After receiving my feedback from David on my editorial, I had to make some minor changes to certain aspects of the design.
In terms of the format and detailing the main issues I had were based around the text, as well as the pace of the outcome overall. The first issue I looked at changing was the text, David had pointed out that the body text in particular was too heavy and slightly too small on the page. I looked at changing the thickness of the font to make the body text slightly thinner so it wouldn’t look as heavy, however I couldn’t find one any smaller in the original typeface which was Bureau Grot. I wanted to stick to a sans serif font but find one slightly thinner so the body copy wouldn’t look as heavy.
After looking through a few sans serif fonts I noticed many of them are too round which I think makes them look too big on the page, so I aimed for a more compressed font, similar to Bureau Grot. I found Helvetica Neue has a compressed typeface in different thicknesses which I could use for the headings and subheadings as well as the body copy. It looks much thinner and less heavy on the page, I also increased the point size to 10 to make it more readable.
David also pointed out that the pace of the editorial was good but was a bit repetitive, so I wanted to change the middle spread to be slightly more experimental while still keeping the same theme. I still wanted to keep the same black and white theme, as well as the images because I think without those elements it would stray too far from the original design. The first and third spread both have a half black, half white layout so I wanted to experiment more with keeping the black and white shapes in the background but in different ways which aren’t so repetitive.
I looked at the idea of splitting the image into 2 and placing the text inside. I think it works well to slightly change the pace but keep the overall essence of the other 2 spreads. However I think splitting the image into 2 means it’s much less effective for the feeling I wanted the image to convey, I think keeping the image in one makes it much more effective and keeps the idea of being ‘sucked in’ or falling, which was the original idea.
I liked the previous idea of having more of a split screen so wanted to experiment further with splitting the colour of the image in half to make it slightly more experimental. Initially I split the page straight down the middle with black and white but think this is still too similar to what it was previously.
I split it diagonally and think it’s much more effective and looks much more experimental. I think it still has the same overall feel as I was looking for previously, however the page being split diagonally just slightly changes the pace a little and stops it becoming too repetitive.
Finally, although I was relatively happy with the previous spread, I thought the page looked unbalanced with the image in the middle. I wanted the page to be more balanced on either side of the image so moved it over slightly to achieve this.
Overall I kept the majority of the 3 spreads the same, just slightly changing the layout of the second spread. I think it works well to improve the pace and stop the spreads looking too similar. It breaks up the spreads and gives the viewer something different and more experimental to look at in the second spread.
Ben Jackson 