Mackinnon.E.LiveProjects

31.03.11

Live Projects Part 1: 6 Weeks at The Architects’ Journal Magazine

the architects’ journal www.architectsjournal.co.uk

Ella Mackinnon Live Projects Report mac08241935 BA (hons) Design for Graphic Communication

The Architects’ Journal Six weeks as the design intern at AJ

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Contents

THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL GREATER LONDON HOUSE HAMPSTEAD ROAD LONDON NW1 7EJ

Intro Editor’s Letter

30 Magazines Features 10 My first magazine. The Sustainability Issue.

14 My second issue. NORD’s Shingle House Feature 18 Issue three. Saurbruch Hutton Feature.

24 Magazine number four. Neo Bankside and One Hyde Park Features.

29 Magazine number five.

Leicester Square cover.

34 Magazine number 6.

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The Architects’ Journal is the longest running weekly architecture magazine. It’s written on a more broader scale than it’s competitors.

So its features appeal to Architects and Critics alike.

I was lucky enough to get a design internship at AJ after much emailing, and finally a phonecall. I arrived in February and have been working on the magazine, under the Art Editor, Brad Yendle, since then.

I had a two day inerview,

to ‘see how you get on” and from then I was asked if I’d like to come back. And of course I said yes! I’ve been told I can stay here as long as I want, which is amazing!

This is a report about my time there, about what I’ve learned, what scared me, what I did well and what I did wrong. It also includes examples of the kind of work I’ve been doing here and examples of spreads and work I have had printed. I hope you enjoy it, like I have!

The Cover

Below: A crude drawing of the team!

I ‘borrowed’ this cover from an old ‘small projects 2010’ issue of AJ and adapted it to make it my own. You can be pretty flexible with the covers...I’ve even seen landscape ones at AJ. This cover, in 2010, actually got a lot of criticism from architects, because you can see some damp.

So the cover was deemed, “too grungey.” GOSH! You can’t win them all!

The Team

06 Edittin Floor Plans using Adobe Illustrator 07 Indesign Wizardry 08 Layout and Design of AJ 13 The Maxxi Building in Rome 16 Architects’ Journal Buildings Library Advbert 20 The terrifying phonecall 30 My first full feature 34 An awesome gift

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new starter

new starter

Day 1

The first day was, to say the least, frightening. The building, is just scarily big, when you get there, its a refurbished tobacco factory. Then you get in and it gets worse.

Scary security guards pointed me in the right direction, into the EMAP part of the building. I got to the reception and stuttered my name- just. I’m meeting Brad, the art editor, at 10. I’m 10 minutes early, and Brad is casually 5 minutes late.

These were probably the longest 15 minutes of my life.

I got given a huge name badge, saying I was a “visitor” and I look like a total loser sat there on my own with my portfolio in hand. Sat in the foyer I was surrounded by business men...

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Day 2

“what have I got myself into” came to mind. Women in high heels and nice clothes were directing important people to the glass meeting rooms that surround the foyer.

“Shit, I’m wearing trainers!”

There are lights in the walls of the foyer that change colour, and rather than make me feel calm and chilled and happy to be hear, they make me feel a little uneasy. When Brad arrives, its ok, because he’s normal looking!

“Phew” My first words were, “nice to meet you, this buildings scary!” good start Ella, well done. We walk into the office and I’m shown to my desk, I’m sat next to Brad. He introduces me to the members of the team, that

Above: Me sat in the foyer, crapping myself!

are around. These were Rory, the assistant editor, who got me the placement, and Felix, who is the technical editor, and sits across from me. I also meet Tom, whos a freelancer that works on a neighboring magazine, Architecture Review, aswell as the AJ Specification magazine (monthly AJ magazine for subscribers, about products and materials) He has cool trainers, and always asks me if I want tea.

“Thought that was my job!”

I was pretty lucky that Brad spent a good amount of time teaching me how to navigate the network and how it all works. He didn’t (and still doesn’t)mind me asking endless amounts of questions.

