people
still refer to it as the Swiss Style or the Swiss Legacy. This progressive, radical movement in graphic design is not concerned with the graphic design in Switzerland, but rather with the new style that had been proposed, attacked and defended in the 1920s in Switzerland. Keen attention to detail, precision, craft skills, system of education and technical training, a high standard of printing as well as a clear refined
and inventive lettering and typoraphy laid out a foundation for a new movement that has been exported worldwide in 1960s to become an international style.
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Die Neue Grafik In 1959 four zürichbased graphic designers launched the first issue of Neue Grafik magazine. A Magazine devoted to the Swiss style of design and typography. The team of editors constisted of Richard Paul Lohse, Josef MüllerBrockmann, Hans Neuburg and Carlo Vivarelli. The team signed some of their jointly written articles with the acronym “lmnv”, formed from their initials.”Neue Grafik” epitomizes Swiss typography of the 1950s. It was the new age manifesto for the design world and it was seminal in its influence on international graphic design after WWII. The publication of the magazine proved an international success making the Swiss Style the International Typographic Style. Page 24
Helvetica Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas foundry in Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market.
Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland in order to make it more marketable internationally.
Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage. In 1960, the typeface’s name was changed by Haas’ German parent company Stempel to Helvetica — derived from Page 25
Super Graphics Super-graphics was a short-lived movement during the postmodernist movement, which derived from pop art. However you still see evidence of todays supergraphics on the sides of buildings, construction sites, stairways or interactive installations in the theatre. The movement was characterised by the use of huge arrows, numbers and words. Rainbows that were painted onto walls to transform bland interior to something new and exciting, in general anything that stood out and screamed ‘look at me’. It was a favoured technique by postmodernist designer Paula Scher who used the technique to transform the Page 26
side of a Victorian building in New Jersey into an upbeat performing arts centre. To do this she used dramatic large black gothic lettering, typographical latticework and of course clashing stark colours. Paula Scher is a New York based graphic designer who is known for her playful approach to letterforms. Like most postmodern designers her primary work began in the music industry as it allowed her to be innovative and experiment with her designs. Her designs take many inspirations from 20th century design history and movements such as constructivism, dada and futurism.
“There’s a very fine line between simple, clean and powerful and simple clean and boring” – David Carson
The New Wave Postmodern type was characterised by a new wave of the Swiss typography. Designers sought to challenge the rules and constraints of the international typographic style, making the point that type is an art form in itself and shouldn’t be uniformed and constricted. Therefore designers began rebelling against ordinary precepts of ‘readability’ and type became increasingly illegible to make viewers stop and try to decipher the words.
with letterforms, wide word spacing, reversed type blocks. His work had a unpredictability to the designs in terms of weight, contrasts and random placement that provided a dynamic alternative to the predictable corporate design solutions based on the Swiss design principles brought about by the international typographic style.
Wolfgang Weignart is one of the typographers who challenged the rational order and rules of the international typographic style. He did this through expressive experiments Page 27
Punk Movement The Punk Movement was part of the Postmodernist movement which began as a reaction to the rigid restrictions of Modernism. Its DIY ethos encapsulated the anti-establishment mood of the mid 1970s, a time of political and social turbulence. The former British Empire was dissolving and a new era in British music, fashion and design was beginning. Taking the stage to articulate the feelings of a dissatisfied generation calling for change were the Sex Pistols, who played their first gig in 1975 at St Martins College of Art. Their outrageous behaviour and contempt for established conventions announced the beginning of Punk. The DIY ethos and uncontrolled, Page 28
home made style was revolutionary at the time and launched a new era in British music, fashion and design. Followers of the Punk style were depicted through aggressive visual appearance and anarchic behaviour. Graphic Designs sought to capture this essence through the use of throwaway collage, chaotic layout, shocking slogans and ransom note design.
