OUGD601 - initial practical thoughts

As my essay has started to progress, I have decided to turn my attention toward the practical part of the brief. The focus of my research throughout my essay was on editorial design and how technology has influenced the creativity of designers. 

There have been a number of focussed arguments that have taken shape within my essay. One of these has been looking at the differences between modernist design with strict rules and principles and post-modern design which has much more experimental layouts within editorials. This is then compared with the rule breaking editorials that are produced today and how they appose modernist and minimalist magazines such as Cereal.



Due to the nature of my chosen question it was essential that my final practical work was portrayed through an editorial. I have also previously identified my target audience  Although this limited my options for what I was going to create, I came up with 5 ideas which abided by my brief.


1.Altering the Penguin Books
The strict rules Jan Tschichold brought to Penguin are very different to many of the publications seen today. As explained in my essay, the introduction of desktop publishing has brought a new wave of designers who disregard the modernist ideas. Although I discussed that this may have been down to the ease of use for software such as Adobe, there are still many examples of good experimental design which doesn't abide by any rules.

This idea would take a penguin book, designed by Jan Tschichold and alter the contents so the design is more similar to some books you may find today. Text may be difficult to read and the previous layouts may be unrecognisable but would show how design has changed.

2.Fold out editorial
My essay often looks back to editorial design in the past and compares it to that of today. This idea would show the different graphic movements and styles on a fold out timeline. The content from this can be taken from further research and information taken from the interviews I previously conducted. Different design movements are shown using the text on the time line so the reader then has an idea of what each looked like.

The reverse of this fold out leaflet would include a quote from a designer taken from the time line in his/her own style. This uniquely shaped poster would be appropriately for a younger design audience. 



As seen in my previous research, I had decided to reach out to numerous graphic designers in order to find what opinions professionals had on how technology has effected creativity within editorial design. As the responses I collected were such an important piece of research within my essay, some  ideas were produced using the answers I received as content.

3. Poster-zine
This idea would work as an informative piece of design which would give the opinions of the professionals I interviewed in an abstract way. The poster side would include all the interviews whilst the zine part would have legible, modernist style text so it is still informative to the reader.

4. Online editorial
This idea would require me to create an informative and easy to use website that shows my interview responses. There would be two formats to this editorial, one which abided by modernist guidelines. The other would show how there are movements other than work produced today that disobeys all the rules.

5. Animation
The final outcome for this idea would be a short video showing the deconstruction of a modernist layout into a more post modern composition. The content for this idea would be one of my interviews. The second deconstructed design will continue to animate and move around and will eventually be illegible.