NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
Name:
Project:
Molly Deakin
Form Follows Function - an exploration of Modernism and Post Modernism
Module:
Content:
TFD1411
Research, Initial Ideas, Development
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
MY APPROACH
2
The brief of a ‘New Visual Language’ to me is an exciting one as i feel it is what i am strongest in. The use of layout, soace, the relationship betwen text and image and coming up with a unique style to carry across is what i enjoy the most. The brief is to design the first issue of a magazine titled New Visual Language. The magazine is to
focus on and exploration of Modernism and Post Modernism and will also include 3 examples of my own work. In order to reach the final magazine I will show the steps in which i took to get to the final thing showing a variation of layouts, mastheads, and contents pages etc.
MODERNISM
Modernism covered many creative disciplines from design and art to influencing architecture, music and literature. The power of machines forced artists to strategically re-think their practice, the results were revolutionary
and still influences designers to this very day. This new technology provided the opportunity for mass production, and the machine itself became a theme in modernism. Modernism especially changed the thinking process for communications, graphic design and typography, the style of design shifted drastically from the prior 19th century approach. Before the concept of Modernism, graphic design and typography was ‘overly decorated’ and elaborate, every possible inch of a typical poster would be filled with imagery and type.
New Visual Language
‘FUNCTION SHOULD ALWAYS DICTATE FORM’
Designers of the era of Modernism abided to strict, structured grid system with emphasis on negative space, just as important was the use of clean sans-serif type. The idea was to create strong graphics that were against commercialism, greed and cheapness. Typical typefaces used in the Modernism era include Franklin Gothic, Monotype Grotesque, Futura, and Helvetica Neue.
Research
With the advances of technology Modernism began to break through at the end of the 19th century into the beginning to the 20th century. Western society began to develop new ways to shape human culture and improve the constructed environment.
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 3
LES NABIS
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
MODERNISM (1890’s)
4
Les Nabis were a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s. Initially a group of friends Les Nabis originated as a rebellious group of young student artists interested in contemporary art and literature, most of them studying at the private art school of Rodolphe Julian. They preached that a work of art is the end product and the visual expression of an artist’s synthesis of nature in personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols. They paved the way for the early 20th-century development of
abstract and non-representational art, and they had in common with most progressive artists of the time the goal of integrating art and daily life. Les Nabis artists worked in a variety of media, using oils on both canvas and cardboard, distemper on canvas and wall decoration, and also produced posters, prints, book illustration, textiles and furniture. Considered to be on the cutting edge of modern art during their early period, their subject matter was representational, but was design oriented along the lines of the Japanese prints they so admired, and art nouveau.
Les Nabis stood out to me when look kat modernist art movements because I feel that they incorporate flatness, page layout and negative space and other decorative modes, with a painterly, non-realistic look.
FELIX VALLOTTON
PIERRE BONNARD
‘Untitled, Woodcut’ www.google.co.uk/images
‘Les Parisiennes’ (1893), lithograph www.wikipedia.com
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss painter and printmaker associated with the Les Nabis movement. Vallotton was heavily associated with working through the style of woodcuts which at the time was seen as innovative, establishing Vallotton as a leader in the revival of true woodcut as an artistic medium. Vallotton emphasized outline and flat
patterns - a technique which I feel can be transferred through to design work today. I really like looking at how modern and revolutionary his work is in comparison to other traditional paintings around that time. I think it shows that finding new and exciting ways of working has always been a method of producing something exciting.
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of the Les Nabis. Bonnard is known to work from memory, using drawings as a reference, and his paintings are often characterized by a dreamlike quality. The unusual vantage points of Bonnard’s compositions rely less on traditional modes of pictorial structure than voluptuous color, and visual wit. Bonnard’s work stands out to me from other modernist artists for his unique use of colour and his complex imagery to create something that wouldn’t usually be seen as ordinary - but yet you still feel something from his work and understand it. Bonnard did not paint from life but rather drew his subject—sometimes photographing it as well—and made notes on the colours. He then painted the canvas in his studio from his notes. This practise is something I feel should be recognised as it shows Bonnard’s true technique and skill for capturing something.
