51261 Project 5: Digital Magazine Feature
For this final project, we are asked to employ all the design principles discussed thus far in a digital magazine layout — where composition, typographic hierarchy, document hierarchy, visual-verbal interaction, expression, color and system come together. Using text and photos or illustrations as primary content, we created three spreads of a feature article intended to appear in a specific mainstream publication. The story must fit
within the publication’s existing ethos and content strategy. For the final deliverable, we posted our magazines to issuu.
Nov 13th, 2020
Grid Exercise
Develop Content for Digital Magazine
@tinycactus!!!!!
I want to make a digital magazine for one of my favorite photography magazines — aperture. As I was browsing their website, I find that they have a special column on @tinycactus (KangHee Kim), a South Korean photographer that I have followed for a long time on Instagram. As a non-American artist living in New York in the COVID period and is unable to leave the United States due to visa restrictions, a lot of her works have a sense of surreal escapism. As an international student who is also unable to leave the United States due to visa restrictions and fear of losing my status, I am much consolated by her works.
SO — I decided to develop this Digital Magazine project around her and her works.
I want to continue the style of aperture magazine, and develop a special edition for KangHee Kim.
Contents for my digital magazine:
Retrieved from (https://aperture.org/editorial/introducing-kanghee-kim/)
KangHee Kim wants to take you to another world, one where single palm trees emerge from a sea of clouds, perfectly crescent moons appear in cotton candy-hued skies, golden rays of light shine over streetscapes and domestic interiors, and clouds peek through windows and scaffolding. Kim is most widely known by her Instagram handle, @tinycactus. While her dreamlike, otherworldly images perfectly capture the digital aesthetic of today — soft color palettes, minimalist compositions, and an almost uncanny, eerie quality — they were the result of something much deeper.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kim immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of fourteen. When her lawyer missed critical deadlines in applying for Kim’s green card, she was unable to secure citizenship. Eventually, she was granted protection under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), but it came with the major caveat: due to visa restrictions, Kim has been unable to leave the U.S. for over a decade. Her images of “surreal escapism,” as she refers to them, have since become a form of visual therapy. “To be in DACA is living in limbo,” Kim says. “I desire to be unbounded in my photographic practice. Creating these fictional scenes allows me to feel a little bit liberated.”
Kim studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2014. It wasn’t until her senior year that she began using photography as a creative outlet, enjoying the freedom that came with the minimal equipment required. One of her ongoing series, Street Errands, began in 2016 and was born out of the mundane daily encounters of living in New York. “I realized, instead of waiting for miracles, I could instead create the magical moments in my imagination,” Kim says. “I construct my own form of escapism.” To create these photographs, she uses Photoshop to merge and manipulate multiple images from her travels in New York, California, Colorado, and Hawaii. Rather than preplan the scenes, Kim lets intuition guide her — creating cohesion with a uniform aesthetic and color palette, and the returning motifs of moons, clouds, oceans, and skyscrapers.
The early years of Kim’s Instagram feed feature standard day-to-day documentation — she joined in 2012 — with hints of her future experiments intermixed in the form of non-photoshopped, early versions of her dreamy photographs. Now, with just under 300,000 followers on Instagram, Kim is among a generation of photographers for whom the platform has become their main source of notoriety. As a result, her images have proliferated across the Internet, earning her commissions from brands such as Adidas, American Express, Air France, and Nike, as well as publications ranging from TIME and the New York Times, to Bloomberg Businessweek.
But for Kim, widespread popularity has a double edge, and she now feels conflicted about showing her work on Instagram. “It’s certainly helped me in many ways to get where I am now. At the same time, the flow of the Internet is uncontrollable,” she says, noting that the deeper, more personal ideas can get lost. However, she adds, “It’s fine with me if some people are missing out on the backstories, as long as they can relate their own experiences.”
Navigating the line between the everyday and fantasy, Kim’s photographs make the impossible possible: they create a space for her desire for freedom, while accepting the reality of her situation. Ultimately, Kim explains, her work “seeks to actively create something new with what I have for myself. These images give me illusions of traveling to unknown places that are familiar yet totally new. I’d like to remain optimistic and hopeful. Appreciating what I have in the present seemed to be one of the ways to do that.”
Exploring the visual styles of Aperture Magazine
After browsing the covers and insides of Aperture Magazin. I find that they use serif fonts a lot (for titles & for contents). The theme for each magazine is usually centered close to the bottom of the cover.
