Job:12-84823 Title:RP-Graphic Design That Works (LDW)
175# Dtp:120/163 Page:106
Text (DS)
Asking magazine designers how they reach their final layouts is a lot like
asking painters, photographers, or novelists how they conceive and pro-
duce their masterpieces. They may be able to tell you how they begin or
what inspires them, but the actual mental processes involved often remain
mysterious—to the artists themselves as well as to the rest of the world.
Some university design programs focus heavily on process. In the real
world, however, time for such formalities is rare as designers rush to close
issues against strict printer deadlines. The design process is often guided
by a helpful grid or patched together miraculously by association, sudden
brainstorms, and last-minute tweaking.
Here’s a look at how some designers define their own processes, plus a
peek inside one designer’s mind as he perfects the layout of an important
magazine section.
Creative Process
left and opposite page
At
Entertainment Weekly
and
Walking,
designers
begin with the photo-
graphs or illustrations and
let layouts build naturally
around them.
106-111 84823 10/12/05 2:41 PM Page 106
Job:12-84823 Title:RP-Graphic Design That Works (LDW)
175# Dtp:120/163 Page:107
Text (DS)
DW)
e:106
Designers usually start the page layout process with
the element that most emphatically sets the tone for
the magazine’s personality. “Sometimes we’ll start a
design before the photography is in, but the design al-
ways depends on art,” says Geraldine Hessler, creative
director of
Entertainment Weekly.
“We make a map of
the entire feature well. We may cut a page from some-
thing else if we have a good photo shoot. We allow
ourselves a lot of leeway to play up good art.”
An
Entertainment Weekly
layout is “reactionary,”
Hessler says. “We work with the editors to come up
with a headline that works with the art and story.”
Then designers alter the type to further illustrate the
topic or concept. “It’s almost like geometry,” Hessler
says. “There is a certain set of givens, and we have to
work with them.”
Walking
art director Lisa Sergi likewise always waits
for an issue’s commissioned photographs and illustra-
tions to come in before beginning her work. As for the
Walking
designers, artwork inspires the graphics,
headline fonts, layout, and colors that Sergi chooses.
From there, she simply launches into a design with a
natural feeling of balance and flow.
“It’s instinctive,” she says. “I just go with what feels
right and makes sense. I don’t make a huge effort to go
through a formal design and review process, though I’ll
do printouts and look at them to make sure they look
the same on paper as on the screen. But I usually go
with my gut feeling, trying to put the strong stuff up
front and put together a good mix of text-heavy fea-
tures and sidebars.”
Art Is Life
106-111 84823 10/12/05 2:41 PM Page 107
Job:12-84823 Title:RP-Graphic Design That Works (LDW)
175# Dtp:120/163 Page:108
Text (DS)
From the initial concepts onward, all designers have a
distinctly personal process for perfecting their final
versions. Always perfectionists, some tweak colors,
shift text boxes, and add and delete rules in the origi-
nal computer file right up to the final deadline. Others
save versions of files as they make changes, then com-
pare them before submitting the final layout. The
image of how the layout should look resides almost
exclusively in the designers’ heads, and they con-
stantly push themselves until they’re satisfied or, more
likely, run out of time.
Some designers follow a process that is a bit more for-
mal.
Context
design director Mark Maltais, for example,
allows enough time for several revisions of illustrations
so art will perfectly complement layouts. “I get tons of
sketches from artists,” he says. “We go through three to
five rounds, from thumbnails to rough sketches.” He
then begins laying out the story with the sketches in
mind to make sure everything works together.
The review process is more democratic at
Real Simple.
“We start by pinning ideas up on the wall and choos-
ing the one we like best,” says creative director Roland
Bello. Then designers route the initial layout through
several stages of approval, from artists to editors. “We
might change it three times from the initial layout,”
Bello says. “If we come up with a brilliant idea several
steps into the process, we can still implement it.”
At
*Surface,
the first design review actually takes the
form of editing. “Designers help in the editing
process,” says Riley John-donnell, one of the maga-
zine’s publishers and the creative director. “By review-
ing the stories and products, we notice design trends
before the editor does. Then we use those trends to
create a visual dialog” by designing layouts that relate
similar concepts.
