Layout Design Project

I was given a project at university to make a page layout for a given target audience. I got to choose from 3:

- 16-24 year old females
- 30-50yr professional city workers
- 60yr+ unisex retired or gap years

I chose 30-50yr professional city workers.

For this project I created both the single page document and a DPS as I thought it would look better on a DPS and I could also fit all of the article on it. I replicated the basic templates for the magazine, such as colour schemes, header and subheader styles and the ID tag, and sourced the body copy from a previous magazine article from a few months ago from the website, found here: http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-drives/VW-Polo-GTI-2010-CAR-review/

For the main body copy type I selected a typeface called Constantia, a serif typeface. I chose this for my target audience (30-50yr old professional city workers) as something that would appeal to their eyes from a few periodicals i’ve seen is a nice, simple yet official looking typeface and i think this typeface pulls it off nicely.

For the header I chose Helvetica, as it is a nice, very simplified, attention grabbing type, that isn’t too in your face, which is also something i noticed about headers from periodicals of this nature. I also used the same typeface for the image caption as it then stands itself away from the body copy in the layout by differing from it.

For the subheader I used an italic version of Constantia, as not only is that a theme that they stick to in this magazine, but it also makes it stand out nicely between the header and the smaller copy underneath (the car’s specifications) which are both in helvetica.

The Folio’s at the top of each page were made to replicate the ones in the actual magazine, which are bold and easy to see, so the magazine is simple to navigate if you are looking for a specific article from the contents.

The column alignment is justified left, which I think makes the layout look really clean, as you can clearly see the identical gutters and spacing between each column.

The pull quote in this article also uses Constantia as a pull quote is essentially a blown up extract from the body copy.

At the end of the article (on both layouts) I created an anchor for each purpose. In the single page document, the article doesnt end, so i created a small arrow anchor to lead onto the next page. However with the DPS, I could fit the whole body of text on nicely, so i created an anchor in the shape of a car wheel, to show where the text finishes, and to fit in keeping with the magazines content.

All images were sourced from the same page as the sourced article, except for one, which was taken from here: http://www.2fastlane.com/showImg.php?id=1719

I enjoyed doing this project because, honestly, i enjoy doing page layout design.