SUPREMATISM MODERNISM (1913)
‘Suprematist Composition’ 1916 ‘Black Square’ 1923 ‘Suprematist Composition’ 1915 www.wikipedia.com
any new visual environment bringing about a change in perception... In a series of diagrams illustrating the “environments” that influence various painterly styles, the Suprematist is associated with a series of aerial views rendering the familiar landscape into an abstraction. I liked looking at Malevich’s work a it shows a real understanding and appreciation for space and layout of objects and shape. Something which I feel is vital in design today.
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
Kazimir Malevich was a Russian painter and art t h e o re t i c i a n . H e w a s a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde, Suprematist movement. Malevich laid down the foundations of Suprematism when he published his manifesto ‘From Cubism to Suprematism’. Malevich was most known for his ‘Square’ paintings which shown a “Cubo-Futuristic” style. He also was interested in aerial photography and aviation, which led him to abstractions inspired by or derived from aerial landscapes. Malevich defined the “additional element” as the quality of
New Visual Language
KAZIMIR MALEVICH
foundations of absolute non-objectivity that the future of the universe will be built - a future in which appearances, objects, comfort, and convenience no longer dominate. I feel that this basic use of shapes and space is important in design and is interesting to look at it being used in its original format when artists were first exploring shape and colour etc.
Research
Suprematism was an art movement, focused on basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines, and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colours. The term suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” rather than on visual depiction of objects. Malevich’s Suprematism is fundamentally opposed to the post-revolutionary positions of Constructivism and materialism. For Malevich, it is upon the
5
DE STIJL
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
MODERNISM (1971 - 1931)
6
The De Stijl was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 in Amsterdam. The term was used to refer to a body of work between the years 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands. Dutch painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg published a journal to propagate the group’s theories also named De Stijl. The group’s principal members - alongside Doesburg
were the painters Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszár, and Bart van der Leck, and the architects Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van ‘t Hoff, and J. J. P. Oud. Components that seemed to class something as part of the De Stijl movement are clear. Art is reduced 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. I chose to research the De Stijl movement as I feel it is essential to graphic design and what we see as clear, clean design today. The use of space and white space is noticeable and something I know I feel is vital to clear design.
BART VAN DER LECK
THEO VAN DOESBURG
‘Metz & Co. showroom’ www.google.co.uk/images
‘Metz & Co. showroom’ www.google.co.uk/images
Van Der Leck was a Dutch painter, designer, and ceramicist. With Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian he founded the De Stijl art movement. After meeting Mondrian, Van Der Leck started to paint abstract compositions comprising simple, basic forms such as squares and triangles, with the three primary colours and black and white.
Van Doesburg was a Dutch artist, who practised painting, writing, poetry and architecture. After coming in to contact with the works of Piet Mondrian, Van Doesburg saw within Mondrians work his ideal in painting: a complete abstraction of reality. Soon after the exposition Van Doesburg got in contact with Mondrian, and together with related artists Bart van der Leck, Anthony Kok, Vilmos Huszar, and J.J.P. Oud they founded the magazine De Stijl in 1917.
In 1930, he was commissioned by Jo de Leeuw, owner of the prestigious Dutch department store Metz & Co. to design interiors, window packaging, branding and advertising. For these print materials van der Leck developed a rectilinear, geometrically constructed alphabet. In 1941, he designed a typeface based on this alphabet for the avant garde magazine Flax.
Although De Stijl was made up of many members, Van Doesburg was the “ambassador” of the movement, promoting it across Europe.
RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM MODERNISM (1919)
The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917. The term itself would be invented by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, who developed an industrial, angular style of work, while its geometric abstraction owed something to the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich. Constructivism as theory and practice was derived largely from a series of debates at The Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow. The First Working
Group of Constructivists developed a definition of Constructivism as the combination of faktura: the particular material properties of an object, and tektonika, its spatial presence. Initially the Constructivists worked on three-dimensional constructions as a means of participating in industry. I really like looking at how this style began to take shape in the use of poster work and design incorporating typography as a form of art for the first time.
