The changes I made to the feature article are subtle. I looked at how the fold would have effected the layout and then decided to shift the boy over the right a little and up so that the angle of the staircase text flowed up to the top of his head, thus making his eyes connect with your when you look at the headline. I also tried changing the red of "hunger" to the red in my color palette but because everything is B&W it looked too cheery because the red has some orange undertones to it. I didn't like the way it looked so I changed it to black and the grey from my color palette and added a gradient. In my head I was thinking hunger leads to fading energy and fading life so the gradient was appropriate. Do you guys think the gradient is as effective at drawing the reader's eye as the red was?
For the cover I kept the image at full saturation and shifted it to the left to emphasis the stack of frozen food. I wanted to balance the stacked vertical image with the tower of text on the right more. I realized it looks a lot more like the original cover I had designed but without the angled frozen spinach and different type treatment. I also went back to my original logo, my idea with the bars had been to create a space, because the habitat of the target audience (cities) is created as concrete jungles don't exist naturally on their own. Since the counters of the a and b exist naturally I didn't want to put anything in them. Do you guys think the logo is too simple? Does it look like its been before because there isn't much too it?
Jehan -
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy your revision of the dept. article. The cropped image really helps in readability, though I wonder if the left article is too close to crashing with the image. I think it does read as a dept,- small title, long column, I believe the large image is the only thing throwing me from it being a dept.
The feature article's new title treatment is great. The idea behind the fade is perfect and gives it a more solemn tone.
The cover seems to be the most dramatically transformed but I believe the cut lines are signnificatnly more readable, the full saturation to the image is great and the masthead makes more sense to me now.
Dan
Hey Jehan,
ReplyDeleteI think you are almost there with the cover. I think everything but the mass head works. There is just a little bit of a disconnect between the image, headlines and magazine title itself. I do enjoy the limited color palette though.
Best,
Chris Cefole
Jehan – your work continues to evolve, good!
ReplyDeleteCover: I can now see the individual elements, nothing it covering anything else up. That’s a good thing, but knowing that your design style usually incorporates large amounts of neg space, I’m a bit surprised that there is really no designed negative space on this cover. It just doesn’t look like you! I suggest that you experiment with reducing elements, bleeding elements off the page (why doesn’t that stack of frozen food bleed off to the left… do we really need to see every part of it to recognize what it is?), and incorporating more well-designed negative space. Cut-lines may approach the trim edge too closely.
Department: Is this photo distorted? The barn looks too skinny and tall to me. If you want it to appear elongated, that could be ok as long as you don’t distort it too much, as it currently is. I wonder if that little “fast forward” icon should actually appear up with the department title, not sure I understand why it’s next to the title. Do you want me to fast forward through the article – of course not. But.. that IS what it means down there I think.
Your continued lines indicate that you have 2 articles that start here, and then jump to another page towards the back of the magazine. I want to talk you out of that, because the successful design of that “continued page” will be a challenge for you (or anyone). Look at a magazine that does that… and you’ll see page layouts at the back that are simply utilitarian for this overflow… they aren’t well designed pages. Why have a page like that in this project? So – please do not continue both articles in this manner. What are your other options? Well… work with a spread – you need another page to follow this one, and maybe 2. Cut type if needed, so that only 1 article, at the most, continues onto an overflow page (which would be the 3rd page of the department). Know that, because you have 1 article on a white background, and 1 on brown inside the image, we WILL follow the thread of each article as long as they sit on their respective colors on the spread. In other words… we will look for, and find, the rest of The Future of Farms even if it jumps across the gutter to the facing page. As long as it continues to sit on white we will follow it. So I encourage you to add another page or two to this department and finish the articles.
Feature: this page is done, I look forward to seeing the following pages that will continue this approach.