Project Three :: Magazine Spreads

Project Description
Explore the grid, hierarchy, composition and the control of complex elements through the design of a 3 spread (6 individual pages) magazine article. Your content will be a found article relating to your icon systems project. The title of the article can be your icon systems name or a name of your choice. The title of the magazine is your choice. You will be developing diagrams in VisCom that will also appear in the design of your magazine spreads.


Spring Break: Content Research
Using your icon subject matter and theme, find existing magazine articles or book essays (or online articles) about both/either:

1. a specific theme within your icon set (a subset or micro view, i.e. the culture of heroin addiction or disease carrying microbes found in motel pillows) or, 
2. about the icon system content from a general perspective (macro view, i.e. addiction treatment strategies in the western world or worldwide health and cleanliness standards in the hotel industry).

While searching consider separate threads of information that may be useful in the article. By that I mean an article can contain a main text as well as a subtext running through it. Also consider the breakdown of information within the article, among many elements, you will be required to use subheads in your version, and these can be self-authored to support your theme and icon system name.

Also gather images that relate to or support the article content. You should already have a wealth of material to use from your earlier icon set research.


Spring Break: Form Research

Find and purchase a magazine, content is irrelevant, but, its design must inspire you in some way. Is the layout beautiful, elegant, ugly, bold, rigid, chaotic? The magazine should not be a "picture-book" or textless, we are looking for text and image, happily cohabitating.

Draw the underlying grid structure in a multi-spread article from your found magazine. You draw on top of a photocopy of your article or on transparency overlays. Define the page edges, margins, columns, rows and gutters. Include both left and right pages as a single spread. On a second sheet try to define the content elements of the article, including headlines, intro, pull quotes, sidebars, captions, subheads, body copy, folios, graphic elements & images.

Bring all materials to our first class after spring break.


Inspiration
Read Ellen Lupton’s Grid chapter, and look at: Josef Mueller-Brockman, Emil Ruder, Ladislav Sutnar, Karl Gerstner. For rule breakers see David Carson, Martin Venesky, Rudy Vanderlans. Magazines: Good, Monocle, Time, Eye, Emigre (library only, out of print), Portfolio (online only, out of print), zines, Rolling Stone, Wired, etc. etc. Barnes and Noble has a huge magazine section.