Designing a Typographic System Through the Illustrations of Jiayi Li
“I don’t consider my work art as I have trouble defining this word. I just play with visual parameters to make the viewers feel a certain way much like a chef plays with ingredients to create tastes.” — Jiayi Li
Jiayi Li is a Paris-based illustrator who grew up in China living in various big cities (Chongqing, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Shanghai). She studied fine art before pursuing further education in Paris for graphic design. Today, her illustrations are recognized for their culturally relevant elements that prompt sentimental memories.
This blog post goes through my process and reflection in creating a design system for her work, namely, designing a magazine spread and an Instagram advertisement around Jiayi Li’s feature in an ItsNiceThat article, which can be read online here.
October 26, 2022 — Sourcing Resources & Exercises
My design ideation moodboard sources works from artists and designers like Wending Yang, Jess Ebsworth, Ram Han, Eric Hu, Jaenam Yoo, and Alex Valentina, who I believe exude a glossy, nostalgic energy in some of their works similar to the illustrations of Jiayi Li. I also looked at some of her own references she’s mentioned in interviews: airbrush artists such as Hajime Sorayama and Masao Saito, fantasy style artists such as Robert Venosa and Tuco Amalfi. I’m looking for a sort of sleek, polished look with bold and dark (but also playful) colors. Sparkles, sex, and cultural references as an added bonus. See more of the moodboard here.
I also began creating design directions (3 in total) for my magazine spread. When choosing the typeface, I thought about qualities like the typeface energy, connotations of use, formal qualities, expectations vs reality, expression vs legibility, distinction without distraction, and whether I even enjoyed the typeface or not.
Direction 1 focuses more on a playful, pastel look.
80s Shine, my name for this direction, is largely inspired by another quote from the artist in a different article by Ballpitmag, where Jiayi Li says, “If my illustrations look like the dreams of a carefree teenage girl from the 80s/90s then I’m satisfied.” Thus, in this direction I wanted a sort of girly 80s thematic through the color palette, the bubbly typefaces, and a focus on the sparkling, sincere parts of her illustrations.
Direction 2 is a darker, more mature and sensual palette.
This direction, which I named Curl Seductress, is mainly inspired by another quote. In the article I am focusing on designing for, Jiayi Li describes discovering Playboy magazine at a young age in China, where the magazines are very much contraband and hold different connotation than say, finding one around in the West. She mentions how she “was totally captivated by the beautiful nude photos. At that time I didn’t really understand the sexual dimension, but the application of hazy and glowing lights in the photos left a deep impression in my memory.” I therefore sought to capture the more sensual, glowing side found in her artwork through darker colors and more curvy, bold letterings.
Direction 3 encapsulates the bright and the modern.
This direction, Modern Gloss, is less based on a specific quote and more on the themes surrounding Jiayi Li’s illustrations — which are often modernized still-life work with elements of the previous two directions. However, instead of old oil-based still life paintings, her art exudes youthful energy with bright and dreamy colors and glossy, sparkling texture — perfect for product advertisement! I thus focused on the sort of modernized and fresh look her illustrations bring to the table, through summer-like colors and individualistic but straightforward fonts.
All three directions have images that feature work by Jiayi Li, and I am planning on incorporating graphical elements through that: for example, adding sparkles to the magazine pages, or perhaps glowing elements and modern products/still-life objects on the page.
Pathfinder & Pentool Exercise:
While I had previous experience with the pen and pathfinder in Illustrator, this was a good exercise to practice and warm up with the 2 tools again after not using them for a while. I remember the first time learning them, I had difficulty remembering which pathfinder mode changed the shapes in which ways, as well as whether the layer of which shape is on top mattered or not; this exercise thus helped me solidify those practices.
November 2 & 7, 2022 — Iterations of Design Boards
I decided to modify upon Direction 3: Modern Gloss and create revisions off of it. I was given feedback to consider complementary colors in my color scheme so that the artwork has colors to contrast with and compare to, and so my magazine spread will have variation with the illustrations. I also tried a new headline font, incorporating in aspects of the curls in the other directions I proposed.