I also find that the layout for inner pages tends not to exceed 2 columns. They tend to place one image on one page and textual contents on the other.
Nov 24th, 2020
Looking at the visual styles of aperture magazine, I found a minimal intertwining of images with texts. Often, images are on a separate page to the texts. Moreover, the aperture magazine utilizes high contrast serif fonts together with low contrast sans serif fonts to create an elegant, modernistic yet not boring visual style. The aperture magazine uses serif fonts for main content too.
That’s why I decided to try out constantia for my thumbnails. (and later decide on a sans serif fonts).
I made explorations on manuscript grids, column grids and modular grids. I tried to include a rainbow-like pastel palette to convey a hopeful and cheerful feeling.
1:1 Feedback Session with Ji
- only need 1 title, maybe sub-headings?
- start thinking about typography choice
- developing information hierarchy
- (Q from Yuran: What is a caption?) (Ji: Going to check with Anna later)
- Like my second and third grid system better, recommend breaking texts into columns in my manuscript grid system. The second page is a little bit too text-intensive for a magazine.
Dec 1st, 2020
I first try out the layout with placeholders and then adding in images. I chose Futura as my sans serif fonts. According to Ji’s feedback, I made a clear distinction between subheadings and the main title in the hope of the visual hierarchy would be clearer.
Interim Critique
It seems that I’ve got a lot of good comments on craftsmanship. Both instructors and peers said that they like the column grid's layout better — so did I. I decided to go with the column grid!
Dec 3rd,2020
I felt that the distinction between the tagline and the main title can be more, so I changed the Futura font of the title to Didot (but not Constantia, to avoid the title look more like the main texts). When designing the first spread, I referenced aperture magazine.
1:1 Feedback Session with Anna
- increase leading by 1 point
- increase the size of subheadings by 1 point
- shorten the indentation at the start of each paragraph
- preferred the second page to have only one line
- the quote seemed to be a little bit disconnected (maybe adding a line suggesting their relationships?)
Dec 4th, 2020
Explorations and Revision based on Anna’s Feedback
- I changed the title font to be Playfair Display because it represents the original typography in aperture magazine better. Also, it is more readable, even if it is still a high contrast font.
- I found out that the title I used in my previous iterations was actually the title of another article. I accidentally mixed things up.
- Also, I added a line connecting the tagline and the title on my first spread, so that their relationships are clearer.
Weekend Feedback
Dec, 8th
According to Anna’s feedback, I refined the margins and details, also rearranging my texts a bit (in particular, put the “early years” section on my second spread).
1:1 Feedback from Anna
Dec, 9th
I designed a front and back cover & refined some details on my page. I then sent my updates to Anna for her review. I referenced the covers from the Aperture Magazine archive.
Anna’s Feedback on Miro
Dec 10th
last-minute changes!
final works!
I created a special edition on surreal escapism photographer KangHee Kim.
I wanted to make an edition on KangHee Kim’s work because her work has been providing me a lot of comfort during the pandemic and I hope to share it with you guys.
The magazine is aperture magazine, which is one of my favorite photography magazines and I think their visual styles are pretty unique in the sense that they showcase the pictures more, and make their magazine look more like a book than like a magazine.
I use a column grid just to keep it consistent with the visual styles of the magazine. I use Playfair Display and Futura as my fonts, because I like how the aperture magazine plays around with the combination of high contrast serif fonts and bold sans serif fonts.
Although the layout of the aperture magazine seems pretty minimalistic, it is challenging to keep the hierarchy clear while maintaining that elegant and appealing visual style.
The photos in my magazine are all by KangHee Kim. They all have a hopeful ambiance and I intentionally choose photos so that as a whole, they would form a cheerful pastel palette.
Final Critique
issuu link! https://issuu.com/home/published/issuucompressed
Feedbacks & Reflections
I was not very into this project at the start because the grid systems do not sound so interesting and seem very constraining. However, after doing this project, I actually find it is quite challenging and fun to play with the white places in a minimalistic layout. In fact, although layouting the spreads might seem easy by following or referencing a certain grid system or template, the nuances and details vary a lot, depending on the content.
During the final critique, I received a lot of feedback on my white spaces, some liked these spaces, some are a little bit confused. Another key takeaway from the final critique was that the choice of color palette can really make things more interesting and dynamic in a seemingly constraining magazine layout. Most feedbacks I received are around how the pastel rainbow palette makes the magazine more appealing.