‘The Woman Without a Name, Part II, film poster ’ www.google.co.uk/images
‘SA. Sovremennaia Arkhitektura’ www.google.co.uk/images
Jan Tschicold was a typographer, book designer, teacher and writer. Tschichold had converted to Modernist design principles in 1923 and he became a leading advocate of Modernist design. He advocated the use of standardised paper sizes for all printed matter, and made some of the first clear explanations of the effective use of different sizes and weights of type in order to quickly and easily convey information. I decided to look in to the work of Jan Tschicold as i feel that the importance of his work was often overlooked. During his time working for Penguin he gave their books a unified look and enforced many of the typographic practices that are taken for granted today, he allowed the nature of each work to dictate its look, with varied covers and title pages.
Alekei Gan was a Russian art theorist and designer who was a key figure in the development of Constructivism. Together with Alexander Rodchenko and his wife Varvara Stepanova, Gan formed the first Working Group of Constructivists, which rejected fine art in favour of graphic design, photography, posters, and political propaganda. In his interpretation of Constructivism, which he saw as the creative counterpart to the socio-political tasks of the Revolution, Gan called for creative activity to be politicized to the maximum and for its artistic component to be minimized. His slogans included ‘we declare uncompromising war on art’ and ‘death to art’. Gan also published and edited the journal Kino-Fot, in which he advanced his idea of the replacement of painting by photography and promoted the cinema as a medium unconnected with tradition and capable of the objective recording of successful changes in Soviet life.
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
ALEKEI GAN
New Visual Language
JAN TSCHICOLD
Research
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements. Its influence was pervasive, with major impacts upon architecture, graphic and industrial design.
7
BAUHAUS
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
MODERNISM (1919 - 1933)
8
Bauhaus was an art school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicised and taught. it was founded with the idea of creating a “total” work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, Modernist architecture and art, design and architectural education.
The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel in the decades following its demise, as many of the artists involved fled, or were exiled by, the Nazi
regime. The influence of the Bauhaus on design education was significant. One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology, and this approach was incorporated into the curriculum of the Bauhaus. The structure of the Bauhaus Vorkurs (preliminary course) reflected a pragmatic approach to integrating theory and application.
HERBERT BAYER
LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY
‘Universal’ typeface www.google.co.uk/images
Title page of: ‘Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar’ www.google.co.uk/images
Herbert Bayer was an Austrian and American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus. In the spirit of reductive minimalism, Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted use of all-lowercase, sans serif typefaces for most Bauhaus publications. Bayer is one of several typographers of the period who experimented with the creation of a simplified more phonetic-based alphabet. From 1925 to 1930 Bayer designed a geometric sans-serif Proposal for a Universal Typeface that existed only as a design and was never actually cast into real type.
After joining the school, Moholy-Nagy introduced the ideas of “New Typography” to the Bauhaus. He considered typescript to be primarily a communications medium, and was concerned with the “clarity of the message in its most emphatic form”. The Bauhaus’ typography was closely connected
to corporate identity and to the development of an unmistakable image for the school. Characteristic for the design were clear, unadorned type prints, the articulation and accentuation of pages through distinct symbols or typographic elements highlighted in colour.
POST - MODERNISM set adherence to rational order and formal organization. They also seemed to entirely pay no attention to traditional conventions such as legibility. Another characteristic of postmodern graphic design is that “retro, techno, punk, grunge, beach, parody, and pastiche were all conspicuous trends. While postmodern design did not consist of one unified graphic style, the movement was an expressive and playful time for designers who searched for more and more ways to go against the system. Post modernism
shattered established ideas about style and brought a radical freedom to art and design. It brought a radical freedom to art and design through gestures that were often funny, sometimes confrontational and occasionally absurd. Most of all, over the course of two decades, from about 1970 to 1990, post modernism brought a new self-awareness about style itself.