After getting feedback on the modified version, I was also given new direction on what I should focus revising next. I realized in group critiques that many people had suggestions for my typeface choices. Multiple people encouraged changes to the headline and body text typefaces, with comments that the headline was nice but a little bit difficult to read, and the body text was a bit serious and bold in comparison to the rest of the options.
Therefore, I found a new body text font that I think was lighter than my subhead (to keep the hierarchy clearer) and changed my headline back to the original Ogg that isn’t italicized, but bolder.
November 9, 2022 — Grid Exercises & Layout Drafts
Below are my Illustrator grid exercises to get a better sense of magazine layout, columns, and formatting:
I learned about chunking and grids in a more hands-on approach with this exercise. All four feature column-based layouts, but do so with slightly different margins, blocks, flowlines, and subject matter. However, they all are successfully executed for their material, and consistent throughout the pages. Because I had to identify all parts of the spread, including the subheads and text on the edges of the page, I began thinking about smaller details I hadn’t thought about previously, like whether my own design would have page numbers or include citations. (You’ll see that later on I did add these details to my final design!)
After working on those, I began drafting possible layouts for my magazine spread and my Instagram advertisement.
I’m generally looking to keep the Instagram advertisement quite simple in design; being that this is an article about an illustrator’s artwork, I’m thinking about focusing more attention to the art itself, and drawing potential readers in for the artwork. Ideally, my advertisement could just be one of Jiayi Li’s illustrations, but that would lack design on my part. So I also created ad variations that were more text based, and ones that incorporated some of the graphical elements I was thinking about also having in my magazine pages (i.e. the sparkle shape).
As for my magazine spread layout ideas:
Continuing on the idea of putting the artwork first, many of my draft layouts have the potential illustration photos taking up large chunks of page space. My thought process behind this was to be able to highlight each illustration as an individual piece, instead of having many on each page to the point where they would become more like image decoration than art. I wasn’t completely consistent with this idea though, and tried to experiment with different approaches. For example, the first page spread in the middle design has multiple images overlapping each other — while they do end up taking up most of the space on those 2 pages, I’m less certain about moving forward with overlaps, which I think may counteract the idea of giving space for each individual illustration. However, at the same time, I think it may align with Jiayi Li’s quote of her illustrations not necessarily being art, but rather visual exploration. In the next refinements I will probably reconsider or edit some parts of my magazine layouts after recieving feedback.
November 14, 2022 — InDesign Spreads
Translating the 2 of my magazine spread designs into InDesign:
One thing is that I accidentally did 3 spreads between the title and closing page instead of 2 spreads — so I have 8 pages total on each of the two designs instead of 6 pages — but this way I’ll be more prepared for the next iteration now when we need to add 2 pages!
Generally, I think my grid system is based on amplifying the content of Jiayi’s illustrations, which I hope to further make apparent after I add in those illustrations and add color to the pages. Since this is a magazine spread designed for an artistic focus (based around a creator’s work), I am trying to also strike a balance between legibility and expressiveness in what I feel is similar to Jiayi Li’s still-life commissions: big brand names and fashion houses commission her to draw their products or logos in an artistic setting, balancing their marketing legibility and appeal to the masses with the creativity and expressiveness of an illustration.
November 16, 2022 — IG Ad + Magazine Iteration
My first advertisement design:
Generally based on the first ad sketch I did, this design has text taking up the space, with her artist name big on the advertisement. I also experimented with layering and masking images over text to get interesting holographic gradients.
My second advertisement design:
Both of these ad designs are mostly based on my first and second handdrawn sketches. I kept the ideas of having large text and having her illustrations take up a lot of the visual element of the work. This second one is mainly based off the second sketch, but I added in elements from the first (like including the little logo of the platform that hosted and interviewed her in the article in a circle).
The page designs I’ll be iterating on to make my final magazine spread:
I was given feedback that my first spread design was more cohesive, which I agreed with, but I also enjoyed the second two-page spread in magazine design #2 that I made. Thus, I decided to further work on the first design but replaced the overlapping-images-spread (which I had previously mentioned I was unsure about) with the spread that I gave preference to in the second magazine design.
November 21, 2022 — Adding Images & Graphics
Adding images transformed my layout a lot! With colors laid on the page, I started to play with some of my color codes and decided to match the background color to the general main colors found in the illustration of the respective 2-page spread.
