Peaches Geldof

Peaches Geldof is the final person I was asked to portray reading the soliloquy. I found it difficult trying to portray her. I found out that she was a DJ, a journalist and that she is known by the media, as a wild child and none stop partier. I decided to show the music part of her life in the soliloquy, so I chose a typeface called Feedback Loud, which I downloaded from http://www.dafont.com. It is a bold typeface with a sound wave travelling through the type. I experimented with my layout in clashing colour’s to show the wacky and weird side of Peaches and positioned the type on an angle to show how she doesn’t stick to the guide line she is suppose to abide by, set by her father Bob Geldof.

Amy Winehouse

The third person I portrayed reading the soliloquy was the one and only Amy Winehouse. She has Bipolar Disorder also known as Manic Depressive. In the media she is known for her drug use, overdosing, failed rehab, self-harming alcohol abuse and staggering on stage. I decided to try and show the self-harming and destruction aspect of her image. I used a typeface called Cracked. It is a typeace, which is quite bold like Amy is her style of clothes and make up. But when you look closer at the type, there are cracks in the letters. I wanted to make the layout of the typography look like slash marks so I positioned the type on different angles and crossed the type over, as well as using the Knife tool in InDesign to cut up more of the text. This make it look even more broken up and damaged

Brangelina

The next person I had to portray reading the soliloquy was Brangelina aka Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I research their relationship on the Internet and in magazine and I got the impression that Brad follows Angelina in whatever she does. Since Brad has been dating Angelina he has a lot of humanitarian work that she has been doing. So in the version of the soliloquy I tried to show Angelina taking the lead and brad following. Angelina reads most of the soliloquy and as she comes close to the end, Brad jumps in and begins to read it. The type overlaps hereto show how close they are to one another. By using a different font or another typeface from the same family, I learnt that you could show different people talking.

Gordon Brown

I have now been ask to make another four version’s of Hamlets Soliloquy to portray four different people reading it.
The first was Gordon Brown. From Researching him, I found that he was quite a bold person and was dedicated to his family away from the public eye. I decided to use the typeface Hoefler Text because it is quite a bold typeface yet some of its characters are rounded and soft which shows his softer side.
Here is my interpretation of Gordon Brown reading the soliloquy.

I started by trying to make the layout similar to an official letter or speech that Gordon may have read out with his personal notes on the side, and faded the type on the left side to show how he is blind on his left side from a childhood accident.

The image below my design is a magazine article from Esquire magazine, which I came across after I had designed this page. It has a similar layout with the handwritten notes on the side. It reminds me of the notes people put on the side in their textbooks at school.

Modern Page Design

For my modern twist on Hamlet’s soliloquy, I tried to show the passion in Hamlet’s voice. When he raises his voice while saying this soliloquy, the type becomes larger and then smaller as he calms down and comes back to his senses. I think this design is quite subtle looking. It is only when you read it, that you notice that you naturally raise your voice when you read the larger type in the soliloquy.
This is my modern interpretation of Hamlet’s soliloquy.

Neville Brody

These two images were designed by Neville Brody. The image on the right is similar to what I would like to create in my work. I want to show the different emotions in Hamlet’s voice and I think that using different sized type next to one another would help to show this.
I’ve learnt a lot from looking at Neville Brody’s work. A good design does not have to have the type going across the page neatly. Good designs can have the type on it’s side, up-side down, overlapping or reflected
The image on the left also has different sized type in it, but I like the way that it is placed in the centre of the page with the type centrally positioned which gives it a modern feel. Rather than the left hand side with a straight edge which looks more classical.

Classical Design

So for my classical interpretation of Hamlet’s soliloquy, I used a typeface called Dukeplus because it looks handwritten and has a medieval feeling to it. I used a page size called Crown Octavo because it was not to big and I felt like this was a suitable size to design my classical interpretation to.
Here is my interpretation of the soliloquy classically shown below the top image. The image at the top is from Creative Review. it is a spread i found after i had designed this classical piece. From seeing this spread i have now learnt other way of creating a design classically.

