The Brief

Graphic Designers have had to be able to mock up page layouts for decades, now it is your turn. This task will teach you how to make and break a grid system to incorporate graphics, text, photos and more into a page spread and magazine cover. You will develop your skills in InDesign, one of the leading industry-standard software for desktop publishing, to create a magazine cover and a 2-page spread for a fictitious/or real magazine of a topic of your choice. Your final design will be mocked professionally and showcased on your portfolio website.

My Work

For my final piece in my magazine brief, I have decided to base my magazine around the F1 driver Lewis Hamilton as there has been a lot of news regarding him and is someone I as a person look up to. To begin with, I started researching images I could use in my magazine and implemented these into a mood board. I annotated what I could use these images for and the pros and cons of using them.

By doing this mood board it helped me imagine my format for my magazine, how much writing in ratio to photos there would be. I decided I didn’t want my magazine to be too text-heavy and make people lose interest in the magazine but where there is writing still makes it look intriguing and not blocky.

Before beginning to make my magazine I did some research on past magazines made around Formula 1 and what codes and conventions they follow.

After doing this research I was amazed at the different layout styles used even though they were all based on the same subject. There were some that went with a very simplistic approach using lots of negative space and some that filled every bit of space there was to take. Some included a mesh of lots of colours and there were some with minimal colour or only sticking to one colour throughout. This showed that each brand of the magazine had a targeted approach and also how the design process has changed throughout the years trying to fit with the taste of the people of the times and making it more modern. People now prefer more minimalism as seen through a survey “In the last ten years, minimalism has become one of the biggest growing movements in the US and around the world”, for this reason, magazines have been seen to use fewer taglines throughout their magazines and loud colours as it is considered more ‘tacky’ to something that is more toned down with paler colours and more modern fonts.

With all this in mind, I began the creation of my magazine, I began to gather some images I would want to use for my front cover and double-page spread. For my front cover, finding an image was more complex as I wanted to find one which I could write around but still be impactful and eyecatching to the reader.

These were the first two initial photos I found that I thought would work really well with my magazine and give off the impression I wanted, Hamilton being a dominant and strong figure.

I moved on to making my double page spread and decided to leave my front cover until after I had finished the spread. For the first page of my spread I wanted to do a whole page of text surrounding an image of Lewis Hamilton, the reason for this is many readers are not fond of lots of text-heavy pages, doing one page with all the text you then have the freedom to space out your other pieces of writing on pages and not have to write as much keeping readers more interested in the magazine. Even though my page will have lots of text on it it will not appear like this as the text will be working around the outline of Lewis Hamilton keeping the page captivating and looking less text-heavy on the eyes. I did this by first picking out an image of Lewis Hamilton that I would workaround for the first page of the spread.

Within the three photos, I had found I decided that the third one with Hamilton in a standing pose with his racing suit on would work best and be easy to work with as well as keeping the page clean with the minimal colour in the image already. With the images decided I opened InDesign and began to set up my document.

To set up my document I clicked ‘Print’ when met with the options board when opening InDesign, I selected A4 and ensured ‘Portrait Mode’ was selected and made sure ‘Facing Pages’ was ticked. In the ‘Pages’ panel, I clicked the ‘+’ symbol twice in order to create my cover and double-page spread.

To create the guides for my pages I selected ‘Create Guides’ from ‘Layout’ I made my rows to 11 and the gutter to 3mm and made sure fit to preview was ticked, this would make working a lot easier as it would help make sure everything is in line and is spaced correctly. I placed my image into the page and dragged it out to fill it, by right-clicking on it I had the option to make it a high quality display, which I did. To start the process of making my text wrap around Hamilton I started by using the pen tool and drawing a rough outline around him and making the stroke to this line 1pt so I could see it clearly. From here I found the piece of text I wanted to use for my magazine, using san serif to make it appear less old fashioned and instead more modern. I drew a text box and clicked on the outline I had drawn previously and opened the text wrap window and selected the ‘wrap around object shape’ option, I raised the offset of this to 2mm and here I saw my text wrapping around where I had drawn my line.

I turned the stroke of my line back to 0pt so it could no longer be seen and using the type and tables tool turned off the hyphenate option so none of the text I had placed would hyphenate. I also used the drop caps tool to make the first letter of my paragraph larger, something that has frequently been seen to be used across magazines for decades. To add a more professional look to my magazine I highlighted all my text and lowered the K number to 80, this made it look more like print than black. Finally, I added a title to the piece and this was my first page finished.

For my second page, I didn’t want to fill it with too much text and instead use more images. So again I gathered some that I would want to use.

I again found some text for this page and began experimenting with different layouts and using photos that were relevant to the text I’d used. One image that I thought would look really good would be the one of Hamilton and Verstappen facing with their backs opposite each other as they are each other’s biggest rivals so I went with this. However, I needed to do some editing to this image because of the background it included, I transferred this image into photoshop where I used a clipping mask to get rid of the background of my image without losing the information to it and transferred this image back into InDesign where I used it at the top. I again used the pen tool and text wrap as I did for my first page to get the text to wrap around the two making it look more absorbent and less boring with blocks of text. I originally used two photos of Lewis at the bottom of the page with two questions written around them however later decided that an image with his future teammate looked better and neater. This finished the process for my second page in the double-page spread.

I returned back to making the front page for my magazine where I began to experiment with the images I had chosen before. After numerous experimentations with both images I just could not make them work or look right, when applying text to them the text either became really hard to read or there was simply not enough room to write around, I found this difficult as the pictures I had chosen represented exactly what I wanted but I was back to the drawing board to find a new picture to use for the cover of my magazine.

After spending some time searching around on the internet for images to use I found one that I believed would really work and I would be able to write and work with, unlike the other two previous photos.

With this picture, I was able to use the empty space to write my masthead and cover lines with plenty of room to work with and with the grey background my writing would be legible grabbing more attention from readers. I used pale colours to keep the cover minimalist so it wouldn’t take away the attention from the main image which is what all my writing would again be surrounding as I used the pen tool and text wrap trick once again, I wanted Hamilton to be centre with his eyes being the pulling cause making readers want to buy.

  

The majority of my fonts were san serif to keep a sleek and modern look apart from Lewis Hamilton which I put in san serif to stand out above the rest and show its importance as well as making it larger than everything else apart from the masthead and then the headline coming below his name in the hierarchy.

    This is the finished design of my magazine placed on a mockup to show it in a real lie setting. I am really pleased with how this turned out and followed the ideas I had from the beginning with it looking minimalist and modern. Although it does not look as minimal as some of the magazines I saw, I don’t believe my magazine looks overbearing or text-heavy like some that I saw.

What I like about my magazine are the different layouts I used on each page and experimenting with different ways to layout text to separate all the text from being together in one big paragraph and not make it appear boring.

If I were to change something from my magazine and learn from it in future is finding different ways to add coverlines in more artistic ways rather than them being stuck in the corner as although they are not the most important part I don’t want them to be something that ruins part of the presentation for the cover.