So today I start doing real jobs. The team are working on the yearly special ‘Sustainabiltiy issue.’ One of the features is a review of a show at the Excel Centre, called the EcoBuild.

This is a show full of companies that claim to have eco friendly products or systems.

The feature provides a large map, of which the sustainability editor, Hattie Hatman has made some notes. The notes look really cool on the map, kind of like an architects plans.

So my first job is to replicate this. I traced the path throught the map and all the annotations, put it in illustrator and spent the rest of the day fiddling around with it.

I also got taught how to edit architectural floor plans. Which is “a big part of the job,” at AJ, because there are floor plans on most pages. They get sent in as pdfs, which need to be con-

verted into Illustrator .eps files.

Then you have to edit them.

This is becasue these plans are originally meant to be huge and they will become essentially only a few cm in width and length on the actual spread, so some of the finer, yet most important details get lost. You therefore have to clean up the image, emphasize the important and get rid of the not so.

I did three of these at first, for the new olympic veledrome.

But I didnt do any of them right.... Practice makes perfect!

Next was a another big hurdle...the “do it all printer scanner photocopier emailer thing.”

This thing is amazing and evil at the same time. You can scan anything and it will email it to you. Or fax it to you or text it to you...anyting. You have to type in all your ID codes too, it took me a while to figure out how to log out. One time I couldn’t

Left: The evil do it all photocopier.

Right: My visitors badge

figure out how to log out, so I just left it. The guy behind me went to start his printing and looked at who I was logged in as, Tom Carpenter, and started shouting at me that I wasn’t Tom, in his storng Jamaican accent. So I pretended to laugh and ran away!

I use it all the time now though. It has a 50% success rate with scanning however, sometimes the files never arrive!

Its friday today so that means the cover has to go to the printers, this is a little weird, because half the mag goes on monday and half on tuesday as well.

But the cover sometimes needs special glosses and there is sometimes foldouts or cut outs, so they need special preperation. which I’m guessing is the reason for this, or perhaps its just to make sure everything isn’t done in a rush.

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the techy bits

“As I expected, they have crazy words for the simplest of things, and easy words for the most comlicated, what is the splash!?”

Today I’ve been working on the greenwash spread. The article is about how companys use a simple visual and verbal language to put across the impression of being green. Ive benn given this to play with becasue the illustration is a bit of a faff.

Its really weird shaped, and as its on a white background you cant define it by cropping it.

Lame! So I have been experiementing with ways to lay out the type and get everything on the spread, and some how add a unifying factor that makes it all look like a spread. Which seen virtually impossible. We desided to greyscale the illustration and try playing around with adda green brush storke

over the image and over some of the text. to emphasize the “greenwash.” It looked awsome but was deemed a little too offensive to the illustrator, who had hand coloured with pencil’s the whole thing! So in the end it kind of looked a bit crap. Oh well.

I have also been adding the finishing touches to the eco build map. The editor decided to flip the map 900 so now my hand drawn sketches down fit, so I have to do them all over again. Gosh! The first thing Brad said to me when I started here, is that you cant be precious about your work. your idea can look amazing , but there’s always someone that wont like it, or will want to change it. I guess this applies here!

InDesign Wizardry

My notes for editting the floor plans

Day 3

the techy bits

Day 4

STROKE

A screenshot of how to edit the floor plans

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GRADIENT TRANSPARENCY

Today I did the ‘week in pictures’ spread, which shows big glossy images of the news features on a nice spread. I got to choose all the images myself and determine the layout aswell. I also did the new business section on page 12, its only a small section but its a start!

Also learning a crazy amount of shortcuts... No wonder I get so close to deadlines, I’m sure I save about 30 minutes a day by using these shortcuts.

I’m also getting used to the crazy printer, I’m having about a 70% success rate now. Today we also go to print (its a Tuesday.) Busy, Busy!

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Layout & Design Type Styles

Adobe Caslon Pro - Body Copy and Headers

Adobe Caslon Pro Italic - Names and Critics headers (sometimes red) Adobe Caslon Pro Bold - Some headers and cover copy

Akzidenz Grotesque - annotations & credits Akzidenz Grotesque - Detail Numbering The magazines actual dimensions are 210mm X 265mm, opposed to A4 like this document.