Imperial Page sizes

When the first issues of Hamlet were published, they would not have been on A4 sized paper, because the size had not been invented. So I decided to research Imperial Page sizes. These are the measurements of some of the page sizes I researched

Crown Octavo – 5 x 7.5 inches
Royal Octavo – 6.25 x 10 inches
Imperial Octavo – 7.5 x 11 inches
A4 - 210mm × 297mm
Quatro – 10 x 12.5 inches

http://www.princexml.com/doc/6.0/page-size/

Hamlet

Hamlets Soliloquy is about his insecurities in life. He is unsure about weather to live or die and if he should commit suicide or not. I was asked to make this soliloquy look classical and modern.

I began by looking at 16th century manuscript for my classical design because it was around this period that Hamlet was written. I noticed that these scripts had ornate decorative letters at the beginning of the type and looked like they had been handwritten.
This ornate letter was from a book called Fancy Alphabets. (The Pepin Press, 2005, pg 77)

The top image shows a modern spread which has a classical feeling to it. i like the way the designer has placed it on an off white background which makes it look older.

Robert Tarbet

While researching magazine layouts and looking for images to use in my magazine, towards the end of this project, I came across this image at the top by Robin Tarbet in Blueprint. (Issue September 2007) Robin combines 2D work with photography, printmaking, film and 3D models. He created this image using LED’s sticks while the camera exposure was open. I think this image is a lot more interesting to look at than other images I placed in my magazine and if I had to do my magazine again I would use his work as my inspiration.
The images underneath are some of the other images in this collection.

Booklet Design

These are a selection of my best double page spreads in my booklet.
The first spread has numbers and symbols moving across the page like a computer code. It was inspired by the image below it from the film, the Matrix. I decided to carry on this code pattern throughout my magazine as the page numbers. I like the way the image spreads across both pages yet it doesn’t feels like it is overcrowded. Because the code pattern is set against a white background it feels like there is loads of space on the page.
The second layout is set on a grid of four columns. I have made the type the same width as the pixel images to make the spread flow.

Designing a booklet

I was asked to design and make a 16-page booklet on the theme of the word Glitch. I chose to show the theme of glitch by using electronic components and images as my inspiration. I make spelling and typing mistakes in the booklet to add to the glitch theme.

I chose to use the typefaces Prestige Elite Std for the many body of text and Synchro LET for the headers and bolder type in the magazine. Prestige Elite Std is a slab serif monospaced typeface originally designed for use on a typewriter. It was designed in 1953 by Howard Kettler for IBM. A monospaced font is where the height of the letter is the same as the width of the letter.
Synchro, created in 1984, and was quite a futuristic font when it was designed to reproduce the look of electronic display systems.

Magazine Front covers

The top image above is from Creative Review, which later inspired my front cover on my booklet. I like the way they have used negative space to frame the image. I found these electronic fail and pass safety stickers on the side of an electrical meter. It looks like the booklet failed a test but then passed a few days later. I had to make a number of mock up designs before I was happy with the final design. I learnt that the spacing and layout of a magazine spread on a computer looks a lot different when it is printed out. So by printing the magazine design out as I was developing my design, it helped me to add or remove things that did or didn’t work before I had to print my final design.

The next image below is a cover from Playboy Magazine (June 1957). This cover was designed by Art Paul. It is described as very understated in a book by William Owen called Magazine Design(1991). The only thing on the page apart from the magazine title is a set of cufflinks, which have no explanation on the front cover. But is think it works well with the negative space. It becomes part of the image.

The last front cover is from ID magazine (issue 282, November 2007, The !*#? Issue). The front covers of ID magazines usually focus on the photograph on the front. They don’t have much typography on the front and I think this makes you want to look inside the magazine to find out what it is about.

I’ve put these images in this blog, to show that a successful magazine cover doesn’t have to have loads of information on the front to make it appealing to people for them to want to buy and read it. I’ve also noticed from researching Magazine front covers, that most magazines have the barcode on the front rather than the back, like books do.

