Extended Practice: Beyond Meeting No.3

During the third meeting with Amy, we agreed on a few changes for the magazine arrangement and page layout. The main changes were as follows:

Keep the hexagon pattern as the brand colour throughout the magazine
Try using more spacing between the hexagon shapes
Include issue number on front page?
Make the image thumbnails hexagon shapes instead of circles to keep the magazine image consistent with the hexagon pattern featured throughout the magazine
Drop the opacity of the hexagon pattern so less of a distraction from the main content
Lower the start point of all body copy
Change all headings to be left-aligned at the top of the page to add consistency and more readability.
Keep page headings to two lines
Change 'La Pedrera' page to match other pages - currently the body copy is lower than the other pages
Maybe use Park Guell for front image - experiment with this?
Lasercut front of a dust jacket for the magazine

Firstly, I changed the mosaic pattern to add more spacing between each of the hexagons.

I then placed the new pattern onto a couple of the other pages to see how it worked in comparison to the old version.

The new pattern was more effective as the increased spacing made the hexagon shapes better defined and clear on each page. To keep the pages consistent, I changed the hexagon pattern to match the brand colour with a lowered opacity by 50% to avoid too much distraction from the main page content.

I also began editing the layouts of the pages so they followed the same structure as one another.

For the 'La Rabla' page I extended the height of the top image on the second page and moved the hexagon pattern to the bottom left of the first page. I also experimented with shrinking the thumbnail image at the top left of the first page as it was currently quite large alongside the new title alignment. The body copy was also lowered (as to be applied to all pages).

Most of the elements of the 'La Sagrada Familia' section were fine. I kept the main imagery as it was and just changed the hexagon pattern and lowered the title to the same height as the rest of the page headings.

There weren't too many changes to be made to the 'Camp Nou' section. The image was removed from the bottom of the first page and used as a replacement feature image on the second page. I decided to remove the previous image from the second page as it was really low quality and over-pixelated. The hexagon pattern was also swapped from the second to the first page to remain consistent with the other pages.

I also tried lowering the body copy to the same height as the image to see how this would look.

Although the 'Mercat De La Boqueria' was initially one of my favourite spreads in the magazine aesthetically, the heading was difficult to read and most of the elements no longer fit in with the consistent themes of the magazine.

I changed the heading from vertical to horizontal at the top of the page. This was positioned into the same grid as the previous pages.

The body copy was lowered and the hexagon pattern added at the bottom of the text page.

I lowered the spacing between the heading of the heading from 36pt to 30pt. This would be applied to all headings longer than one line to ensure consistency.

The final change for this section was to change the main image to full bleed.

The main changes for 'La Pedrera' were to move the heading upwards and left align the text. The pattern needed to move to the bottom of the page. The body copy was also moved up with the heading.

The main imagery stayed as full bleed for this section.

For 'Museu Picasso', I extended the height of the top image on the second page to match the layout of the 'La Rabla' image page. Unfortunately the image quality was distorted when I enlarged it, meaning I will have to return to this at a later date to replace it with a new, better quality image, or find a new image altogether.

The heading was altered to be horizontal, left-align and the body copy lowered a substantial amount to match the previous pages.

Finally the pattern was placed back to complete the correct arrangement.

I changed the size of the main image for 'Fundacio Joan Miro' to match the dimensions of the 'Camp Nou' feature.

I then made amendments to the heading, placing the text across two lines instead of three. I much preferred the appearance of this page once the changes had been made. I wanted to re-visit this to ask Amy what her thoughts were about removing the thumbnail images on each section as the layout seemed more sophisticated with the extra white/negative space.

I continued with the same layout for now, noting down to mention this to Amy in our next meeting.

The main image for 'Museo National D'art De Catalunya' was already highly pixelated and needed to be enlarged to full bleed so I decided to find a new image for this section before carrying out any arrangement changes. the new image worked out to be more appropriate as it included the official signage at the site attraction.

Once I was happy with this, I changed the heading to be left-aligned and placed the other content into the correct layout. As the heading was so long I wasn't able to compress the text into two lines. I experimented with decreasing the spacing between each character and lowering the point size but the difference in size was too noticeable next to the rest of the pages so I decided to leave it across three lines this time.

There weren't many changes needed for the 'Montjuic' section. The main image stayed as it was, all that changed was the alignment and placing of the heading and the addition of the hexagon pattern.

The 'Park Guell' section didn't require too much attention either. I re-sized the main image to make it full bleed.

The only other change was to reposition the heading and add the thumbnail image and hexagon pattern.

The 'Casa Batllo' section was still in progress. The main image was enlarged to be full bleed and the thumbnail image was placed to match the rest of the magazine.

The heading was placed at the top of the page, left-aligned instead of vertical.

The text was then put into the correct placement. Again, I think I preferred the page like this, without the additional thumbnail image.

The other content was put in place, however he thumbnail image still needed updating.

............

I changed the thumbnail images from circles to hexagons using Photoshop. I decided the quickest way to do this was to find a simple hexagon shape online and place this as a new layer on top of the original image. I deleted the inside of the hexagon, allowing for a hollow shape to then be masked onto all of the separate thumbnail images one by one. These were then saved and placed in the magazine where the circular thumbnails had originally been.