c studio reflections
9.1.18
coffee table books, magazine, info stories…
I don’t have much experience when it comes to the design of text. Of info heavy pages like books and magazines. Grid systems, blocking out elements on a page, color and typeface — I knew they existed, but every little.
It was really fun to analyze a spread of a magazine or a website! I liked learning how to scan a spread in, and begin figuring out the grid structure the designer used and see if how many columns they thought was adequate. These were components of a magazines I had not thought about too much when reading.
So far I’ve realized that when it comes to communication design, there’s a lot that I know exists or am aware of, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more that enters the page when it comes to designing the spread that the audience generally don’t even realize (which font family? which two shades work together? 10px or 12px margins?) but ultimately help increase the visual aesthetics and readability of a product.
9.9.18
There’s much more to color theory and photography than I originally realized. When continuing the research for project one, I understood what I was feeling as a reader of the magazine, and the certain design elements used, but I didn’t immediately see exactly why. For example, when looking at a cover spread that used vivid, bold colors, I understood that I felt energetic yet warm and that bright colors were used, but it wasn’t until I did more analysis did I see that it was because the bright colors used were of warm temperature, which causes a more energetic and warm feeling.
Furthermore, when we started to look at the hierarchy project, we instantly could tell that each assignment would not be an easy task. By looking at the sheet, we could tell there were more then two categories and our assignment only allowed two hierarchal distinction. Our discussion became more of which were two that should be aesthetically highlighted and then which were two that should be informationally highlighted. We talked about this because looking at the sheet, distinguishing the title from the rest of the information of the concerts seemed important because the title could easily be mistaken as a band name. However, when we dug deeper, we started to think about: what’s the information I want an viewer to understand the most? We started to debate about what information was important to what type of audience (If I already wanted to go to this concert, do I even need to know the name? If this poster was on a billboard with ten million other billboards, what’s the most important information?) It turns out that to different types of audiences, different points of information should be highlighted, and this a key aspect in learning about design hierarchy: your audience. Understanding what the most important points of a piece is step one in figuring out the hierarchy of a layout.