Newspaper Designs

Newspapers are very structured and they are very organised. This page is from The Guardian (Feb. 1989. This Image was found in Rewind 40 years of Design & Advertising, Phaidon, 2002) There has not been much change to The Guardian Layout since it was redesigned in 1989. The type and images are all laid out neatly in newspapers. Different newspapers have slightly different styles of layout because they have different target audiences.

Gossip Magazine Designs

This is a page from Heat Magazine (October 2007) The style of these magazines, is to have the articles positioned on an angle and use large, bright coloured type. They use the colour in the type to catch your eye when it’s on the sale shelf. But It doesnt look very attractive compared to other magazines and the colour scheme doesn’t really run through out the magazine. So it doesn’t flow as well as the better designed magazines. The layouts they use here, may be determined by the limited number of pages these style of magazines have.

Architecture Magazine Designs

This layout is from Blueprint Magazine (September 2007). The size of this magazine is a lot larger than fashion or Gossip magazines. It is approximately 350 x 246mm in size. The layout in this magazine is set against a grid of four columns and it is a lot more technical looking. In the image below shows how the designer guides you around the page using arrows and positioning of the type. The type and images are also quite blocked and clean looking unlike in a gossip magazine where the type is highlighted and images are on angles and overlapping.

Fashion/Design Magazines

In Different magazine, there are different layouts used which create a uniformed look for that magazine. This makes them distinguishable from one another. But also different types of magazines have different styles and feels to them that only work for that particular target audience.

These two spreads are from I-D Magazine (issue 282, November 2007, The !*#? Issue) You can see that the layout is not squashed together like in Gossip magazines. The designer positions the type and images together to make it look attractive and not overcrowded. If there is more information they need to add they will just place it on another page. There is no limits on how many pages the magazine has, which gives the designer more freedom to design it.

Recreating a double page spread

Using the grid of the double spread that I had created earlier in Adobe InDesign, I then recreated it by placing images and type onto it.
The bottom image is the original spread from I-D Magazine (issue no 279, August 2007, The Couples Issue) and above it is my interpretation of this spread. The boarder measurements and spacing are all the same as the original but I have just changed the Photographs.
The photographs are not central on the pages and I think this gives it a modern feel. It is laid out on a simple grid but I think it has work well because the images are so dramatic. I like the way they have used the negative space around the photographs to frame the photographs nicely.

Unsuccessful Magazine Design

This a bad example of a double page spread from Reveal Magazine (Issue 42,
20-26 Oct 2007). The page looks too cluttered. It looks like the designer has ran out of space in the magazine and so has placed images and type really close together and overlapping one another to fit more on to the page. Also the text and image box are all different colours and shapes, which I think they have done to make it more eye catching but it makes it harder to read. I didn’t know which part to read first when I first looked at it.
I think it could be improved by positioning the type and images more neatly on the page. I would only use one hue of colour to highlight the type in the background and wouldn’t position the type on different angels, so that the spread flows better.

Successful Layout Design

These images above are good examples of double page spread. They are from Eye magazine. The layout’s in Eye magazine are quite organised and structured and combine’s negative space with type and images well. This combination of the negative space and an organised layout doesn’t make the magazine feel crowded. I particularly like the bottom left double page spread shown above. It is from issue 29 no13. The images and text are all positioned evenly across the pages and I like the way the title of the article is spread across the two pages like a footer instead of a conventional header. The article doesn’t feel over crowded and the arrangement is easy to follow.

Grids and Layouts

From looking at magazines such as Eye Magazine, Creative Review, Blueprint and ID magazine, I have learnt a lot about layout design. Each page in these magazines is layout according to a grid like the image shown above. These grids help with the position of images and type and the spacing on the pages. I analysed these double page spreads by measuring the components on the page such as the margins, the gutter/spine, the size of the page and gaps between text and image boxes. Then using these measurements I had gathered, I created a grid of the double spread in Adobe InDesign, so that I could recreate these pages later.