Project Three :: Format and Grid

Monday, 22 March

in class

• format & grid discussion
• InDesign demo
• set up a basic grid and layout in InDesign:
  1. use placeholder text and set title, subhead and body styles
  2. let text flow interconnected through the 6 pages
  3. create 3 versions of the document, altering type sizes and leading in each
  4. print out and discuss

homework

• pick a format for your magazine
• bring 3 different article layouts to our next class:
  1. set with your article text, black on white
  2. use text only, and, use gray boxes to denote image and diagram content
  3. use all styles from the hand out
  4. print out and trim
  5. tape spreads together (on the back!)

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.

Project Three :: Structural Components

Structural Components of Editorial Design

• page – the single unit of editorial design
• double page spread – two single pages side-by-side are the main and most important compositional element of editorial design. All grid building and layout is looked at through this lens.
• grid – the invisible architecture of the double page spread
• margins – the free space reserved at the top, bottom, outside and inside of a double page spread (top, bottom, left, right of a single page). In general, enough space should be reserved to make reading comfortable.
• columns – the vertical units of a page used to define where elements are positioned. Columns can be any number and are often between 2 and 12.
• rows – the horizontal units of a page used to define where elements are positioned. Rows are not automatically definable in InDesign but can be simply set with guides on your Master Pages.
• gutters – the space between columns. Gutters should have enough width to help define text columns and not hinder legibility (they should not be so close that you skip across the gutter while reading).
• baseline grid – a series of evenly spaced horizontal lines which determine where the baselines of text, as well as other elements, can be positioned. The leading of all typographic elements is usually a either the same amount, a multiple, or a division of the baseline grid which helps give visual structure to the overall grid.
• folio – the area where page numbers and publication title are positioned.
• Folios are often outside or below the perimeters of the article’s design (i.e. somewhere in the outside margin).
• bleed area – the space outside of the edges of the double page spread reserved for overflow of artwork
• slug area – the space outside of page and bleed edges reserved for file and technical information for production

Project Three :: Magazine Content Components

Content Components of Editorial Design, in usual order of hierarchy

• headline – title of the article
• image: photos, illustrations, icons – images which support and supplement the reading experience
• intro/deck/kicker/standfirst – initial summary of the article, called out hierarchically to be read while visually scanning the page. A bridge between headline and text
• pull quotes/breakouts/callouts – information pulled and duplicated from the main article text, set in a way to visually punctuate the rhythm of the spread and orient the reader
• panels/box copy/sidebars – these hold information that relates, but is not essential, to the content and ideas of the main text. These subtext areas hold lists of pertinent information, interviews, info graphics, etc. to give the reader another perspective on the content, enrich the reading experience.
• information graphics – see above
• captions – image descriptors that act as a bridge between image and main text
• subheads – subheads break up the main text into logical sections
• text/body copy – the main content of the article which all other elements work to support and illuminate
• folios/footlines – folios usually contain the page number and publication title but can also have section or chapter titles. They do not necessarily (and most often do not) appear on every page of a publication and will be removed where full-bleed art is used. They will sometimes appear only on right-hand pages
• graphic elements – lines, textures, color bars or background images that help define, shape or highlight the construction of a spread and can lend mood or tone to the article

Poster Footer Replacement

Replace the footer in your posters with this new and improved footer:

poster_footer.ai.zip

Project Two :: Progress Crit Mon / Final Crit Friday

Monday, 8 March


in class

• typeface lecture
• progress crit
• studio

homework: Final Crit Friday
Billboard in the environment: find a high quality image of a billboard to use for your photomontage. Try to integrate your art as seamlessly as possible into the image, try to match the lighting and quality as closely as possible.

Have all materials refined and mounted on black boards on the wall, and the final .swf in my drop box for final crit. One board can show interstitial storyboard, one buses, one billboards. How will you best present your applications, one per board, horizontal or vertical? Design the layout of the presentation itself. 18" x 24" boards will be large enough for our purposes.

Make a post on your blog summarizing the project. Consider the emotional versus the informational impact of the content. What were the challenges in creating expressive compositions that fit together formally, but expressed their individual phenomena dramatically? What were the challenges in applying the compositions to the applications? What defines the "system" across your applications? How did you balance the hierarchy of elements?

Project Two :: Progress!

Monday, 1 March

in class

• progress crit
• lecture Garamond & Bodoni
• studio time

homework

• develop:
  1. buses and billboards based on crit
  2. storyboard and make your first interstitial attempt
• hang progress and place .swf files on my CAS berfore the start of class