Editorial Design – School Assignment
Using an existing magazine layout, recreate it for a different subject matter, including your own copy with a minimum word count, images, and remaking any logos that are used.
Detail…
Easily the most entertaining assignment from our Design Composition class, we were given the assignment of re-using an existing magazine layout (no online magazines allowed). We had to find or create our own copy, images, and had to change attributes of the layout as required.
After scouring at least 50 magazines, I found a layout that really stood out to me. It was from an issue of Road & Track, and actually worked well. It was a two page spread, very colourful, yet still had enough copy area for me to meet all of the requirements.
I pulled my images from stock.xchng, which is a stock photography website offering both free and premium high resolution photos. I am a huge fan of the website. My copy came from a very extensive Wiki article about cycling, which I had to trim up and try and construct into a workable story. We didn’t have to write a whole story from scratch, but the teacher didn’t want Lipsum either, so the content had to at least make some sense.
I had to make alterations to the layout due the the dominating colours of the layout. Where the original was mostly black and olive greens, I opted to go with red, due to the logo and use of red in the large image. I also had to add a gradient to the image in the bottom right in order to read the text that is placed there. The original layout had a much lighter photo, which allowed the text to be black with little readability issues. Given that I was now using a rich blue image, it made the text blend a lot more, and so I had to compensate.
I also added the gear to the start of the story, the red tab under the left page number, changed the top logo – It used to be R&Ts Ampersand – and altered some of the small, supporting symbols on the page to better reflect the content.
Overall I’m really happy with how it all turned out, and this piece was featured in a recent Open House at Mohawk College.