De-constructivism The more common use of the term is the more general process of pointing to contradictions between the intent and surface of a work, and the assumptions about it. A work then “deconstructs” assumptions when it places them in context. For example, someone who can pass as the opposite sex is said to “deconstruct” gender roles, because there is a conflict between the superficial appearance, and the reality of the person’s gender.
approach to typography, the Dadaists and Futurists in the 1920s and 1930s, and later Concrete Poetry during 1950s and 1960s experimented with floating type compositions and fragmented typographic treatments, releasing type from its linear structure. Further developments of the deconstructivist typography in the 1990’s shifted the typographic practice towards a spatial, non-linear process
In graphic design deconstructivism gave its name to one of the major typographic movements, starting in the early 1980’s and continuing into the late 1990’s: Deconstructive Typography. Taking on a more experi-mental Page 29
Neville Brody Neville Brody is known for his work on The Face magazine and Arena magazine, as well as for designing record covers for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire and Nine Inch Nails. He was one of the founding members of FontFont (now FontShop) in London and designed a number of notable typefaces for them. He was also partly responsible for instigating the FUSE project an influential fusion between a magazine, graphics design and typeface design. Each pack includes a publication with articles relating to typography and surrounding subjects, four brand new fonts that are unique and revolutionary in some shape or form and four posters designed by the type designer usually using little Page 30
more than their included font. Initially working in record cover design, Brody made his name largely through his revolutionary work as Art Director for the Face magazine. Other international magazine directions have included City Limits, Lei, Per Lui, Actuel and Arena, together with London’s The Observer newspaper and magazine. Brody has consistently pushed the boundaries of visual communication in all media through his experimental and challenging work, and continues to extend the visual languages we use through his exploratory creative expression.
In 1994, together with business partner Fwa Richards, Brody launched Research Studios, London. A sister company, Research Publishing, produces and publishes experimental multi-media works by young artists. The primary focus is on FUSE, the renowned conference and quarterly forum for experimental typography and communications. The publication is approaching its 20th issue over a publishing period of over ten years. Three FUSE conferences have so far been held, in London, San Fransisco and Berlin. The conferences bring together speakers from design, architecture, sound, film and interactive design and web.
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Magazine
research
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Graphis Magazine
Graphis became one of the classiest publications available, as a result of his impeccable care and good taste.
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Graphis is an international bastion of excellence in design and visual imagery
Graphis, The International Journal of Visual Communication, was first published in 1944 by Walter Herdeg and Dr. Walter Amstutz in Zurich, Switzerland. Graphis presented the work of fine artists and illustrators, and gradually presented the formative years of graphic design as we know it today. Advertising and photography were also featured, and Walter selectively chose what he felt to be the best talent of the time.
Emigre Emigre is a type foundry in California that was often criticized for being a direct threat to modernist ideals. It was one of the first places to take full advantage of the new medium to graphic design that was the computer generated revolution and create digital typefaces. Rather then using
letterpress technology. Emigre also published a magazine to showcase this new found technique that featured work from many talented designers. In addition the publication caused form itself to be a means of debate, questioning the actual function of type and designs
function. It was these aesthetics which made the magazines a contributor to 20th century postmodern design.
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David Carson David Carson is considered by many to be one of the world’s most influential graphic designers. He describes himself as a “hands-on” designer and has a unique, intuition-driven way of creating everything from magazines to TV commercials. In addition to various awards and achievements for his graphic design and typography work, Carson has also written books on design, including The End of Print (with Lewis Blackwell), Trek: David Carson, Recent Werk, and the soon-to-be-released The Rules of Graphic Design. Carson is most famous for ‘Raygun’ a publication that was designed without any specific structure. Carsons experimental approach when working on youth Page 36
orientated magazines such as ‘beach’ and ‘ray gun’ changed conventions of traditional editorial and advertising during the 1980’s/1990’s. This made him lead designer in the post modernist movement as his techniques began frequently used in design practice. His playful approach is shown throughout the magazines style. For example, the front covers were retro, collaged, inspired by a do it yourself movement and typical of the punk style in the mid 80’s. This was further enhanced by the extreme justification used on the inner pages, which showed text columns jammed together and deconstructed type that left the reader
“You have to utilize who you are in your work. Nobody else can do that: nobody else can pull from your background, from your parents, your upbringing, your whole life experience.
to decipher the message. This amplified content and meaning that encouraged closer engagement from the viewer. One of the most known experiments in Ray Gun magazine was a spread on musician Bryan Ferry. Carson deemed the content boring and not worth reading, therefore as a solution set the typeface to “Zapt Dingbats” – a typeface composed entirely of symbols rather than letters. This explored postmodernist ideas that a page must be felt rather than read, which shocked many during the 90’s as a stark contrast from the modernist principles of clarity.