Research
Post modernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Post modernism includes sceptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism. Postmodern designers were in the beginning stages of what we now refer to as “graphic design�. They created works beginning in the 1970s without any
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 9
EMIL RUDER POST - MODERNISM (1930’s - 1970’s)
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
‘Minimalist design posters’ www.google.co.uk/images
10
Emil Ruder was a Swiss typographer and graphic designer. He is distinguishable in the field of typography for developing a holistic approach to design. He expressed lofty aspirations for graphic design, writing that part of its function was to promote ‘the good and the beautiful in word and image and to open the way to the arts’. He was one of the major contributors to Swiss Style design. He taught that typography’s purpose was to communicate ideas through writing, as well as
placing a heavy importance on Sans-serif typefaces. No other designer since Jan Tschichold was as committed as Ruder to the discipline of letterpress typography or wrote about it with such conviction. The Swiss Style was developed in Switzerland in the 1950s and ruder was heavily influential with the movement. This style was defined by the use of sans-serif typefaces, and employed a page grid= for structure, producing asymmetrical layouts. By the 1960s, the grid had become a
routine procedure. The grid came to imply the style and methods of Swiss Graphic Design. Ruder demonstrated a grid of nine squares as the basis for different sizes of image Also stressed was the combination of typography and photography as a means of visual communication. The primary influential works were developed as posters, which were seen to be the most effective means of communication.
JOSEF MÜLLER BROCKMANN POST - MODERNISM (1930 - 1990’s)
‘In my work I have always aspired to a distinct arrangement of typographic and pictorial elements, the clear identification of priorities. The formal organisation of the surface by means of the grid, a knowledge of the rules that govern legibility (line length, word and letter spacing and so on) and the meaningful use of colour are among the tools a designer must master in order to complete his or her task in a rational and economic matter.’
Research
Josef Müller-Brockmann, was a Swiss graphic designer and teacher. He is recognised for his simple designs and his clean use of typography (notably Akzidenz-Grotesk), shapes and colours which inspire many graphic designers in the 21st century. He began his career as an apprentice to the designer and advertising consultant Walter Diggelman before establishing his own Zurich studio specialising in graphics, exhibition design and photography. By the 1950s he was established as the leading practitioner and theorist of Swiss Style, which sought a universal graphic expression through a grid-based design.
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 11
ARMIN HOFMANN POST - MODERNISM (1940’s - 1970’s)
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
‘Poster Designs’ www.google.co.uk/images
12
Armin Hofmann is a Swiss graphic designer. He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts. Hofmann was instrumental in developing the graphic design style known as the Swiss Style. His teaching methods were unorthodox and broad based, setting new standards that became widely known in design education institutions throughout the world. His independent insights as an
educator, married with his rich and innovative powers of visual expression, created a body of work enormously varied - books, exhibitions, stage sets, logotypes, symbols, typography, posters, sign systems, and environmental graphics. His work is recognized for its reliance on the fundamental elements of graphic form - point, line, and shape - while subtly conveying simplicity, complexity, representation, and abstraction. He is well known for his posters,
which emphasized economical use of colour and fonts, in reaction to what Hofmann regarded as the “trivialization of colour.
ROSMARIE TISSI POST - MODERNISM (1960’s - PRESENT) ‘Poster Designs’ www.google.co.uk/images
straight-laced ‘Swiss style’. I feel like Tissi has a real creativity to create posters. The use of geometric shapes in the posters produce a great tension and balance, and her choice of colours gives a sense of warmest into the posters. Even though there are many elements, the readily and legibility is still maintained.
Research
After working together for ten years, Rosmarie Tissi and her mentor set up the collective studio O&T in 1968. Their clients include printing houses, companies of all kinds, cultural institutions and the public sector. Her designs are characterised by an objectively clear yet undogmatic style, and the approach whereby writing influences form can be called a style-defining characteristic of Tissi’s work. However, she has always steered clear of
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 13
WOLFGANG WEINGART POST - MODERNISM (1960’s - PRESENT)
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
‘Poster Designs’ www.google.co.uk/images
14
Wolfgang Weingart is an internationally known graphic designer and typographer. His work is categorized as Swiss typography and he is credited as “the father” of New Wave or Swiss Punk typography. As early asthe mid-1960s he began to break the established rules. He liberated letters from the corset of the right angle, spaced, underlined or reshaped them and reorganised typesetting. In the 1970s he began to translate half
tone films into collages, in this way anticipating the digital sampling of the post-modern “New Wave”. His work instils creativity and a desire for experimentation into the ossified swiss typographical industry and reflected this renewal in his own work. Countless designers have been inspired by his teaching at the basle school of design and by his lectures.