This is how much shorter the actual pages are

This is a “pull quote” It’s a key phrase we pull out of the feature.

News Section

Cover

Paul Finch’s Column Called “letter from London” he talks about current themes in architecture around London.

Technical & Practice A feature based on technical details, from a practice point of view.

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This is called a boxout

Adverts Sold

News in pictures spread, New Practice section, and various current news stories

This is the grid we mostly use at AJ. its a 7 column grid. Its an odd number because we keep on column for captions for all the images we use. without this coumn we would have to lable the images on the images, which would be really messy

This is wear we put little snippets of info, that are related to a piece. Or in the critics, James’ Weekly column is in a box out, to seperate it from the other reviews.

This is where the captions and picture credits go.

This column is always defined with keylines, which are the black lines you can see on either side.

They have a stroke weight of 0.5. In Ian Martins column, you can fins small annotations in here.

1. Brendon Walsh, director, property and regeneration at Ealing Council ‘Change VAT regulation to make refurbishment exempt.’

2. Jennifer Dixon, partner, ASL ‘Revisit the whole subject of VAT relief to unlock smaller scale renewal projects.’

Building Study

In-depth look at a building/ development. Has detailed plans. Lots of photos. Gives an informed opinon and is a more critical piece.

Astragal Lists of inserts

Gossipy Column about current events. Has a Cartoon.

Leader Has Christine’s and Paul Finch’s Column, and letters from readers, also there is sometimes a guest column

Rotating Feature

Either on Sustainability or another Building Study. or sometimes these extra pages are distributes throughout the other constant features of the magazine

Unsold Adverts

Critics

Ian Martin’s Column

Section about cultural aspects of architecture.

Book reviews, Exhibition Reviews, Artist profiles are usually in here.

A Monday- Friday update on his week and the things he’s seeing and hearig, related to architecture. Written in a light-hearted comical tone.

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First week, first issue

Ella Mackinnon gets her first printed work at AJ

Day 5: Searching Getty

Left: The image I found on Getty to go on the news in pictures spread.

Below: Me being all embarassed in the meeting, when im introduced to everyone formally.

I’m starting to get these architectural plans down to a tee now! Still need my notebook to jog my memory and to make sure I do it right though.

Today I’ve been searching getty images for an image to put in the news section, that will accompany a piece about the Libya fighting. Tough job when the last thing people are doing in Libya at the moment is uploading their images to Flickr’s Creative Commons site or selling them to getty.

However we do find some good shots from protesters before the violence got to dangerous for journalists to be hanging around.

I have begun using Adobe Bridge again, I haven’t used it since college, but it so much easier to place images in indesign when using bridge because it places the image exactly where you want it without shifting or resizing it.

Helpul indeed! You can also preview whole in design spread on there!

Day 6: My first meeting Today is a Monday, the day before we go to print. They invited me along to a meeting. My first one! I have to be honest, I had no idea what they were on about most of the time, they were talking about what news topics could go online, a little follow up of the news that was in the magazine and that could go into the next one, which we start on wednesday.

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And very embarassingly I got intorduced to the WHOLE team. I went bright red, as Brad was telling them about me and all the work I had been doing.

I literally ran out of that room when the meeting was over!

But since then, everyone’s been a little more chatty with me, and people from all over the magazine, online and print, want me to do things! Yay!

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off to rome

off to rome

Day 7: Beers, Pizzas and The Maxxi Ella Mackinnon gets her name in the front of AJ and finally goes for Beers!

THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL GREATER LONDON HOUSE HAMPSTEAD ROAD LONDON NW1 7EJ architectsjournal.co.uk Established 1895

Editorial enquiries/fax 020 7728 4574 / 020 7728 4601 E firstname.surname@emap.com T 020 7728 plus extension below

Editor Christine Murray (4573) Deputy editor Rory Olcayto (4571) Editorial administrator Crystal Bennes (4574) Digital editor Simon Hogg (4572) News editor Richard Waite (07918 650875) Reporter Merlin Fulcher (4564) Technical editor Felix Mara (4568) Senior editor James Pallister (4570) Sustainability editor Hattie Hartman (4569) AJ Buildings Library editor Tom Ravenscroft (4644) Art editor Brad Yendle (4578) Design intern Ella Mackinnon Production editor Mary Douglas (4577) Sub-editor Helen Nianias (4579) Contributing editor Ian Martin Contributing photographer Edmund Sumner Sustainability intern Jo Leeder Editorial director Paul Finch

I did another ‘week in pictures’ spread, for the news section, It looks really good and I’m really getting used to editting the floor plans. Today they also put my name in the credits at the front of the magazine, I’m down as the design intern.

Oh yeah! But other than this its a pretty quiet day. I plucked up the courage to accept the offer to go to lunch with the team, we went for pizza and beers, 12

and they payed for it for me!

How kind! I’m really starting to love it here! Not just because of the pizza!

I’m going to Rome tomorrow so I’ll be back in the AJ office in 5 days.They recommended I go to the MAXXI building in Rome. Its a modern art exhibition space, that was designed by a British architectural company. It won the stirling prize!

So I’m determined to go!

Left: The office.

Right: The Credits column. My names in in the middle, I’m the “design intern” Below: Beer and Pizza, a regular lunchbreak at ‘The Vic’ Across: An image I took of the MAXXI in Rome

Group chief executive Natasha Christie-Miller Director of architecture and media Conor Dignam (5545) Commercial manager James MacLeod (4582) Business development manager Sam Hutchinson (4560) Sales manager Amanda Pryde (4557) Account managers Mary Constantinou (4609) Hannah Buckley (3762) Classified sales Ashley Powell (4518) Recruitment sales Kirsty Heath (5521) AJ subscription UK £165 Overseas £210 Back issues and subscriptions 0844 848 8858

The Architects’ Journal is registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. © 2011.

Published by Emap Inform, a part of Emap Ltd. Printed in the UK by Headley Brothers Ltd AJ (issn 0003 8466) is published weekly except Christmas and August. Subscription price is $420. periodicals postage paid at rahway, nj and additional mailing offices. Postmaster send address corrections to: AJ, c/o Mercury International Ltd, 365 Blair Road, Avenel, New Jersey 07001.

Distributed in the US by Mercury International Ltd, 365 Blair Road, Avenel, NJ 07001.

Day 8

Back from Rome and back to work. I can’t find a copy of the magazine anywhere! It went to print the day I left for Rome, so I couldn’t get one!

Today I’m learning really practical things, there’s not alot for me to do, but I’m just shadowing Brad, seeing what he’s up to and asking lots of questions. I’m figuring out the rules and the possibilities of this magazine. I found out that you can do so much with the cover, very simply. Basically to put gloss on you make a black and white copy of your cover, and in black you highlight everything you want to be glossed, and you send that along with your cover image.

Other things I’ve learned, are that AJ does have images

going over the bleed, they are an architecture magazine so big glossy images that take up a page look awsome and therefore it isnt a problem to do this.

You can put things outside the gutter. The printer prints to the edge of the page, so for example, when im numbeing the images on the news in pictures, sometime the only plae for the numbers is below the gutter.

But thats fine. Type cannot go out over the bleed!

There is a stong use of heirachy in terms of page content.

Usually a feature is 6 pages long, and theres normally two of them. If one feature is more thigh profile than another, it will get more pages, and more images.

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Magazine number two!

Ella Mackinnon does her first complete spread

One of my favourite picture spreads.

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My first spread with copy!

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Day 10

Day 9

Went to my second meeting today. It was very interesting. They were talking about the decline in readership and subscriptions of AJ and the rise in requests for purely online subscription. they talked about how they needed to juice up the magazine so that it was more appealing and less like the online news and stories.

They wanted to make the magazine more “chocolately.” However at the same time they have launched the AJBL, Architects’ Journal Buildings Library. A database of all the photos and plans used in the magazine, with technical spec info and information about the architect and the building itself. You have to pay for this. But to me its more likely to draw people online. They’re doing this by have free to view pages of the AJBL that correspond to current features in the magazine, while it gets on its feet.

