Final Project--Magazine Layout

 

This is my layout for a story about the Black Beauty hair salon in Florence, Italy. I used stills taken from a Flip Cam video for the strip sidebar across the bottom, and I used a file photo as the main visual element of the story because of a lack of other usable photos or illustrations. I also tried to make the headline very bold, prominent and succinct to draw the reader's attention to that first above all else. I used another small sidebar and a pull quote to break up the text and add some visual variety to the rest of the two-page spread.

Midterm Web Page Design

Oops, it looks like I forgot to post this when I was supposed to. I used the pictures from my photo essay, along with a few that I found online, to create a web page layout for a site all about commuting and Metra news.

Cover Design

I chose a picture of the Arno River in Florence at night as the cover image for my design because I thought it really captured the beauty and excitement of Italy. I increased the brightness on the photo in order to allow more of the colors to show through while still maintaining the twilit look of the original scene. I chose text colors to match the colors of the light reflected in the water and contrasted them with a basic white that I believe complements the yellow while still remaining readable against the darker backdrop.

I came up with headlines based on the stories I was told we would have to work with, doing my best to get the main idea of each story across while making them interesting and attention-grabbing.

Photo restoration

Before:

And After:

I fixed a lot of the holes/missing parts of the image using the Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop. I selected areas that looked similar to what should be in the missing holes and used the clone stamp to fill them in. I did the same thing to cover up all of the discolored brown spots all over the image, and I used the Brush Tool to lighten the whites of the eyes slightly.

Toned Photos

For my photo essay, I took pictures documenting my morning commute on Metra trains. I then toned and adjusted the pictures in Photoshop to make them look as good as they could. I did this because raw photo files don't always look as presentable as they could, and Photoshop allows you to bring out a photos full potential.

I adjusted the brightness and contrast in the pictures so they would accurately convey the lighting conditions of the early morning sunlight. I also adjusted the hue and saturation of the colors to give them the warmer feel that the early morning sunlight lends to a scene.

With the photo inside the train, I did similar brightness, contrast and color adjustments in order to emphasize the artificial lighting inside the train and how it makes the color scheme inside the train look a bit cooler than the outdoor scenes with natural lighting.

For the crowd scenes, I also had to adjust the sharpness of the photos in order to reduce motion blur.


EDIT 11/1/10:

I forgot to show an original, raw photo for comparison, so here's the original shot of the train coming in:

 

Like I said above, I lowered the brightness and increased the contrast in the toned version to better convey the early morning sunlight and the warm colors that it gives to everything. This adjustment, along with some minor color tweking with hue and saturation, let the bright red on the front of the train and the vivid colors of the commuters' clothing stand out more in comparison to the more muted, dull colors of the original raw file.

Infographic

This project required me to take a set of data and represent it visually as an infographic. The data was a set of statistics related to coffee consumption in the Midwest and the rest of the country.

The list of ways Midwesterners drink coffee, combined with the percentages given, lent itself most readily to a table format because it had two correlating sets of information that needed to be represented side by side.

I turned the percentage of coffee drinkers by region into a visual map rather than just a list of numbers because that will help readers understand what areas of the country the numbers apply to.

I took the list of the most coffee-reliant professions and turned it into a bullet-point list for a cleaner visual presentation that is less cluttered and easier to read. (The original list was just one long sentence, with each item separated by commas.)

Page Reproduction

This project involved reproducing a page layout from a magazine using InDesign. I paid particular attention to the use of sans-serif typefaces throughout the page (in this case, Helvetica), as well as to differences in type size and color.

I laid out the pictures an text boxes (filled with generic filler text to avoid typing out the entire article) with the appropriate spacing between everything measured using a pica ruler, and I also took into account the kerning between individual letters in the headline. I did my best to find pictures as close to those on the page as I could to give my design a greater sense of accuracy and authenticity.

Color 2

The idea behind this project is largely the same as the last one: take my original black & white design and add color to it. However, this time I decided to work with cool colors. I used a variety of blues, greens and purples to give this version a distinctly cooler tone than the previous one.

The sense of movement is once again maintained by juxtaposing and overlapping elements of differing colors, sizes, transparencies and weights. The vivid colors and bold lines towards the bottom of the image draw the eye first, and the image moves upwards from there, dissipating into more transparent color fills and thinner lines towards the top.

My main goal when originally creating this composition was to create that sense of movement, and I think the addition of color helped highlight the differences between the various elements and make the overall image more dynamic.

Color 1

I created this composition by taking my original black and white project and adding color to the various elements. In this case, I worked with a theme of warm colors in mind.

I used a variety of reds, oranges and yellows to convey a warm, happy feeling throughout the image. I used brighter colors towards the top of the image, with the colors becoming slighter darker and more autumnal as they progress towards the bottom.

With the addition of color to the image, the variety of sizes in the geometric shapes, as well as the difference in stroke weight and transparency, keep the image dynamic and prevent it from looking repetitive. Each figure overlaps with one that isn't quite the same color, size or weight, which helps maintain a sense of movement throughout the composition.

Black and White Composition

I decided to use only squares and circles and created contrast in the image by overlapping them and creating variations in line thickness, fill color, transparency and size. The composition flows together because everything is connected and no single component stands alone. The geometric shapes all overlap to form a sort of flowing, chain that spans the vertical space of the image while weaving back and forth horizontally. A lot of the negative space is left open to prevent the composition from becoming too cluttered.