Habitat Magazine
Habitat Magazine speaks to the urban city foodie. We live in
these big cities and the hustle and bustle is always going causing it almost impossible
to stop and sometimes indulge. Habitat brings us back. The pages of this
magazine bring to life the love and need for a food culture even for the busy
working person. The readers of our magazine are hard working adults between the
ages of 23 to 50 who enjoy the gourmet food scene, adventurous eating, and
current social trends going on in the world sustainability. The design on this
magazine follows to offer information in a blog/info graphical sort of way,
which is perfect for our readers who like to sometimes sit and read, but
sometimes want their information in a quick glance. This audience cares. They
care what they eat, they want to learn more about exotic foods of the world,
from different places and what is the next big bite. They Love to eat, not Eat
to Live and they like to be socially consciousness while they fill their bellies.
Design Process
The meat of the magazine. Content and concepts drive us to
portray a clean-cut visual message to our readers every month. To achieve a
high level of work, it took much research Creating, finding and adapting
recipes, social buzzes, trends in the world, sustainable outcomes and solutions
and that weird foodie trend that you just might get into. We want our readers
to feel healthy, full, and when they close this magazine chapter, to feel as if
they walked out of the hottest restaurant in town and ate the best thing ever.
Blissful and Satisfied. The methodology behind the design for our magazine will
evoke these emotions and will grab our target audience’s attention even before
they open up to a single page.
For the color palette, which was a little complex and challenging
to balance at times was formulated with color selection through a process from
the images that were selected then finalized to be used. The primary colors
were of course the red and yellow, but additionally green was selected since
many of the secondary colors are a taupe and a nude, because those are the
tones are found almost side-by-side in many of the natural, sustainable, Farm
to table like food photographs. This
color palette had to be strong and striking but also it had to fit into the target
audience, which is a social and sustainable group of people who like earthy
tones balanced colors.
Image research is one of the most important parts of the
visual design process. This is where you dive into a world of images coming at
you and you have to find something that’s going to grab the attention of our
reader which is finding something that showed a good variety of healthy foods
as well as a nutritional and gourmet meals.
Finding strong images is a key part of any magazine layout because content
is important but the images are what you see first and for my reader they are
like I’ve said before sometimes into a quick glance and get a quick burst of
information or they want to sit down cover to the whole magazine. The strategy
I use for this, especially in my department was to create something that
visually you could recognize somewhat before even reading the content. As an
“food buzz,” you’re given a header for the paragraph or content but you see an
image first that we’ll give you some sort of indication on what is this section
going to be about would use my reader the option of glancing and choosing a
section to read. Another strong and hard
decision made an image research is the cover photo. Finally something that is
going to strike someone to stop, look, and say, ”hey I wonder what’s in this
edition” is the end goal. I chose for my
cover a person caring as sustainable grocery bag with healthy foods coming out
of it; this is the essence of this month’s edition. It reaches out to my audience
to show that this person is not only sustainable by using a reusable grocery
bag, it’s about healthy foods AKA “The Future of Food,” and gives insight to
what is going on inside the magazine. Also, last thing I’m going to say about
images is that there has to be consistency, we have to make sure that the
message is going to show and reach our target audience but not compete with one
another.
Typography is also a strong aspect of design that encourages
or discourages people from reading or looking at a design. For my target audience I chose clean tall
balance typefaces. The modern city dweller loves to sea clean lines and is
living in a much more into a world of what is going on now and san serif
typefaces complete speak volumes to this target audience. The choice that I made after much
deliberation were Helvetica Neue light at a 10 point weight for my body copy
which gives just enough size for reader at the end of my target audience to
read and it’s small enough that it’s a pleasurable point size on a page. I
stuck with many different typefaces from the Avenir Next Condensed family for
my headings. Depending on the department or feature article there was some variation
made to the point sizes and which weight I used or if there was a combination
to create visual hierarchy in my design and a balance of flow for the reader.
Inside The Edition
Feature
Cover Story: How Our Eating Habits will Change
Departments
Editors Note
Our monthly letter from the editor to our readers to give
them a little glimpse on what is trending in his world.
Health Corner
Update on food trends, what’s healthy, what’s the newest super
food, diet crazes. This is the “Eat this not that corner,” the food is the next
big thing.
This Month- Overused and Underlooked
What’s Cooking?
Recipes, preparations, ingredients reuse- anything and
everything you need to jumpstart or spice up weeknight meals
This Month- Salmon 3 Ways
Trending
The hottest section of the magazine. What are
going on, every week new facts, ideas, goods and more? The hottest thing in the
foodie scene
This Month- Food Buzz
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Norco Bikes
Aspen Resorts
The Final Product