APRIL GREIMAN POST - MODERNISM (1960’s - PRESENT) ‘China Club Poster Designs’ www.google.co.uk/images
name to Visual Communications, as she felt the term “graphic design” would prove too limiting to future designers. In that year, she also became a student herself and investigated in greater depth the effects of technology on her own work. She then returned to full-time practice and acquired her first Macintosh computer. She would later take the Grand Prize in Mac World’s First Macintosh Masters in Art Competition
Research
April Greiman is a designer recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited with establishing the ‘New Wave’ design style in the US during the late 70s and early 80s. In 1982, Greiman became head of the design department at the California Institute of the Arts. She lobbied successfully to change the department
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 15
DAVID CARSON MODERNISM (60’s - PRESENT)
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
‘Poster Designs’ www.google.co.uk/images
16
David Carson is an American graphic designer, art director and surfer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun, in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called “grunge typography” era. Typography spun into a whirling end-of-century in the 1990s, and David
Carson was at its centre. The incendiary pages of Ray Gun magazine inflamed the eyes and minds of countless young designers who sought to tap into the freedoms unlocked by his bold new style. Carson shaped everything in his path for his own purposes, endlessly contorting type, layout and grid into new configurations and abandoning design’s established truths of order and legibility. He represented a new breed of visual author. Carson forged graphic design into a cultural force and a medium with its own
shape and direction. Although design swims in the stream of commerce, it lives there, in Carson’s work.
THE GRID SYSTEM Grid System Designs www.google.co.uk/images
page, or relation to other parts of the same graphic element or shape. Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to your design. As a tool grids are useful for organising and presenting information. Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns for users to follow. From a designers point of view they allow for an organised methodology for planning systematic layouts.
Research
In graphic design, a grid is a structure (usually two-dimensional) made up of a series of intersecting straight (vertical, horizontal, and angular) or curved guide lines used to structure content. The grid serves as an armature on which a designer can organize graphic elements (images, glyphs, paragraphs) in a rational, easy to absorb manner. A grid can be used to organize graphic elements in relation to a page, in relation to other graphic elements on the
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 17
THE GRID SYSTEM
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
When it came to using a grid system to follow when developing my own magazine for New Visual Language I tried a few different ones before deciding which was best for the layout I hoped for with my magazine. Due to the layout being completley different on each page and not one page being the same, I found it quite difficult and challenging to use the grid in a number of different ways. However the grid did help in the aid of making
18
each page flow. The grid system I decided worked best was a 12 column and 12 row grid using the golden ratio. It also Included a 12pt base足line grid.
MAGAZINE COVERS Paper Magazine - www.pinterest.com Esquire Maagazine - www.google.com/images Vanity Fair Magazine - www.pinterest.com
attracts people instantly to the magazine and distinguishes it from others. The covers that stood out most to me were the various Paper covers which show a strong relation to one another but each has a distincive image that seperates one from the other. Other magazines that stood out were various indie publications that I came across on sites such as Behance and Pinterest as they show new and unique ways of displaying information in relation to well known magazines.
Research
When looking for inspiration from various different magazines I was mainly looking for quite simple yet striking covers. I wanted to find something that shown me different, interesting ways of displaying information. I like the idea of using lines and bozes to seperate different parts of text and having different points and spaces to break information apart from one another. I dont like covers to look generally busy and unorganised as I believe a cover shoud flow and be the most organised and striking part of a magazine as it is what
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 19
Research New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 20
Punk Not Dead Magazine - www.pinterest.com I.D. Maagazine - www.pinterest.com BEople Magazine - www.pinterest.com
Research
Unknown - www.pinterest.com Ling Magazine - www.pinterest.com Port Magazine - www.pinterest.com
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 21
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
MAGAZINE COVER DESIGN
22
When Coming up with ideas for my own cover I knew that I wanted the main focus of the page to be the masthead rather than an image. Therefore I knew that my cover would be quite a simple and spacious design. However I also knew that the cover had to to reflect the work contained inside and must relate to my style. From there i then knew that I would have some sort of ink t my work on the cover - wether that be an image or images, or more text, or maybe even pattern or shapes. When sketching ideas I had not
yet decided on a final masthead design so a lot of my ideas were focussed on that. However from sketching I knew the kind of style I wanted to follow and how I wanted to present the information required on the cover. In the end after I felt my covers were to simple and not effective enough I decided to include snippets of images off each of the pages to represent my style.