To keep a sort of consistency and flow throughout the various page spreads, I kept the sparkle stars all the same color and their placement generally leads the eye to the next reading paragraph/creates balance throughout the page.
I believe this design also offers moments of surprise during the reading experience as they move through the sequence of pages because each 2-page spread incorporates different main thematic colors. First, the title page has summer-like light blues and orange pinks — it feels warm and bright. We move into a spread with an intriguing light yellow-green, then flip to a contrasting dark navy-black 2-page spread. In the last 2-page spread, we go back to the same blues and pinks found in the cover image, tying it all together at the end of the article. Lastly, we finish the reading with the closing page — which incorporates darker, moodier hues of the blues and pinks we are now familiar with, as if the summer sun is setting. Thankfully, these colors are mainly different shades/hues of the colors I originally brainstormed in my design system, but I may want to edit the system to show these exact shades.
The reader is also kept interested through smaller design choices I made that I feel were more instinctual. For example, I changed the text layout in the introduction spread where the second text box is moved to the bottom of the page, so a hypothetical reader’s eyes wouldn’t need to travel down to read the first text, then travel back up for the second text box, then flip the page and travel back down again. With the text mainly on the bottom, there is a clearer consistency in the up-down, left-right reading direction western readers are probably used to experiencing.
November 23, 2022 — Refinements + Adjustments
I noticed in my layout that some of my grid structures were still off, and this messed with the cohesiveness of my spread, so I took this time to refine the positioning of layout text, etc. I didn’t adjust too much to the overall photo, but edited and reworked the alignments of some of my grid layouts and text positions after getting detail-oriented feedback. You can see my edits on the magazine spread below, on the next date (see Monday November 28), as well as some more fine-tuning I did on the next iteration. For this specific refinement iteration, I played around with increasing the first letter of the article, minor revisions to image positioning and centering, and moved around text such as the illustration citation to the left side of the second page. Another addition was the quote/subtitle — I hadn’t included it in the first draft. I had trouble figuring out where I wanted to position it and I realized the font I had chosen for quotes also didn’t work well with my layout (and didn’t even include quotation marks, actually — the font didn’t include all the characters and replaced special characters with a white box) so I now have a subtitle text that is a variation of two fonts. I’m hoping to get some feedback on that — whether the mixture of fonts doesn’t feel right, as well as the subtitles’s position on the page.
I also decided to refine my second advertisement design and iterate upon it. I played with clipping masks to incorporate aspects of Jiayi’s art instead of just pasting her entire illustration in as a background. While I liked having her full artwork there, I disliked that I had to lower the transparency of the image a lot in order to see read both the title text and understand the image.
While I think it now has more design elements, I don’t necessarily think I made it better — not sure if it’s all that cohesive. Definitely hoping for feedback on it too. I like the border I clipped from her artwork, and think it related to her style, but I’m heistant on whether it clashes with everything else. I’m also wondering about adding more clipped object elements or maybe less, as well as preserving the outline glow I added to the images. I’m somewhat hesitant to clip Jiayi’s illustrations too much, because I feel like it’s generally on the more respectful side if I were to not edit illustrations and artworks.
November 28, 2022 — Fine-tuning Compositional and Graphic Details
One big thing: after a check-in and a reminder, I realized I hadn’t added page numbers! So I added hot-pink page numbers on some of the pages where there was space to add the number in without feeling out of place or cramped.
My big greviance here was that I was unsatisfied with the cover and back pages and thought they looked a little too empty. I therefore added text details to the cover/back, and while arranging that new text, I ended up modifying the composition. I also wanted to try out a different color and see how it looked, although I think the change I’m most uncertain about is the new color — I may refine it back to the original white depending on feedback in the next critique as well as how I feel looking at it more. I still need to make minor adjustments to text positioning, especially looking at the back page date and website, which isn’t aligned with the page number on the article pages.
I also tried looking at my Instagram ad on an actual phone placement.
I played around with different colors; one version is black text on light gray, another is holographic text on pastel purple. Still unsure about it, but will see what peers/professors say in critique.