Review and Revision
left
Real Simple
layouts spend time pinned on a wall so
artists and editors can judge them and make changes.
below When artists share in the editing process, in-
spired layout concepts emerge. In this layout in
*Surface,
designers noticed that several featured products—sofas
and benches—had to do with the idea of community,
so they grouped the images to complete the theme.
Graphic Design That Works
108
106-111 84823 10/12/05 2:41 PM Page 108
Job:12-84823 Title:RP-Graphic Design That Works (LDW)
175# Dtp:120/163 Page:109
Text (DS)
DW)
e:108
Shawn Hazen, senior designer for the San Francisco-
based startup magazine
Dwell,
was close enough to
the magazine’s conception that he could document his
design process. Specifically, he recalls how he came to
the final version of the magazine’s events calendar, a
pull-out gatefold piece printed on uncoated stock.
“This format was developed to be a unique addition to
the publication and also to have a distinctly different
feel than the rest of the book,” Hazen says. “The result-
ing size also makes a more interesting poster than a
spread-sized sheet.” The idea was that readers could
pull it out and pin it on their walls as a reminder of
everything going on in the design community.
Editors and designers wanted to make the calendar an
important part of the magazine’s brand. “Karrie Jacobs,
the editor in chief, felt strongly that it should feel like
controlled chaos,” Hazen says. “I was told to make it a
sort of random-access soup. Everyone felt it should be
dynamic and kind of crazy.”
It took Hazen three issues before he perfected the cal-
endar. “The initial problem to overcome was how to
achieve a wild layout that, inherently, is opposed to
the modernist tenets upon which we were building the
look of the rest of the magazine,” he says. Hazen ex-
plains the five phases of the project in his own words.
First Draft, Final Draft
First Sketches
above “I tried a number of things initially—arraying the images in a sort of spine
across the page for a horizontal layout or down the page for a vertical layout. Then
all the information would bounce up and down or side to side on top of varying im-
ages. I also put some saturated colors in the background; color was becoming in-
creasingly important to the magazine. Another early design involved making each
entry its own unit, in a box, so each item was clean on its own, but they overlapped
each other all over the page. After some quick reviews, both these ideas proved to be
too clean—not chaotic enough.”
109
106-111 84823 10/12/05 2:41 PM Page 109
Job:12-84823 Title:RP-Graphic Design That Works (LDW)
175# Dtp:120/163 Page:110
Text (DS)
Rethinking the First Sketches
right “I spent time rethinking how I could create a system that, when strictly ad-
hered to, would create interesting relationships on the page. I decided to exploit the
strongest design system there is: the grid. I gave each of the six types of entries we
were featuring a grid. At this point, the question of what orientation the calendar
should have popped up again. Should it be readable horizontally while still in the
magazine or oriented vertically for hanging as a tall poster? I decided the type could
run both ways. My grids could create interesting horizontal-vertical relationships.
This would also limit the number of grids I’d need to use for both the horizontal and
vertical orientation. It would look chaotic, but each type of information would have
its own system or set of rules that would be consistent. The resulting grid system
was cool, kind of a weird plaid when all the different column widths were overlaid.”
New Sketches
above and left “The next set of sketches followed my plan. Of course, I could take
liberties here and there with regard to placement within the grid, but I allowed the
intersecting grids to do most of the work. I felt I really had to show the grid selec-
tively in order to visually explain the system—control the chaos visually. The images
could fit on any of the same grids as well, and I decided, at this point, to choose just
a few illustrations, as the page was becoming dense and active. After review, we
realized this was heading in the right direction. I started to think that the feedback
about the design being too clean might be due to the strong, solid colors I used in
the background. So, in a late-night flurry of designing, I picked out a couple of my
favorite images and tossed them in the background as duotones to give a more even,
lower-contrast surface for the type. That created a wildly more dynamic page. I
developed a subtler way of hinting at the grid—little hash marks, which had a nice
architectural feel. And the four-color chunks of the background image that showed
through revealed the grid and created an interesting, abstract compositional element.”
110
106-111 84823 10/12/05 2:42 PM Page 110
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.