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VICEROY
2020
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Viceroy was the first ever form of magazine I made, I went about using photoshop (which in hindsight was a grave mistake) and made a lot of design flaws and errors but, I was happy with the result nonetheless - there is nothing better than when you can look back and feel good about what you've made. The work within Viceroy taught me a lot about how I should try to construct my approach through research and establishing a solid content so you can make informed decisions but, to also try to embrace things your interested in and work out how best to experess them to others - perhaps I didn't achieve this here however, I understood the idea of the concept upon feedback and reflection.
Throughout the duration of the project I kept a google docs page updated with any research and processes that I made. The main starting point is starting development, at this point I looked around at different industry magazines and what they were making, I made sure to keep my intrests close to heart as this made the project all the more easier. In the PDF to the left you can find some of the more basic forms of research that I made from a moodboard to find connections in interests that would be worth writing about, a mindmap of ideas, research into publications - with additional research into typography as well as various types of magazines and what each one did in terms of writing and design.
Within the research I conducted I looked into different publications more specifically pulbications from gaming magazines, musics and movie magazines - each looking at the various aspects of each. While there is a lot of crossover between the different types each attempts to mainly entertain and inform which helped decide my direction as well as inspired a visual approaach with the layout. You can see these individual studies at the bottom of the pdf to the left.
The next steps where to begin. Putting the first foot isn't always easy so in this case I was advised to make some form of plan that I could refer to or adjust as needed. You'll see the very first version of a mock-up layout and drafts to the right. At one point I even attempted to design a cover so early on by basing it off of an aquatic "Nirvana" aesthetic but, eventually decided against it. Below these drafts you'll see a blog that follows the drafts throughout development essentially all the way to the end where it's becomes essentially identical to that of the final product.
As I developed the magazine I kept a blog of most of the developments as well as the failures and successes that came along the way, this outlines most of the processes, the hows and whys as well as showing images of the processes earlier on - these are essentially parts that I scrapped like the original title or the desk image idea incoperating some friends. Additionally you'll be able to read about a photoshoot of items I conducted for poetenial use within the magazine. You'll see a lot of scrapped ideas at first and I'm quite glad for this as it helped me learn that to push forward you need to fail a little! Thanks to teachers I would ask questions to how I could solve problems when I coudln't solve it myself. You'll see this to the left as well. Below I want to go onto pointing out indivdual pages and how they've aged.
First the cover and back cover - both look simplistic yet have gradients eliminating them from being minimalstic. Personally I liked the approach with with the colour manipulation adding gradients where they normally aren't as well as having the theme continue onto the next cover as a continuation. However, the covers still come with many gripes, I'm not a huge fan of the gradient within the text or it's font - I think this font could be less italic but, I do appreciate the boldness of the font itself. Perhaps the subheading could be better aligned and do without the dark gradient as well - font woes still apply here! Despite the font issues I think this is still a decent cover especially considering this was when I had first started to design anything.
The original inspiration came from a magazine called 'Cyan' which used soft colours with simplistic backgrounds with an image for it's covers. I really liked the apporoach Cyan had taken with it's simplistic design and adapted it to my own purpose for Viceroy. You can see Cyan in the magazine processes as well as just below here.
Originally I had no clue what Cyan magazine was however, after using it as inspiration for this project and also for remaking the project further down the line I did become curious. Cyan is a Japanese beauty and lifestyle magazine aimed to showcase beautiful visuals with interesting information aimed towards a young female audience especially with the catering towards make-up topics but, also covers fashion advice and trends giving colour combinations or conducting interviews with models. Personally, the information doesn't interest me as much as the striking visuals of eaach cover which varies between issues, sometimes producing something similar to the right (which is their most common design) but, occasionally making something way different such as a full photo on a page, or replacing the background with a pattern and even earlier photos that take up the lower half of the page with Japanese font/writing interacting with the images on the cover. All in all Cyan is an inspiration for their fresh and inventive take as well their willingness to change - yes they have 20+ issues using similar covers but, they're not afraid to experiment to see what works. You can take a gander at the collection of cover that inspired me right here!
Our Contents page I feel is very misaligned, no justification on our body text that tells us about the articles and images don't align, furthermore I think the gradient theme becomes too overused here - gradient on the pickguard, gradient box with text that has a gradient. Looking at the two other image here It may have been more benefical to use one of these images as the main image and the overall design would be a lot better. I think had I tried to focus on using one of the images as opposed to the photoshoot images it may have turned out much better.
The first article isn't too bad, especially considering it was made in photoshop. The main issues for me is the alignment of text as well as too much of a drop shadow. The text feels very strangled - almost no room to breathe and somewhat sparodic which also leave the spotify code in a unnatrual place almost. Then the drop shadow is slightly too 'glowy' feeling like its bleeding out over the page taking away from the image which should be our main focus. One thing done well however, is consistency in the colour shceme which ends up setting the standard for the next article - black and white images with a blue contrast.
Our second article has a more redeeming factors - most namingly the text feels slightly more natural but, it doesn't take up the page quite like a normal magazine would do - instead its focused within the middle with space around it. I'm unsure as to whether this feels good or bad but, I do know I perfer this entirely to how the text was on the previous page mostly because it gives room for other elements and images without being intrusive! Images are nice but, the focus feels too heavy on drop shadow - this could be because the shadows aren't equal and opposite (which could give an idea of reflections and balance).
Finally we have our final page and inside cover page. Not much to say here other than I wish the final page was something more interesting to the content of the magazine we've seen so far - for example when remaking the magazine I opted for choosing various songs of the musicians however, here I've opted to cover my tracks and show responsibilty for the images I've sourced - while this isn't bad it doesn't really speak volumes for entertaining and informing people. Secondly this page could be better alinged with the main body of text and doing without a drop shadow on the image both - neither is really detrimental but, they sacrifice form at the want of being interesting.
The inside cover is quite interesting and speaks nicely to the different methods of experimentation I underwent during the project, this final piece applied most of what I had learned and resulted in something pretty to finish the magazine off to. On reflection I think perhaps framing it could be done slightly better - such as having some kind of stroke around the edge or removing the pick from the picture altogether?
Overall, I believe this project is not representive of my entire development but, showcase the work I started from and serves as a great place to see the development I've made over the two years of media Bath College gave me. Furthermore the fact that I've managed to revist the work and improve upon should be evident of the developments I've mentioned.
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