Plant it Out the UX Case Study
Looking at the Re-Design of a flower Publication
To view a short version of this Article please go to My site at Morgan’s Photo and Design.
I was challenged to Re-Design a publication I had done in the past. It had been about a year since I had worked on the design of this publication. So, as I took the opportunity to look back on a few of the Magazines that I have done in the past to see which I wanted to Re-Design. I had my choice between my Luxury Homes and All About Flowers. Both of these magazines had potential to be changed. So, I took it to the people of my class to ask them. They helped me see that the Flowers magazine had the most improvement to offer.
There was so much work to be done on the Flowers magazine and so much potential. So, I went to work on looking back at the old Flowers and in with the new. I started with the cover and working with fonts, pictures, layout, and everything in-between.
I found that almost everyone who was just looking through it cringed at its look. Nothing made sense and it was all scattered and there was no interaction in the magazine. These were the goals of things I wanted to change:
1. Make things complementary and work together in unity.
2. Create interactive pieces that enhance the magazine.
3. Have simple instructions that don’t need a navigation page.
4. Pick new fonts, colors, images, and assets to make the magazine look more like a flower/plant magazine.
Here are the different variations that I had started looking at.
Looking at these left to right the one on the right is the original and then I re-worked it to be darker and the one on the right side is the final. The reason I worked on so many variations of this cover page was because I wanted to get it right. I went through a process of testing and re-testing to see the fluency of how things were placed on a page. Testing were best to place the title and what image to use. Looking at if I should use an image blur and if I should use a drop shadow.
Going through this process took me a long time to get everything right. The look and feel of the magazine needed to be lighter and not as child-ish. Nothing was flowing in the magazine. Here is what the original magazine looked like. It was so clunky and out of place every page you went to.
Having people look at this magazine with me I wasn’t very excited about all of the work that I saw ahead of me. Plus, I am not that thrilled about flowers in the first place. I was looking through the magazine and the fonts were too inconsistent, the images didn’t flow, the headers were very bold for a flower magazine, and the images didn’t complement each other.
I went ahead and changed things to Landscape because I felt like I wanted the images to play a main role in this magazine. The images were going to be what people were looking at and they needed to be the star of the show. So, I went to unsplsh.com and found all of the images that I needed to get the picture of where I was headed.
I was also presented with the idea of adding other elements to this magazine to make it more appealing. Some of those elements were plants, cactus, and succulents that I wanted to explore. I knew it was going to be a lot of new information that was going to be gathered so I started finding assets. Working with new assets that would have my pages adding to one another instead of being distracting.
Here is a look at the new images looked like with the magazine:
After seeing how the pages worked together with the two dark pages starting and then light title pages. The light two dark cover pages didn’t work with my magazine. I needed to find colors that would work together and keep the magazine cohesive.
It was a lot of work to get to this point in my magazine it had to be re-created for a look and feel of soft but sophisticated. Using the new skills taught in class about MagPlus I was able to apply them to my magazine and make my links and other interactions throughout the magazine make sense.
It still felt like something was missing with the design aspect of the magazine. So, I decided to hit the books and see what to do to make design flow together better. My main go to book is the Universal Principles of Design book. I have also learned a lot from classes about design as well.
Working on using some of the skills that I have learned from books and classes like the principle of color, in design it is used to attract attention and group elements. Another Design Principle I wanted to get right is Consistency with the look and feel of the pages. This lead me to something that looked more like this.
After working so many hours on this magazine I was able to stand back and really look at it. I could compare what it looked like when I started and where I ended up. By adding simple images, making the fonts flow, getting the text the right size, having my pages consistent one page to the next, and adding great interactions it made for a better publication.
This also allowed me to make each page have a fluid movement that it didn’t have before. Each page was presented with a title page and an introduction then information on how to plant that plant. It helped me see that it never had that flow until just by adding simple introduction.
But by adding these introduction pages I didn’t want them to be boring so they all had to be different. Then with each introduction it matched with the title page for colors. It all had a specific feeling that made you feel like homie. I wanted people to feel safe when they read this magazine so that it wasn’t a strange feeling. Adding little nudges for navigation that there were more pages by adding small arrows on the bottom of the top two introductions. I only added them there because the other two don’t have more pages, but they have an explanation on them in the introduction. It accomplished my goal of consistency and color.
In the interaction making circles and hexagon clickable that would pop-up about that number or that planting information was a great addition. It was simple enough that anyone who jumped into this magazine would be filled with great information.
The main addition that made the difference that propelled this magazine leaps and bounds ahead of my previous magazine was the addition of plants, cactus, and succulents. It gave me the energy and inspiration that I needed in order to make this publication ten times better. It really improved how I was able to communicate my design. I was re-energized when I added these three sections because they were more fun. They were exciting to learn about and I was actually looking forwards to gathering information.
By looking back at my own work, I feel like I really improved and learned from my past mistakes. I know if I can do this process of re-working you can to. It makes projects better and something that you will want to show off to people around you. I really enjoyed getting to work on a past project and invent something new. I was able to adjust and tweak things to a point that is even better than it was before. Move forwards not backwards and learn from your past mistakes because, learning by experience is the best way to learn.
