McFarland- Magazine Project

Design Strategy:

The story I chose covers the launch of iconic British fashion model, Twiggy’s new line of clothing and accessories that makes its debut in April, 2010. This story not only interested me because it is current and exciting, but also because she is a model that has taken some of the most breath taking and memorable photos of that era. I thought that featuring Twiggy would give me the opportunity to present a variety of images; both artistic and realistic. Also, since much of her expression has been carried through her willowy frame and shown by her almond-shaped eyes, I knew that the images could give great direction to the text, framing the headers, subheads and body copy. Eye flow was extremely important in this spread. On the first page, I put a great deal into leading the reader into the article, as I edited the photograph in Photoshop and then rotated it to face both the pull quote and full article. Later in the story, I placed an image of Twiggy today and placed the text where her eyes faced. Motion was also important to maintain in this article to keep the reader enthused, so splashes of color and animated photographs were strewn into the spread. The motion of the first photograph and the fluidity and placidity of the circular shape of her hat on the second spread allowed the eye to bounce back and forth between type and image, allowing the reader to stay interested. Another primary consideration when creating this spread was following the grid system. I made sure grids were in place before I set any of my images or text. I wanted to make sure that vertical images went with a vertical page and that the white space, photographs and texts in the spread were balanced. This helped maintain a certain level of organization while still maintaining the pieces creativity. I also carried the color theme throughout the spread. The use of red, gray, black and white were consistently used throughout this article, as on the cover page she is wearing a striking red dress that pulls in the eye with an energetic, warm color. The sidebar, which is a timeline, is also a warm hue, however it is not red because I felt it was important to break up the spread a bit and to pull the reader into something new. It added a valuable element to this design, as it broke up the space and helped with overall organization.

Typeface:

I chose to use three different typefaces for this story. The headers and subheads were comprised of a large and legible fashion font, Bodoni Svty Two OS TTC Bold. There are many different forms of Bodoni, however when testing fonts on the “wow” spread, that read “Twiggy,” every letter seemed to be in its best shape in this typeface. I carried this throughout the article and interlaced different colors in the text to keep the reader’s attention. For the body typeface, I chose Adobe Garamond Pro Regular. Garamond is generally easy to read and extremely elegant, which went well with both the fashion headers and also the image of Twiggy as a whole. Finally, for the sidebar in this project I used Optima. After meeting with Paul, it became apparent that the sidebar seemed most organized when written in a Sans-serif typeface. Optima is a sans-serif that is usually great for headers. I played around with many different fonts and this seemed to fit very well with the rest of the design. Overall these typefaces made the article enjoyable. ~Claire McFarland