Overall, I have really enjoyed working on this brief and I am happy with the final outcome. It has been good working with a photographer that wants to put her pictures together and create an ongoing magazine. I am interested and enjoy working on publications and anything print, it was insightful to produce a publication to be sent to the printers via email and perfect bound, there is a lot more document set ups you have to think about than I initially thought.
The theme of the brief was Hudson Valley a Valley in America where farmers live and grow their crops for sale, their lifestyle is almost amish. Lydia had taken portrait and landscape photos of various farmers living in Hudson Valley on holiday in the summer and wanted to create a new publication, a natural publication celebrating the Hudson Valley and its beauty. Lydia didn’t want to just make a one off publication she wanted to create a new magazine/ brand called Breathe something that she is going to develop once she has left university. She asked me to help her with the graphics of the upcoming magazine. Breathe in this edition includes recipes using natural ingredients from the farms, when Breathe develops all of the editions will include some sort of creativeness for example the next edition could include poems. There will be a starting of 100 copies of Breathe made.
Lydia was very decisive about what she wanted for the magazine which was good, her decision making was fast which made things easy. Originally we looked at having the magazine with a GF Smith paper strip along the side to add more texture, however after pricing up with various printing companies we realised it was too unrealistic. We also thought of having the recipes on pull out postcards so the consumer would just take the postcards to the kitchen instead of the whole magazine. Cost was the fracture that got in the way of some of the decisions made.
While Lydia was editing all of the photographs I began researching into similar publications on the market to see how they look and their layout. The research that I did informed design decisions on the front cover. I began to moc up some front covers, Lydia knew she wanted a bold reconiseable type, a line of colour (the line of colour will change each edition to complement the photographs) the subtitle ‘Hudson Valley’ and a simple issue 1. The photograph chosen for the front cover is striking and complements the green colour well. After developing the front cover Lydia chose one and we then moved forward with the layout of the magazine.
We spent a long time on inDesign with the layouts of the photographs. We then got sent the illustration from Harriet Hobday and this is when we started to experiment more with the layout. I think the illustration through us off course and we started to add more paint brush strokes and small photo illustrations into the layouts, we hit a brick wall and needed feedback of how to move forward in the right direction. We gained feedback off a few friends that hadn’t seen the publication before and Lydia’s photography tutor and they said they couldn’t understand why there was small photographs of the produce all over the publication and wanted to see less produce and more white space to let the photos speak for themselves.
We stripped Breathe right back again and focused on the photography and the cleaness of the type for the recipes. When we took all the little things out the design seemed a lot cleaner and fresh. I am happy we decided to strip it back as it was all starting to look too messy and overcomplicated compared to the clear photos.
I have enjoyed collaborating with a photography student working on a publication for print, it has opened my eyes to all the requirements there are to follow for printing perfect bound from a printers and has been a good lesson. I think we both managed our time effectively reasoning with each other and our work loads. I am partially happy with the front cover design, minimal design is something I don't do very often, stripping things back has made me realise that sometimes less is more. I am excited to be working on the next edition of Breathe magazine.
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