I found today that, even if it’s long and tedious, you should definately read every article you are designing. It gives you a good sense of what information can be boxed out or deleted and how the information will be read on the page in comparison to the images. Also you have to choose between lots of images yourself so you need to know which ones are most relevant to the piece.

Left: The Bankside Bikeshed competition page that I designed Right: One of the AJBL Adverts I redesigned Above: The AJBL logo

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It’s Tuesday today, Print Day! It was a pretty quiet morning, but now its getting busy. I did the picture spread again, but because of constantly incoming news stories and accompanying images it’s changing all the time and what I do now will probably dramatically change by the time I see it printed.

I also did the Bankside Bikeshed competition feature. I had it looking good, but there was a particular image on the page that the editor wanted enlarging so you could see it in clearer detail. This put the hole thing off and in the end I had to leave it for Brad to do. It ended up looking pretty crap.

Form over content or content over form? hmmm?

I also was asked by James to start work on his critics section of the magazine. It meant I had to source some images for a book review. Which I had no idea how to do. To my horror he informed me this involved phoning publishers. I found the publisher, they were in Rotterdam. GREAT! This was my worst nightmare. I got out of it by emailing them. But to my dismay they didn’t receive it or reply to the email. I hoped no-one would notice.

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Magazine number three Ella Mackinnon does 4 more pages and lots of plans!

A couple of my Single pages in the news section

Another picture spread, that emphasizes the Zaha Bridge.

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phoning rotterdam

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Day 11

Not alot for me to do today, just a few horribly detailed maps to edit. Turned out they were a little bit too horrible, so we asked the architect to send us a less detailed version, which was alot easier to edit.

Sometimes the images are so huge and detailed it takes about 5 seconds for illustrator to register that youv’ve clicked the mouse! In these cases it’s ok to give up and just call the architects up.

Day 12

The publishers in Rotterdam didn’t get back to me. So I had telephone them. I was so nervous I wanted to cry. I HATE phoning people. I made myself a little script. I had no idea what to say or how these things worked. The women however, was really friendly and spoke very good english. Thank God! I was shaking for about 20 minutes afterwards though.

Later on in the day Simon (online editor) approached me to ask if I could make some changes to the AJBL adverts that go in the magazine. It just needed a few touch ups and toning down, but all was good, and he really liked it. He also asked if I could touch up a few logos for the blogs and maybe suggest some new ways to change the website!

James asked me to photographs some books for the Critics section of the magazine aswell. I had to take them in natural light...It was a particularly cloudy day!

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1. My little script for phoning the rotterdam publisher 2. The evil phone that I made said call on

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4 quick days

4 quick days

Day 13

Again, another quiet day. Not much to say really, although, when he had nothing for me to do, Brad gave me one of his books about magazine to read through. It was a very cool book with alot of nice quotes, that will be helpful not only for this project but also for my next one.

It was called, Issues: New Magazine Design by Jeremy leslie, 2001...here are a few quotes. “Magazines are for looking at, as much as they are for reading.”

“Magazines are even the precursprs and inspiration for websites. When we pick up a magazine. we do not read, or have to read. We look and we interact.

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Day 14 & 15 Left: The book, that Brad let me read.

Right: Another version of the AJBL advert that was made for a double spread.

Across Top: One of Brad’s many piles of printed ephemera that grace my desk.

Across Bottom: Christing and the subs are hard at work.

It’s monday, so its a bit busier, we’re running close to deadline.

The news hasn’t been started yet, one of the news team was away so i cant domy weekly spread yet, and theres nocopy for any of the articles.

I go to another meeting, to discuss how behind we are, and what needs to be done, as well as discuss whats happening with the next issue, AJ specifiacation and Aj100. Usually in the meetings we discuss the news, and everyone talks about what kind of parties or events and exhibitions theyve been too, and who theyve been networking with.

