Magazines for days. A Mag+ exploration.
This study is on Mag+ and how it works.
I will be using two different magazines of my own making. The first is to get myself familiar with the tools and workflow of MAG+. The second magazine will be design-oriented using existing articles.
Mag+ is simple once you understand how the layers work (not as simple as it sounds).
SPACE Magazine
Simple design and a lot of lorem ipsum.
Layers
A Layers (ALLways moving) is the top layer. Objects pinned to this layer will move on the screen and can appear both above and below the magazine fold(old word pulled from a newspaper. Above the fold is the first page of a newspaper.)
B Layers (Be still) shows above the fold, ONLY! they don't move and anything placed below a horizontal line won't show on the screen at all.
C Layer is for clickable content like popup or jump links. This layer is above both B and A layers.
D Layer is for video.
Lifes Connections Magazine
This magazine will be focused on the outdoors and making those activities more enjoyable. This issue theme is backpacking.
Backpacking, Backcountry, and Outdoorsman are some magazines with similar tasks to what I plan on achieving. This magazine is different by not sticking to one theme every issue but by making it a seasonal publication dedicated to making outdoors activities of all kinds more enjoyable and giving survival tips for each specific activity.
Lifes Connections
Backpacking, Camping and Glamping, Rockclimbing, Boating.
What is this sport/activity?
What are the most common mistakes leading to, injury, death, getting lost, general unhappiness?
What can be done to keep ^ to a minimum?
What can you do if you find yourself in ^ situations?
Where are good places for starters, intermediate, advanced?
How can you do the activity with a low budget?
Publication One
The First publication will be about solo hiking, something I've been getting ready to do. It has been parsed into
- Catchy introduction
- Where to go and planning
- Backpack and supplies
- What to bring in those supplies and what not to bring
- Campsite tricks and safety
One of my goals with the design of this magazine is to do product placement, sho logos of products or say that you prefer A over B.
Opening Page
The open page serves 3 purposes
- wayfinding training, I have all indicators on the first page with quick phrasing to tell new people what they do.
- Product placement, the first image has one of the logos I will be trying to use throughout the magazine.
- Catchy introduction, I have chosen to use bloggers' posts for content fill in this magazine. They use emotion when they tell the story and people love emotion and stories.
After that its find different pictures stories and following the same layout. For the first and last verticals, I added some sound. The first one has birds chirping and the last one the sound of fire.
Things to do with Desing tool
You can make slide shows, panning and zooming images, pop-ups and a lot more. With the use of these, you can make a magazine that is full interaction making the experience fuller and more immersive.
One problem I ran into during the building and testing phase is the pickiness and small glitches. One of the verticals I worked with would crash all of InDesign. Then the next day it just stopped crashing InDesign.
Once I'm done with making and testing on the iPad its time to export and make the final MIB file.
All you have to do is push the verticals go into Design tool, pull the verticals down and organize the order you want to present. Then hit create MIB. BOOM! The second project is done! The biggest part of this is the building and testing once that's all done ending the project is that simple.
Conclusion
Going through the development of the magazine there are different changes in the topic. But I'm more happy with this than what I started with. A lot of the things I wanted to do with the design did not happen because of time and bug fixes. The end product is satisfying to me so that means I worked hard even though it was not how I wanted it to end.