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ID Magazine i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter. Over the years the magazine evolved into a mature glossy but it has kept street style and youth central to every issue.
these were of punks and New Wave youth found on English streets and who were simply asked to stand against any nearby blank wall. The resulting pictures, the subjects facing the camera and seen from “top to toe”, are a vivid historical documentary photography archive, and have established the posed “straight up” as a valid style of documentary picture making.
The magazine is known for its innovative photography and typography, and over the years established a reputation as a training ground for fresh talent.
Tipped on its side, the “i-D” typographic logo reveals a winking smiley. Most issues of i-D magazine have featured a winking cover model.
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Computer Arts Computer Arts is a magazine for people who believe design matters. It is the world’s best-selling magazine for digital artists and designers. Every issue delivers the insight and inspiration creative professionals need to survive and thrive in today’s global design industry. From in-depth analysis of the
latest trends and business issues to the very best new work and behind the scenes access to cuttingedge studios and projects, Computer Arts covers what counts. The one main reason I like these magazines is for the design of the covers. They are all ways eye catching
and very differeny. They mostly include vector illustrations which are themed around what content is inside the magazine. This magazine also has a strong coherent masthead which I think works really well with every single cover.
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Magazine
Development
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Developing a masthead A masthead is the name for a nameplate of a magazine or newspaper. Consider the masthead a standing element in your publication. Except for changes to the names of contributors to each issue and the date/volume number, most information remains the same from issue to issue. Be consistent in placement as much as possible. Because it’s not an article, a smaller font is common. The masthead may be framed or set inside a tinted box. I began typing up some examples of mastheads on Adobe Illustrator to look more specifically at the various fonts that could be used. Similar to the shaping of the design.
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One noticible shape which is seen across many publications mastheads is the use of a circle. I find this design very clean however very cliche. I decided that I would try designing my own masthead in the style. I also experimented with the colours, I decided to start by playing around with the three primary colours as I think these three colours resemble the colours of the post modern era. This also keeps it simple and aids with the consistency throughout my magazine.
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Here I have developed some of my favourite mastheads I had designed. I really liked the font ‘cafe and brewery’ which I had downloaded of dafont.com. I thought this font followed both of the design eras rules and looked very clean and smart. I decided to play around further with the circle idea, also using a slightly different tone of red which I think looks much better than the harsh primary colours.
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Here are my final mastheads which I have designed. They are all consistent with each other and can be used differently throughout my magazine. The third one down will be the main logo of the magazine, and I will have this watermarked on the background of each spread. Furthermore I will experiment with using the other three when designing my front cover to see which ones work and look the best.
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Developing a front cover I started to create my front cover for my magazine. I started similarly to how I started designing my mast head. I kept the colours simple and played around with the positioning of the text. My first idea was to creat a post modern version. I used one of the mastheads I designed and placed it at an angle. I thought this looked really smart and really eye catching. I developed this design adding different effects to try and make it look as post modern as I could.
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This was another idea I designed. I used a picture I had taken of the Charles Clifford car park in Sheffield and edited it on photoshop to make it look post modern. I then played around with the text using a grid. I kept developing this as you can see on both pages. I think this design is really successful and is inkeeping with the design from both eras. However I am unsure whether it is inkeeping with the content of my magazine.
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I thought I would try incorporating some of my project work into my magazine. I used a piece which I created within my street graphic project. I then played arounf with the layout and the placement of where the mast head would go. I really like this design and I think I am starting to get somewhere with the design of my front cover.
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With using a picture from a project in mind I decided to experiment with using another picturw from my street graphic project. This image is my final outcome from the street graphics project, projected onto the side of the Creative Arts building at uni.
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I decided on my final idea, here I have developed it further, to see whether it could be changed and altered for each issue by changing the picture, which it could. I also experimented further with the colour of the magazine. On the right is my final design for the front cover of my magazine.
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After using my previous final cover on the final magazine, I decided I needed to develop it a little further as I thought the mast head wasn’t inkeeping with the cover of the magazine. I decided to go back and look at my original masthead designs. I picked one which I thought would go best with the picture which I decided to use for my background. I found this looked a lot better. I did a quick play around with the colours but I preffered the black and white version with the red line, which I am going to use within the magazine.