Deadlline day! Its moving pretty speedy. I’ve been pretty much working on the week in pictures spread all day, because it keeps on changing! quite annoying, but we talk it out. We tend to not put more than 5 news stories in the spread, because it can get a bit busy and we like to have two or three images f the same story sometimes if it’s a cool story. However, this week we do 6. I thought that the new released plans for Battersea power station should have taken up half of the spread, as they havent been seen before, but it turns out the images seem to contradict themselves and dont actually offer a very good idea of what its going to be like.

Day 16

Its wednesday, and its pretty quiet, the day after deadline. So ive Just been doing the usual, plan editting and basic layouts again. Brad said I’m nearly ready to start helping out with the building studies! Yay! This is the 8 page feature in the magazine that concentrate on one single building, it has quite tecnical bits of information about the building as well as the designer and context of the build.

However, I am still getting to grips with how the critics section works!

Oh and the magazines have arrived from the printers....Yay! 23

Magazine: No.4

Sourcing images, “Pah, thats nothing!� says Ella Mackinnon

Another Picture spread

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Another feature I helped with. These are the images I sourced

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Feature

critics

Day 17

Today was a day of more floor plan drawings. I’m finding them pretty easy now.

Paticularly when I get three or four plans from the same building, I can keep all the weights the same, and consistant. For example, I’ll make all stroke weights of 0.24, 0.5 and all stroke weights of 0.12, 0.3. I tend not to go ove 0.5 in wieghts, because the lines can merge in very detailed plans, but with the more simpler plans I can usually go up to 0.75 and 1pt storke weight.

I’m also getting alot more comfortable working with the team, it’s not very formal anymore, and I feel I can have a chat with everyone and help anyone out. I also go for lunch with everyone most days, which is nice. It’s nice that everyone feels like I’m a part of the team here. Its pretty chilled now.

Brad lets me root through his vast collection of books and magazines, helping me get to grips with all this architecture stuff !

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Day 18

Across: One of my favourite images from the critics section. by Niall Gallacher

We’ve been working on he Critics section today. Which is a bit out of everybody’s comfort zone this week. The critics, which is normally, a section full of book reviews or exhibitions, is this week all one article about neither an exhibiton or a book, but three very seperate designers working on totally different projects. There are alot of ‘weird’ images to sift through and we don’t know where to place them. And we don’t want to use alot of images but they are needed to understand the piece of writing. Nightmare. The copy also came in at 2000 words and 1500 is the max we can use really, without people getting bored of reading. Its been cut down, but needs cutting even more, a nightmare when we’re trying to design it.

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Day 19

Today I’ve been working on the website headers for the website. Basically what they want to do is make the website more like the magazine. In the magazine all the weekly writers have a photo header that goes above their column. They want to do something similar on the website, but combining the photo of the writer, with there name, and using the house type style. Another thing they want me to create is changeable headers for the rotating columns. There are 6 or 7 column that appear every week but rotate over a 5 week period. These are Footprint, Regs, Planning, Practice and Legalese.

Day 20 & 21

The news team were quite behind this week because Richard, the news editor was ill. It meant that I didn’t have a lot of time to do the week in pictures, and the news stories kept changing. By the time the images had come in for the spread, I was already busy working on the Critics, so Brad did a basic

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layout and then I finished it off later in the day. The magazine came in from the press today.

As soon as the delivery guy drops it in the office, everyone stops, grabs a copy as quick as they can (they always run out) and everyone sits down and has a good read of it. Looking at all the work they did in it, whether

it looks good or not. Looking for mistakes. I always find that the photographs in print are always a lot more vibrant and darker...Which I don’t like. For example in the Critics section this week there are some every vibrant images already and so they’re now even brighter.

Above: The headers for each columnist and feature on the website.

Below: One of the images from the critics. The images were so bright, that they didn’t turn out well in print.

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This Weeks Magazine: No.5 Ella Mackinnon brags about how awesome she did...

This week I did the whole Critics section (with a little help!) I’m so proud of myself. I went through this whole text with my red pen and found all the places where a certain project was mentioned and a particular

artist so that I could position the images where they were written about in the copy! It’s all about readability! I also chose and moved around all the images and pull quotes ...

