SLAY Magazine

Project Background

This project was focused on designing my own original magazine throughout with featured spreads and advertisements. For my magazine I decided to make this a lifestyle magazine for mostly women or for people with traditional feminine interest such as make up, fashion, beauty tips and etc. I decided to call my magazine SLAY as a term of empowering ourselves and each other, having a tagline along the lines such as “You Slay, I Slay, We Slay!” SLAY also is a popular slang used among the target demographic that will allow our audience to relate to the magazine right away, The demographic for this magazine is mainly middle class young adults and older teenagers who are interested in popular culture and modern day trends. Side topics of the magazine were planned to feature top picks from staff at the magazine such as top Netflix shows, outfit combinations or beauty products lists. The type of aesthetic that I hoped for the magazine to follow is a clean, modern and vibrant feel in order to attract the target demographic.

The Circumstance + Brief

The purpose of this assignment was to create our own magazine company and design an entire magazine for one of their monthly issues. The brief has exact requirements stating the magazine must have a total of 40 pages filled with different spreads such as photo essays, departments and main features along with featuring at least 11 different advertisements through the magazine. The brief for this project is to be in relation to how a typical editorial like brief would appear when working at a magazine or publishing company. A designer was extremely needed for this project in order to create an identity for an original magazine and to be able to showcase and illustrate that brand throughout an entire magazine design.

Research

My first instincts in terms of research or even finding a direction to go into with this type of production was to understand my target demographic and look for magazines in that similar market and see what I like and what I don’t like and what can I add into this target market that is missing or needed. After viewing multiple different magazines, I went on to do my own type of rough work starting with digital layouts, grids and figuring out what typeface I wanted, how many columns I would structure my magazine and etc. After figuring out more of the structural parts that I felt comfortable with, I then moved forward with my magazine and I started really going through the creative process of deciding what kind of style, imagery and colours I would like to use across my magazine. Then I created a mood board in attempt to capture the total feel of the magazine that I had desired. I really wanted to go with a light but still vibrant colour palette such as heavy uses of pinks, purples and yellow. The Imagery I found myself using was very youthful, carefree and high fashion like.

Bad Ideas

With any project bad ideas and the process of trial and error occur and with this creative process this was no different. A first major issue that I had to tackle was deciding on a front cover and a masthead for the magazine. This was very important as the masthead is essentially the main logo of the magazine and is the first thing a potential reader will see before picking up your magazine in a shop. Cycling through different imagery pairings with font pairings was very tough to pick. Another poor idea was related again to the front cover, this time the final cover even when I had decided on my final masthead, there were not so great choices made when it came to using rainbow like covers all over the magazine issue with the font and picture it felt “too much” and sent a confusing message to the audience.

Solution

As a designer we are creative problem solvers so it’s natural these “bad ideas” can seem intimidating at first but that’s why we are designers we are there to solve them. I tackled the overwhelming amount of photo pairings and mastheads by receiving different opinions about which cover or potential cover spoke to my target audience the most asking peers, friends and even professional designers in the industry. This feedback really helped me decide on a confident decision I can make for my choice of masthead moving forward with this project. The next idea was solved by creating a brand new cover with different imagery, same layout and masthead but different colour palette such as mainly using softer pinks and this front cover spoke more closer to the messaging and aesthetic I wanted to send to my audience and overall was the best representation of my magazine company and issue.

The Why

The main reason I chose to focus on the target demographic and the type of topics covered in my magazine were because of my own personal interest into this magazine and thought of something that I would like to read myself or someone else my age considering magazines and printed media are declining in purchase and interest for my generation. Having that knowledge and previous research about the market helped me make my design choices throughout this assignment and overall I feel like these choices were the right ones because they do an excellent job on conveying the mood and tone I wanted this magazine to have which was youthful, chic, vibrant, quirky and feminine.

What I Learned?

I learned multiple very valuable things during this assignment that I am grateful to have experienced. For instance learning more about using the most dominant editorial software such as InDesign, this assignment allowed me to step out of my comfort zone with a software I didn’t feel that confident going in using but now coming out I feel very confident and eager to tackle my next editorial related project. Another thing I have learned from this assignment was the importance of cohesiveness throughout a brand and how to carry on that identity in multiple different ways rather than just the same exact execution. This lesson was very crucial as it was a challenge when designing multiple spreads from this magazine and trying to ensure these they all connected somehow visually and aesthetically speaking towards the brand.

Conclusion

In conclusion I strongly believe I have answered and solved all the creative problems that the brief has given me. I was able to create my own magazine identity that is unique and is able to stand out but also can become a relatable guide and tool for my target demographic in an attempt to revive or keep up float physical publishing’s of a body work alive in the media. SLAY magazine also is able to tell a vibrant story in relation to relevant topics in today’s pop culture while also featuring fresh and quirky design elements from photo cropping, colour choices, grid structure and etc.