November 30, 2022 — Applying Process Critique Feedback
From this point on, I was mainly fine-tuning my system to make it as structurally consistent as possible, while maintaining an expressive pace across spreads. In the second in-progress critique, I got some valuable suggestions involving how to improve my Instagram advertisement, which I was definitely looking for (so that’s wonderful) as well as how it relates to my magazine spread and what I could do to keep it all part of one design system.
Blue post-it notes that represented the Instagram ad (not pictured in the photo but was there on display) were placed the most on the bottom, which indicated it was probably something to focus on for improving. I was given feedback that my magazine spread focused heavily on Jiayi’s illustrations, while my Instagram ad design didn’t really convey that same focus. Suggestions were also made about how I could incorporate this without having it conflict with the text, and someone suggested that I might get rid of most of the text completely and just keep the artist name. This made a lot of sense to me! Someone also pointed out that while the colors of my magazine design were similar to the ones I envisioned during the design system planning stage, the colors of the advertisement fit in less with my color scheme, and a simple fix would be to incorporate the colors of the illustrations into the Instagram ad. After making revisions, my advertisement design is now somewhat closer to my original second ad design:
Even though it is very similar to my first digital design of it, I think I needed to get that feedback from others to even consider removing the text. I also decided on removing the border I clipped — I think I might have been attached to it because I had taken the time to model all its points with the pen tool and clip it out, but now with a few days of time looking at it, I believe the Instagram ad would be more coherent without the border. Bonus: added holographic sparkles — hopefully serves my intention of adding relevance and relation to the sparkles from my magazine design!
As for the magazine spread, one comment from critique that I wanted to apply was to make the pink subtitle/quote text more dynamic in its shape and positioning, i.e. have the quote start in the illustration image and continue off instead of having super straight, rigid lines of text. I remembered that my very first sketch designs incorporated the quote with a playful structure that went across the page, so I was reminded of that original plan and really liked the idea of implementing it. I played around with various text shapes and curves, but wasn’t satisfied with the shape I made once it was put onto my page, so I started exploring in a different direction. I went and created a two-tone colored quote based around having the letters “stamped” on one of the design element sparkles. This was partially inspired by looking at ItsNiceThat’s actual design elements they use on Instagram (which also inspired my own Instagram ad designs), but instead of using a sticker-like oval to put text in, I utilized the sparkle shape I already had throughout my pages.
Others also thought that the text was nearing the point of being almost too cramped on print, while I thought it may have printed a little bit big for a magazine spread, so I also decided to make some paragraph adjustments, lowering the font size of the paragraph text a little bit. I also changed some more smaller design details; for example, I noticed that the page number I had on one of the pages was wrong, and modified it from 4 to 5 (I guess I couldn’t math correctly the first time around).
Lastly, I implemented some other feedback points from my peers, including creating a fade-out effect on the illustration images I used for the dark blue-black magazine, so that there wasn’t an abrupt shift in the image (which wasn’t so obvious on a digital format but very noticable on print) but rather strengthened the hazy effect of having dark images on top of a dark background.
Here is my final magazine design:
December 5 - 7, 2022 — Finalizing Designs
Although I stuck with most of the concepts in my design system, I wanted to update the design system to reflect any changes I did make as well as make it more precise.
I also wrote a short bibliography for my sources, mainly the article I chose to design the magazine spread for as well as all the illustrations I used in my actual spreads.
After this, I sent the finalized magazine spread to print.
December 12, 2022 — Final Design System
Concluding on this project, this design system was sincerely extremely fun to work on from start to finish. I learned new software (Adobe InDesign) and really got to experiment with making a design project that was more complete and full in its execution than just doing smaller design exercises that make up many introductory design courses. I also think I came out of this project with a better appreciation for communication design in general — even though flipping through a magazine is a simple reading process, there is a lot of work that goes behind the design and its a testament to designers’ focus and time spent thinking about UX and layout that a magazine spread can be such an effortless reading experience.
With the feedback given to me from the final critique session, I am really happy that others got this same fluidly of the reading experience I created through my magazine spread. I really liked the comment about how I designed a sort of “sleeper” of a cover, which opens up into a big, bold illustration page that creates an intriuging, enjoyable flip-through. It’s satisfying that others found my design to be cohesive in both color and form, and appreciated little touches and additions I added throughout my designing process.