I did the whole thing! I think it looks awesome if i do say

so myself ! James, the writer and editor of this section was also really happy with it. This started out as a bit of a nightmare. We never use this many images on a feature..theres 14 images here! and all of them have their own story.

The first two pages of the full feature I did

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The final three pages of the feature

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final days

final days

Day 22:

Day 23:

The intern makes Tea... Finally!

I had to take Thursday off to go into uni. So today is a Friday.

I’m doing a lot of spreads and plans for future issues. This is because next month, April, there is a lot of bank holidays, so we need to get ahead, because even though everyone gets a day off, the magazine still has to go to print.

Another thing is the AJ100 material needs to be designed.

AJ 100 is an annual even/issue, that annalyses the top 100 architectural practices in the UK.

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Below: This years AJ100 logo, in white and gold. this theme will be carried out through the AJ100 magazine Right: My first Intern Tea!

its a really big deal, and everyone wants to be in it. There is a big (and very expensive) party and meal, with speakers from the high end of the business.

The invites and promo material for the event need to be made, Brad got SS a graduate from LCC to come in and help out with the layouts for the information packs. Last year it was a very bright and crazily coloured patter. This year Brad’s going for Gold!

I also made my first cups of

Organisation is key, especially on deadline day!

tea today. I’ve never offered, because im too scared to go near the machine and also becasue im also scared of drpping the everywhere. But I did it, i made teas for everyone...abou 10 people!

So today was deadline day, and its the busiest one I’ve had.

Ive been editting diagrams for Hatties features on the website, Ive been editting AJBL adverts again, I’ve been editting illustrations, and doing the news in pictures spread again. I also got taught how to artcheck.

Art-checking happens when the designer (Brad) has finished

his layout. It basically when you check all the finer details. Like, whether the key lines match up, are they the same length, do the images align properly, has anything moved while the subs have been working with it. Then it goes into the finals folder, there the subs check it once more and make sure it looks ok as a pdf. Then it gets made into

Below: The diagram I had to annotate for Hattie

a ‘pass 4 press’ PDF file and is put into the pdf folder. From here it will go to the printers!

Very organised.

Today is also the last day where I will write about what I am up to at AJ in this report. It seems like a good place to end, now that we’ve just finished another magazine, my sixth.

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the end

Six weeks, Six Issues...

... and a heck of a lot learned writes Ella Mackinnon

I have not finished at the Architects’ Journal yet, I plan to stay for about two more months. However, to round up; these past six weeks have been better than I could ever expect a work placement to be.

I have become more efficient using InDesign and better at laying out pages and typography. It’s nuts how much I have improved and how quickly I seem to have picked it all up.

Not only that I have gained invaluable knowledge of how a weekly magazine runs. I cannot imagine I would ever get so involved in the designing of a magazine, as much as I have here. I do not feel like an intern at AJ, I feel like a part of the team, and I truly believe I have made some friends here.

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I have gained so much confidence working here, which is such a huge benefit to me. I’ve gone from being the person that will do anything to avoid that phonecall, to making calls to foreign countries and publishers weekly. And that will also help in the future when I come to look for a job or more internships.

I have also gained a lot of work for my portfolio, and have had the opportunity to work in an industry I had no idea about, Architecture. I have found that while I’ve been here, the people at AJ have been a constant resource for me to gain information from. Be it magazine, architecture or pay related, I feel so at ease talking to these people and at ease to ask ques-

Above: My favourite Wim Crouwel poster in the book Brad gave me.

tions and make mistakes.

Although it isn’t my last today, and I am back at AJ tomorrow, I thought I’d end this report with the above image.

It’s a present that Brad, my mentor at AJ, gave me today. It seemed fitting that he would give me it on the last day of the diary process of my time there.

It’s a book from a Wim Crouwel Exhibiton that he went to about 15 years ago.

He had tried to get me a ticket to go to the private viewing of Wim Crouwels current exhibiton at The Design Museum with him, but he couldn’t get a spare. So he gave me this! I was so chuffed.

It really somes up my time here at AJ!