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Column Research In typography, a column is one or more vertical blocks of content positioned on a page, separated by gutters or rules. Columns are most commonly used to break up large bodies of text that cannot fit in a single block of text on a page. Additionally, columns are used to improve page composition and readability. Newspapers very frequently use complex multi-column layouts to break up different stories and longer bodies of texts within a story. Column can also more generally refer to the vertical delineations created by a typographic grid system which type and image may be positioned.
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One column - Used very rarely. Text laid out in this one very wide column can look dull and heavy since lots of it can be poured into the column. The text should be larger in size with larger leading. Readers will get lost in columns that have more than 80 characters in one row. Generally the ideal number of characters for best legibility would be around 60 characters per row. You can make it more elegant and interesting if you make the outer margin much wider, making the column much narrower. By making this column narrower you can make the text size smaller along with its leading. Type size for such columns should be around 9-12 points.
Two columns - When using two columns it is best not to use the maximum space on the page. Make some room around columns, give them some space. You can also make bigger outer margin and make two narrower columns which will bring some drama to the page. Three columns - This number of columns also provides for an elegant layout and big stories can be laid out in this way. You can break this column with some pull out quote spread across two columns. This is a great tool to break a page a bit and add some splash to the page. In three column layout your number of characters should drop way bellow 60, ideal number would be around 40-50 characters, or you can reduce type size.
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Developing a grid This is the grid I have used for my research document. I wanted to use a grid in my research document s I could experiment and get used to using a grid before my final outcome magazine. I decided to use three columns which provides an elegant layout which allows for big stories to be laid out neatly as this document will be mostly text and a few images. This layout can also alow for quotes to spread across two columns. This is a great tool to break a page a bit and add some splash to the page. In three column layout the number of characters should drop way bellow 60, ideal number would be around 40-50 characters, or you can reduce type size.
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This is the grid I have decided to use for my final magazine. I decided to stay using a 3 column grid as I think it works well for the purpose.
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Thumbnail Sketches Contents Page
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Thumbnail Sketches Post/Modernism
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Thumbnail Sketches Earth Artifact Page
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Thumbnail Sketches Street Graphic Page
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Thumbnail Sketches Curiosity Page
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Thumbnail Sketches El Lissitzky Page
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Thumbnail Sketches Manifesto Page
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Layout Design
Here I have came up with a few different layout ideas for my contents page. I wanted to keep the contents page minimal and plain as my other pages within my magazine will be quite image and colour heavy. With this in mind these are a few conceps I came up with. The final design I chose is the last bottom right one. I thought this worked really well together however I am unsure whether or not to place the title ‘contents’ on the page or not, or whether a list of page numbers is just enough? Page 70
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Developing my layout for the street graphics spread. My final design for this page showed my finished tiled piece on the right hand page and then on the left, the title which I created during the project and a picture of my design on the side of the creative arts building, Along with two other images I created during my development stages of the project. I think this page works nicely together, especially as this pahe is one of the least text heavy pages, so the big picture works really well as this is the main focal point. Page 72
Developing my layout for the earth artifact spread. I found this page quite difficult to design do to what I wanted on the page was hard to layout in a nice presentable way. The final outcome was what I thought worked the best. I had my final outcome stretching over the majority of the double spread and then on the last right column the text spead the whole way down. Page 73
Developing my layout for the El Lissitzky spread. For my final layout I placed the finished typeface on the right page. I wanted this to be the main piece on this spread. Then on the left page I placed the text along the first column, then the title and then three circles with development of my text in. Page 74
Developing my layout for the cabinet of curiosity spread. My final layout included the final cabinet I created on the right hand page. On the left included the title along the top then a picture of a collage which I created during the development stages and also text describing the process of how I arrived at my final design. Page 75
Developing my layout for the manifesto spread. My final layout showed my finished manifesto on the left and then on the right I placed the title, text and then three developments of my manifesto. Page 76
Developing my layout for the modernism and post modernism spread. I played around alot to get my finished layout. On the next page you can see my final layout where I have included a piece from both movements on one page and the other a bit about each movement along with the title. Page 77
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Final front and back
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Final Layouts
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