FMP WEEK 14 (WC: 01/03/2021)

I have slightly altered the aesthetic of my content to reflect my developing style as well as what is on the Instagram. My older work for this module was slightly more all over the place and experimental, which is true to my own style however, for a magazine, especially one that will be delivering educational content, I aim to make the design slightly easier to read and create so I can ensure consistency throughout the magazine and social media platforms. These are some examples of the work that I have been inspired by, the difference between them is that these are slightly more feminine and soft which is similar to my style anyway. I find that this would suit the philosophical articles I have written for the magazine by complimenting the content with the visuals. The graphics tend to use as lot of the blur tool, which I had just been experimenting with more lately anyway, therefore I thought it would be suitable to find some innovative ways that the blur tool is being used which I could gain some inspiration from.

I have developed my style for this magazine from tactile collage and photo manipulation techniques into digital graphic design work made using the Adobe Creative Suite. This development came from the beginnings of my research into the articles that I am creating; these will be based on the 12 universal laws of the universe, such as the law of attraction. This came due to my interest in Philosophy and reading books such as “The Power of Now” which details the importance of these twelve universal laws but adapts them into a universal perspective which allows you to relate and connect to the book. This is my aim for the magazine, it would be such a nice feeling to improve someone’s day by talking about these topics. I have watched “The Secret” On Netflix to gain a different perspective on the law of attraction, as this is presented in a film formant when mainly I had been looking at articles online. This film was very impactful in terms of changing the way your think about things and process information. This has solidified my idea to write about the twelve laws of the universe. ‘The Secret’ also has input from several different sources through interviews, which is a very authentic way of gaining information for research purposes and these are people’s mostly unfiltered and natural thoughts which they say on camera.

The two elements, design and philosophy had to come together more fittingly in terms of the art direction of the magazine, which is why the graphics became more impactful, such as creating a design and placing a sentence or word on top, or integrating with the design, as the focal point. The use of text within my designs was to create more eye-catching educational graphics, such as ones which have a message behind them. Using text lead me to using dafont and 1001fonts to source some more diverse typefaces to use. The use of typography is extremely important in magazine design, consequently I wanted a large range of different fonts to mix and match my magazine with. I did not want to stick to three or four fonts as the style of my magazine was not as hectic anymore, I wanted to express that experimental side of my work through the position, size and quality of the fonts used. To push my designs further, I took my experimentations and used some YouTube Tutorials on Adobe Illustrator to change the fonts using the blend tool with specific steps to create gradients. Or alter the tool further to make a pattern with the text around a focal point. I also used these to make the fonts placed around a shape or design. The idea was to push my graphic design skills further as the main body of work I am producing is graphic design on Photoshop, and so I wanted each section to be very unique.