Abstraction : Publication Design
A student project magazine published quarterly oriented towards photography, nature, and art. To design a photography and arts magazine that is cohesive and consistent. One that touches on all the key points above, tips and tricks, factual information, locations, etc. Touching base with other photographers and artists to use and feature their work. To make it compelling and captivating while remaining simplistic; focusing on typography, color, layout, and imagery in a way that’s concise and aesthetically pleasing.
I designed it to share facts about the natural world with photos to make one want to go out and see what the earth has to offer. There are suggested locations for hikes or a day at a state park/reserve, as well as historical information about plants and animals. Featured works from artists and crafters, glass blowers, metal workers, etc. There are also tips and tricks for photography and editing programs, ie: Adobe Camera Raw.
I’ve always wanted a place to catalog and share all of the photographs I take, honestly in a blog-like sense, layout is crucial to me and this student project allowed me to use spreads to layout some shots I’m really proud of/ of really amazing memories and places. Instead of contacting other photographer friends to use their work, I decided for simplicity sake to use all my own pictures. My friend blows glass and I’ve done a decent amount of product photography for him over the years alongside many other tasks, creating packaging, logo design, etc, and thought that as an arts magazine, it would be a beautiful addition.
Some of the initial spreads are more like a lookbook than what I actually envision the magazine to be. At the time, I just knew that I needed to make spreads and that so long as they showed skill, they could be whatever I wanted them to be. I didn’t have a cohesive idea at the time, for instance, lots of students did realistic magazines, and I came up with something entirely wild and unlikely, but decided to draw from it. As time has gone on since I took the InDesign class that created this project, I’ve refined what I want it to be. Making more version covers in the Photoshop course really solidified that, as it all started coming together. In some senses, I should have gone back and redone some spreads, in fact, I plan to for my portfolio once this class is over, but timing currently didn’t allot for it.
The layouts all use high-quality images, I could have focused more on what space for balance. The text remains consistent though I’d likely change the typeface at this point. There’s a lot I’ve learned since generating these spreads, it was the second serious design course I’d ever taken (one that wasn’t a 3-week introduction to each adobe program), and I didn’t really have any idea how to design effectively. I love looking back at it, but there’s so much to change.