Research New Visual Language
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 23
24
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 New Visual Language
Research
MAGAZINE MASTHEADS Masthead Examples www.pinterest.com
I feel like their boldness and weight is what made them stand out to me as that is exactly what you want a mastheads purpose to be.
Research
Magazine mastheads are often the focal point of any magazine cover or publication and is what seperates one from the other. Many magazines are notably recognisable to readers due the their masthead. A masthead is what pulls the whole cover together and I personally feel like the hwole pages layout is influenced upon the basis of how the masthead sits and fits on the page. Many of the mastheads that I came across in my research were from indie publications on websites such as Pinterest and Behance.
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 25
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
MASTHEAD DESIGN
26
Many magazine mastheads that we come across are quite bold and stand out on the page. As the title for the masthead is quite long - 3 words long infact - I knew that my masthead couldnt be short and bold like many of of the ones i came across that I liked. So from there I knew I had to come up with an idea that would bring the 3 words together in a striking way. I knew that this would include the use of lines or shape. I then used these two points as the basis of my sketches and ideas. At first underlining the
words felt like the most suitable way of bringing them together, but then i discovered using a square or squares as the background to hold the 3 words together. This idea was the focus towards my final masthead and I feel it works really well as a focal point of the cover aswell.
Research New Visual Language
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 27
28
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 New Visual Language
Research
MAGAZINE LAYOUTS & VISUALS ‘Poster Designs’ www.google.co.uk/images
magazines which stood out most to me were the ones which showed displaying information in a unique way that you wouldnt come across in ordinary everyday magazines. I like the layout of indie publications that stand out to me as interesting and unique.
Research
The layout of a magazine to me is the most exciting part and what I notice most above all other factors. The way a certain amount of information is layed out in a certain way to display what is most important in a pleasing and appelaing way really interest me. It can be quite difficult to contain such a large amount of type, images, and illustrations along with any other extras in to such a small space - thats why how it is layed out is vital. Many of the magazines I came across just stood out as ordinary and basic which is what I didnt want to achieve personally with my magazine. The
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 29
30
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 New Visual Language
Research
LAYOUT DESIGN
knew when it came to designing the magazine what I wanted to achieve and how I wanted it to look down to every detail. One of these details were how i wanted the masters of each page to look - all details at the top to alllow for space on the rest of the page.
Research
When coming up with my own layout I knew that I wanted a strong sence of space and room within each spread. I wanted the whole magazine to be alike in style and layout so that the whole thing flowed and was easy to folllow and read. I also knew that I wanted the readers eye to flow across each page from images to text and to seperate different parts of the text so it wasnt just one large block on each page. After considering many different layout options after sketching my ideas, I
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 31
32
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 New Visual Language
Research
Research New Visual Language
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 33
MAGAZINE CONTENTS PAGES
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411
New Visual Language
Research
‘Poster Designs’ www.google.co.uk/images
34
The contents page of a magazine is what I feel is the most difficult aspect of every publication. It needs to show all information clearly and in an interesting way to excite the reader to carry on reading. I came across a handful of examples of contents pages that i came across that i liked and caught y attention, however I found it difficult to find examples that werent of the ordinary. |It seems like a lot of publications tend to stick to the basic when it comes to navigating their readers - maybe due to them not wanting
to confuse anyone. However the ones I did find interesting I feel I could take factors from each one. Wether that be the size and colour of the numbers, or the use of ines to relate different sections of text, or even using images to seperate information.
CONTENTS PAGE DESIGN
Research
For my own contents page within my magazine I wanted it to cover a double spread and cross over 2 pages. I also knew that it should relate to the other pages in my publication - simplistic and spacious. I also didnt want to overload on information this early on in the magazine so had to develop a way of showing the very little information I had in a attractive manner. I feel like my contents page gives readers an idea of what to expect in the rest of the publication and also portrays navigation of each page well.
New Visual Language Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 35
36
Foundation Studio Practice / TFD1411 New Visual Language
Research