Logo
Immediately I am drawn to Century Gothic (regular, rather than bold) as it's minimal and modern looking and I like that the anatomy of the letters is quite wide. It's a very clear, legible font that would also work well for body text. I generally prefer the wider lettered fonts such as Geo Sans Light, Neou and Keep Calm over the narrow options like Bebas and Fabrikat.
Papercute is quite visually interesting as it has a lot more personality to it than the other fonts and is also rather feminine and playful, which are characteristics of the magazine that I want to highlight. It has the scrapbook feel to it, that I want to create too so this is was definitely a contender.
The different variations of the Intro Rust typeface were also rather visually interesting. I particularly like the 'Base Line Shade' option, as it's quite youthful - I can see it on a teen/young adult magazine. It's a heavy font so not as feminine as I'd like but I did still consider it.
A lot of bloggers tend to use a brush calligraphy style for their blog logos which is why I considered Modern Love. Similarly to Papercute, it's playful and feminine as well as being quite popular amongst bloggers.
Overall I am probably the most drawn to Century Gothic. Although I do really like Papercute, and believe it has it's merits, it might be too playful for the image I'm going for. I still want the magazine to feel modern and a little bit polished, otherwise it could look too "homemade" and not something you would really see on a magazine rack. A lot of bloggers tend to prefer a more polished, geometric font too as evidenced with 1000's of blog logos/layouts I have seen over the years.
Another issue I had with Papercute is that not all the letters were clear/legible and I'm still not 100% decided on the name of the magazine, so a different name might not be very legible in this font. Therefore I have decided on using Century Gothic. I'd like to use it for the logo and for the majority of the body text, but would also like incorporate other fonts across various spreads in the magazine where appropriate.
- draw thumbnails of ideas
- list of final articles
- looking at font pairings for logo
- screenshots of draft layouts/covers (including pixiwoo ones)
- brainstorming name ideas and final selection
House Style
I have a very clear vision for the house style I want to create. I want hand drawn illustrations to give the magazine/pages dimension and character however I want the majority of elements to be simplistic and modern. The mixture of the two will create a very balanced house style that is simultaneously appealing to a young and older audience, is representative of the creative/playful elements of the magazine but is also appropriate for the more serious topics it will cover.
Below I put together an inspiration board of different illustration styles I am drawn to. Most notably is the work of Sally Cotterill. She is a "beauty illustrator" who has collaborated with some of the biggest brands and Youtubers/bloggers in the industry. Her simplistic, hand drawn style against digital backgrounds is simply stunning. I'm definitely not as skilled as her but I really do enjoy this style and would like to possibly do something similar myself, with the main cover image. I have also included the work of Judit Mallol, who uses a similar approach of combining hand drawn and digital elements.
I am generally a lot more skilled at digital illustration and below is a digital illustration of Pixiwoo by Dimitrios Chonos. The digital brushes he has used gives a similar effect to watercolour and gives the image more dimension than flat rendering. The skin is real watercolour paint, which I think works quite nicely. This kind of style is more achievable for me so I might try doing something like that for the front cover of my magazine.
(I have also included images of watercolour designs on/in existing magazines to see how it works in an editorial setting. I personally think it looks great and definitely want to go down this direction).
After deciding on a logo font and a general house style I played around with front cover and page layout ideas, using Pixiwoo in my example as I'm hopefully going to have them on my front cover.
In the above image I thought of using a similar style to Sally Cotterill, to create illustrations of Sam and Nic Chapman (Pixiwoo). I'd have the illustration of Nic on the top right and Sam on the bottom left. Having them at different heights instead of together (which is how they are traditionally photographed/drawn) looks a lot more dynamic and also fills the space better. Having them side by side would be hard to fit on the page too and wouldn't look as interesting.
As it's the September issue I thought of having a pop of Autumnal colour in the background. I like the look of this cover, it's chic and professional however I think it lacks playfulness.
In these two ideas (above and below) I considered having Sam on the front cover and the Nic on the first double page spread of the interview. Sam has a very chiseled face, with model like features that look striking on a front cover. This isn't my illustration but I enjoy the simple outline, with monochromatic shading for skin and a pop of colour with the lips/eyes. I would find creating something like this a lot simpler than the Judit and Sally style drawings.
I've used the same pop of colour in the background which works nicely and has a good balance of playfulness and chicness. I'd like to develop this style more for the real front cover.
Below is an idea for a double page spread. During my research I took a liking to introductory spreads that feature very large imagery, and a large title with minimal text underneath. I played around with this technique to create the below idea. I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to make the image of Nic look illustrated and to make her skin monochromatic, leaving her lips with a pop of colour.
The idea is to have an illustration of Nic in the same style as Sam, on the double page spread to link the two together. The pop of colour on Nic's lips is used in the title text. I enjoy the layout of the title and think it's more interesting than having the word on one line. I was planning to have a short description underneath the title introducing Pixiwoo and the article. The next page would have the full interview and a lot more text.
Below I started considering how I would layout the main articles in the magazine. I used images from dontcrampmystyle.co.uk and the Blog Space article in this example. I like the idea of having a large main image, with smaller images of things related to the article throughout the other pages. I thought about having handwritten captions for the images but I'm not sure how time consuming this would be and if it would be worth the time it takes.
Colour is really important to me in this magazine. I want to use accent colours in the photography as colour schemes for each page, as shown below with the title text and page numbers matching the orange of the lamp
As stated above I want the body text and the majority of the article titles to be Century Gothic.
Below I considered how I could layout the Blog Doctor section. Again I have used the Century Gothic font for the title and used accent colours from the photo in the design elements. I want to include an image of the blog doctor (here I've used Jemma as an example) and then separate the questions into coloured boxes, either having the question and answer in the same box or separating them into two. If I was to separate them I would have the question in a light pink box and the answers in a darker shade of pink.
This is just a basic idea of how I want the house style and layout of my magazine. I will use this as a base for when I create the real pages.
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