ing Design a First on ssi Impre s the i e t i h Grap lack B w e N
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d and a P i e Th azine g a M the er Design ry Glossa
Welcome Name. Shelley Roach
Course. Bachelor of Fine Arts (Interactive & Visual Design)
Favourite Blog. youarenotsosmart.com/
to the desig n magazine that’s kind o f rad. The “In te rchange” graduate exh ibtion issue o f Rad-ish giv you a taste es of the editori a l a nd design fr this brand n om ew magazine .
Rad-ish is designed for your visual pleasure wit h articles to in sp ire the desig in all of us. ner So, sit back a n d re lax. Take the time to enjo y a magazin e that’s not trying to sell you something.
Pirate or Ninja. Ninja. Always.
www.shelley
roach.com
Contributions Editor / Art Director / Writer / Illustrator / Insomniac Shelley Roach Illustrations for “Graphite is the New Black” based on photography by Carlie Roach
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’s ever Anyone who n seen ‘America ws just Psycho’ kno nt a how importa design business card can be.
Designing a business card is like creating a first impression on paper. This little piece of card is what represents yourself as a professional, so you must make sure that it says all that you want it to say - more than just your contact details.
Step One. Create the impression you want to give. Think about how you want others to perceive you and your work. Write down three words that describe yourself or your business and keep these in mind throughout the process. can Your business card either say “Hi. Look at me, I’m different d but also elegant an professional. I’d be with. awesome to work Let’s do business.”
Or, it co uld als o say “ Look at Hi. me. I k now ho to use w a temp late in Microso ft Word .”
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Step Two. Get creative. Look for inspiration on the web for good examples of business card design. Don’t be confined by boring templates. Can you use a visual metaphor? Is there a printing technology that can make you stand out?
Step Three. Choose a layout and theme. Remember the words you want to describe yourself and explore how they relate to colour and form. It doesn’t have to show all three words - you don’t want your business card to be too busy or overcrowded. ‘Minimalist’ doesn’t have to mean ‘plain’.
Step Four. Pick a font. Don’t go overboard with curly or decorative fonts because you think it looks “creative”. Often it just turns out illegible. If there isn’t font that goes perfectly with a theme you’re going with, it’s safe just to stick to a simple san-serif like Helvetica.
Step Five. Add your contact details. Avoid using the hotmail address you made when you were thirteen. Remember to DOUBLE-CHECK your details. Unless you want some guy called Gary receiving dozens of “wrong numbers” while your client list stays largely consisting of family members, make sure all of your contact details are accurate.
Aim to create a business card that people will want to keep. A person will save a business card because they think the will use it, or it’s too nice to throw away. Either way it’s a win.
Fashion illustration nowadays isn’t restricted to the fashion designers. It’s made its way into magazine editorials, as well as promotion and advertising. While a photograph will always capture a more accurate portrayal of pieces of fashion (colour, material, fit), illustration can add something special by emphasizing the unique features of each piece in a way that allows you appreciate them more.
Pencil. The humble pencil is among the leading favourite mediums this season in fashion illustration. It is picked by a number of illustrators to show detail in clothes and tonality in models. The danger with pencil artwork is that it may not appear particularly special in the ostentatious world of fashion. Why not spice up your drab graphite render with a newsprint?
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Pen. Fine felt-tipped pens are excellent for showing extricate details, such as embroidery, but also loose flowing lines can illustrate the look and feel of a piece. Experiment with ball point pens if you’re looking to be different.
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Digital. Fashion illustration serves as a form of art, therefore it generally uses traditional artistic mediums. However, digital media is great for experimentation. You can create mixed media compositions easily intergrated on screen. Digital is generally a cleaner, neater approach. Why not use photography ‘on’ your models instead of ‘of’ them?
Material. It’s time to get the craft scissors out and put to good use. Physical materials can be incorporated into illustration. Start off with paper or fabric.
Paint. Add a splash of colour and texture with a paintbrush. Paint is the most popular addition to any collection of fashion illustrations. It brings texture as well as colour and different types of paint can add a different feel. Oil paint gives rich, vibrant colour, while acrylic is great for texture. Watercolour is usually the favourite, adding subtle colours to pen and pencil drawings and also a sense of movement.
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What happens when your favourite print medium turns interactive? Shelley Roach explores the evolution of the magazine for the digital world.
