Editorial Designs
The particular decisions are made about everything on the page, including layout, colours, text, and graphics, in order to maximise communication while maintaining a pleasing aesthetic appearance.
Consider it a design framework; these elements are in place so that the main ‘structure’ may fulfil its function.
Elements |
Management |
| Typography– Any use of text in your design- SIZE, FONT/TYPEFACE, SPACING
Colour– Choosing correct/ relevant colours- THEMES, CONTEXT, AUDIENCE Imagery– Any use of images in your design- SIZE, FULL BLEED, THEMES |
Consistency– Keeping things the same for the reader- REPETITION, MIRRORING, FORMAT
Time– It doesn’t have to happen all the time- PAGE BREAKS, SPACING, FACE Layout– How the page and content are arranged- MARGINS, SPACING, GRIDS
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Task- Create your own front cover for Empire Magazine
Empire Magazine
Empire magazine is a popular media publication recognised for having very distinctive covers and campaigns that set them apart from all of the other magazines on the market/shelf, with a very specific readership of media-lovers.
They usually focus their covers on one piece of upcoming or popular media and theme their facing content around that.
They’ve also been known to run cover campaigns, where they sell different versions of the cover and encourage readers to collect them all, either to have all the variations or to create a larger image when the covers are combined.
The huge emblem at the top of the magazine’s cover is the only thing that never changes.
Empire Magazine Design
To create my rendition of the Empire Magazine I followed through with the idea of using The Amazing Spiderman as my cover talking about his return in the new movie No Way Home. Using Adobe InDesign I created a new document and page, from here I created an image where I could paste the image I had selected into, when it is in the frame I can still change it and its size or where it is placed.
After placing my main image into place I began using the text box tool where I could start writing my headlines and bylines. To begin I started with writing ‘Empire’ the name of the magazine and changed the font to the exact one the brand uses that I had downloaded off of the internet so I could match the originals as close as possible. I decided to change the colour of the masthead to the dark blue colour of the suit, I matched this with the ink dropper tool so I could get the most accurate matching of colour. I did this so all of the front covers of my magazine link in with each other and there are no random colours spread across, the way I have done it I believe makes it look neat and professional. I made sure that the masthead was the largest piece of writing on my magazine cover as it is the most important part with it being the name of the magazine, it is what you want the reader to see first to recognise and want you to pick it up in the moment and in future. When a reader is picking out a magazine they want to read, in a shop, they will scan their eyes on the tops of the magazines which is where the majority of mastheads are, the more you make yours stand out the more likely your eyes will be drawn to it and be picked out. I also made sure there was space around it so it had its own area of importance and is where the eyes are taken to first, however. I did add a byline underneath this in small writing including the date however I do not believe this takes away the impact I have given to the masthead with the space left around it.
For my headline ‘The Amazing Spiderman’ I used the original font that was used in the Spiderman comics, I did this because I thought it would bring in a wider audience, longtime spiderman fans would want to read this magazine because of the topic and also the inclusion of the font used all the way back in the beginning which you would believe to interest them more as it would bring them back to the days reading the comics. Aside from this, I liked the font anyway and believed it would be eyecatching because of the rigid lines around the letters, this makes it stand out above many of the other things happening on the front of this cover and I also placed it in the middle of the magazine on the chest of spiderman to catch the eyes and stand out above the red in the background as made the font white. To finalise making my headline, I added shadowing behind the letters so they blend into the magazine better, without this the writing looked misplaced and to an unprofessional standard. When I believed to be finished with this I wanted to add a bit of context behind my headline, I added ‘featuring the comeback’ to the top of this in smaller san serif writing to sow it wasn’t as important to be seen first however it just gave further guidance to the story in the magazine.
I finished my magazine by adding coverlines and additional coverlines across my page to fill negative space, I did this with relevant information that would be featured in the magazine and stay relevant to the topics this magazine brand regularly covers, upcoming movies in the cinemas and I decided to place the actors that feature in the movie to fill space too.
Overall, I am really pleased with how my rendition of the Empire magazine came out, I liked my attention to detail and trying to follow the codes and conventions that are regularly seen in the Empire magazines to make them as popular as they are. I like my experimentation with different fonts but each one has reasoning for them being used and sticking to a colour scheme throughout the creation of the magazine keeping a clean and crisp look to it.
If I were to improve something in my Empire magazine in future, I would like to use an image where I can overlap the head of the main image into the masthead, where Empire themselves have done it I believe it adds a whole new feeling to the magazine. It makes the characters look more interrogating and interesting as well as adds different dimensions to the magazine.