Exhibition Design

Gorgeous exhibition design form studio Makgill. I think the identity works because it is strong and cohesive, it complements the exhibition rather than competes with it.

Well Designed Magazines - Foam

Foam is a photography magazine which is very nicely designed. Obviously a regular and consistent grid is stuck to and typography is logical and well executed.

Like ride some fairly experimental type is used for headings, however what I believes makes it work for foam and not for ride is that 1. its consistent; in that its the same typeface thats used all the way through. 2. its given space to breath, set with plenty of white space the letters become a feature in themselves rather than in Ride where they feel like they are distracting and make the spreads feel cluttered.

White spaces is also used very effectively to draw you eyes into the important information.

What is on the pages is clearly rigorously considered, only the necessary information is included meaning there is no 'noise' and therefore very effective communication.

Well Design Magazines - Baseline

Basline is a typography magazine so you would expect its layout to be bang on, which it is. Again a very rigorous grid is used for each spread. The layouts are quite experiemental and the grid varies between the articals, however with i=each article it remains the same.

It is a magazine that is focused on typography and I think that its creative flare and integrity that really shine through, with lots of different well executed ideas on each spread.

Its far from consistent in its overall look, but I think that every idea is clear in what its trying to achieve and perfectly executed that makes it all work together.

Well Designed Magazines - Creative Review

The things that I like about creative review are that every spread has a lot going on and they contain a lot of information but they all look very ordered and clean. This is because they stick to a rigorous grid and the type size, colour and weight is used in a consistent fashion.

Here there is a lot going on but it works well becuaes there is a clear hierarchy and a consistant application of the grid.

Unlike Ride BMX Creative Review makes use of white space, which allows the elements to breath and clear communication of the most important information.

They vary the colours but the magazine remains consistent because the typefaces, sizes and grids all remain very consistent throughout.

Colour is used very nicely to differentiate between different types of information.

Mind Design

I think Mind Design could be my favouite studio ever. Their work is consistantly scarily good.

Pictured is work for modelling agency tess, all of their project look as though so much work has gone into them

Mind Design

Whats wrong with ride BMX magazine.

Seeing as I am slating Ride for being terribly layed out it would be nice if this blogger post was neatly organsied, however blogger being blogger it isn't really working out.

The reason I have decided to re-design Ride BMX Magazine is because it has lost its way. At a time when print media needs to up its games to hold on to its audience Ride BMX is failing miserably. Paradoxically the quality of the photography in Ride BMX is always absolutely first class while the design has in the last year or so become embarrassingly bad.

There is to a certain extent a punk, DIY or zine ethic in BMX magazines. BMX is usually seen as anti establishment and this philosophy can be seen in the magazine design. However just because ride BMX looks at itself as slightly outside the mainstream and not having to conform to the rules that most magazine adhear to does not mean it has to be appallingly badly layed out. Rules are there to be broken but if you don't have any rules in the first place it just looks like a mess.














Throughout the magazine there is no fixed grid used all of the pages are layed out in a fairly random manner, the designer appears to use what even column structure he feels like at the time. Also in the spread above it seems as though the designers hasn't been able to make a clear decision about what images to run with resulting in a whole lot of little images on the right hand page with no hierarchy at all.







































I'm guessing the designer has tried to aim for some sort of zine aesthetic hear, but the complete lack of structure here makes the page look a mess and I don't want to read it.
























If you look closely at the spread above there are 8 different sizes and weights of typeface not including the logotype. Was the designer ever even taught the basics of typography???!




































The hierarchy works OK on the contents page (above) but is 8 different sizes and weights of type really necessary?

































































I'm sorry but considering this is the UK biggest selling BMX magazine having type set with so many obvious errors is rediculous; too many words per line, the paragraphs should either be seperated with line spaces or indentations, neither have been used here. Too many type faces have been used and the hierarchy is not logical. As a result, I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to read it.

















Again it looks as though he hasn't made a decision about which photos to use as a result there is no hierarchy on the spread above, so your eye doesn't no what to focus on and you just move on.






























The designer has aimed to have a different look for each article, I would argue that this is not necessary, it makes the magazine look inconsistent and you are destructed from the words and photos by constantly changing colour schemes and layouts.
















As if the use of bold pink type wasn't enough to separate questions from the answers in this interview, the designers has felt the need to offset the questions by half a column width as well. Why?

Things

A few things I've been looking at in relation to my young typographic designers brief