Before the internet, the magazine was the ultimate convergence of media, by combining text and image. Then the internet came along as a platform that also added sound, video and interaction. However the magazine was still a few things that the internet wasn’t, like portable and tactile. Mobile phones nowadays have internet capabilities, but there’s no argument that picking up a magazine and casually flicking through its pages is a far greater experience than waiting for large images to download onto a tiny screen. Enter, the iPad. For regular people who aren’t in the industries the iPad will affect, and even some people who are, the iPad seems to be a cool albeit not particularly essential gadget. It is desired for the most part because of the symbol stamped on the back of it, even though the product itself contains enough merit to stand on its own. One industry that is not underestimating the iPad is the publishing industry. Even before its release the iPad was widely regarded as the lifeboat of an industry that is slowly drowning. Fast broadband and smart phones provide vast amounts of content on demand reducing the need for traditional magazines and newspapers, and circulation worldwide is down. The iPad was the first viable opportunity for magazines to enter the digital realm. The physical design features of the
iPad is what makes it perfect for the magazine medium. A magazine is for leisure. It’s personal, touchable, and chock-full of high resolution colourful images. The iPad is thin and lightweight so you can pick it up and hold it close and freely. The display is backlit and high resolution (132 pixels per inch) so images appear clear and crisp on a screen that is big enough to read comfortably. It uses multi-touch navigation that can mimic the natural hand gestures of flicking pages. The long battery life and wireless connection also add to the iPad’s portability.
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The iPad was the first viable opportunity for magazines to enter the digital realm.
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For a magazine to become truly successful on the iPad, it must combine the best aspects of print media with the capabilities of new technology. To discover what these aspects are, we must look at the things that make the magazine different from the other publishing mediums, and the main attractions for the consumers. Arguably the most significant feature of a magazine is its visual design, but the capabilities of an iPad magazine is very to similar to that of the web, so it will be very tempting to design the magazine in a similar fashion. We must resist. Where a website includes large sections text that requires scrolling to read, the magazine’s design integrates text and image in a way that both are equally important.
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A magazine’s cover is its most distinguishable feature. It’s what identifies the magazine brand, introduces the issue, and entices people to pick it up of the newsstands. The cover of a magazine serves as an icon for each issue in the same way the title-piece serves as an icon for the whole magazine. In the digital world the cover serves less as a selling point and more as form of avatar. It is the image that represents the entire issue. The interactive magazine cover still serves as an introduction, but a far more exciting one. Video introductions are popular among current iPad magazines. By touching a hot spot on the page, the cover image comes to life with a short video ending with a still frame for the cover image. These video introductions have the possibility to emulate movie title sequences for effective animation of both the text and image on the cover. Pictorial content can evolve into video as well, and not just pictures, but entire feature spreads as a new way of exploring narrative. The nerdy-inclined of us might like to think of iPad magazines as what a magazine would be like inside the magical world of Harry Potter, a world where images are alive. The magazine is becoming a multimedia publishing platform. This means that you could be reading an album review from a
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music magazine while listening to audio clips of the featured music. Three dimensional features can also be added, so you can get a 360 degree view of an advertised product or perhaps of an outfit in a fashion magazine. Navigation is not something you usually think about when reading a magazine. In print, it’s very simple; either turn from one page to the next, or find your desired page from the contents page. On the iPad, you can also navigate with the swipe of a finger, or choose from a thumb-nailed timeline to skip to anywhere in the magazine. Although, these possible features are impressive they shouldn’t be overused. Where a video is used in the place of a static image, there should be a reason, otherwise it’s just there for the sake of it. The features and media an iPad magazine chooses to use should be combined as seamlessly as it combined text and image back in the olden days when magazines were just paper. It is these choices that will add a whole new dimension to magazine editing.
The design of the iPad changes the physical presence of digital content. It is an unmissable opportunity for the magazine to evolve into an exciting and unique medium that has a long future in this digital age.
Avatar Courtesy of James Cameron, most people think of tall blue people when they hear “Avatar”. It is actually an image that is a graphical representation of a person in virtual space. It can show gender, ethnicity, fashion, behaviour and physical characteristics. Note: it may or may not be a genuine representation of the person.
Have a friend who’s a design nerd and don’t quite understand what they’re on about? Rad-ish will help you decipher their lingo.
Papyrus CSS
Back end The area of a website that is used to maintain it and is hidden from outside users.
Bitmap
Short for Cascading Style Sheet, the code that determines the layout and style of a website. Controls the look and feel of the whole website, not just a single page.
Dither
An image that is made up of pixels.
Combines pixels of similar colour in image formats (eg. GIF) with a limited colour palette.
Bleed
Edgy
The area of a printed document that is outside the borders of the final size of the paper. The design must go beyond the page bounds and the excess is trimmed off after printing. This ensures ink continues to the very edge of the paper.
A vague word used to describe almost any style of design. Best avoided for clarity purposes.
Favicon The tiny square image that appears next to the URL in the web address bar on your web browser.
A font that is highly overused by amateur designers attempting elegance. A pet hate for most of the design community.
Plug-in A small program, or piece of code, written by a third part that extends the capabilities of a website (or program).
Vector An image that is infinitely scalable without pixelation. This works by defining the points (called anchor points) and what fills the space between them.
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