Production Day - Trashion Launch Promotional Material

In today's production day, we were given the following brief:

By the end of this week you should have developed a range of marketing collateral to support the launch of your magazine.

The overall tone of the work should relate to your magazine design, and clearly repurpose that house style: this launch campaign is the first impression that the public will have of Trashion so you need to both capture their attention and establish the brand.

These are the designs I came up with:

Billboard Mock-up

Poster Mock-up

Bag Mock-up

Woman's T-Shirt Mock-up

These are the mock-up's that I have designed for the promotional material of 'Trashion'. I decided to keep all of the designs the same as I felt this made it consistent and would make the brand and event easily recognisable. 

I did some research into some ideas for posters/billboards and I found this style of having the text cut out of a bold over-layed box and decided to copy the style using my branding colour of yellow and the original picture that I used for the front cover of my magazine, to ensure that the brand is easily recognisable. 

Production Day - Trashion Online Presence

In this week's Production Day, we were given the task of developing "mock-up" concept designs of our fashion magazine, Trashion.

We had to do:

1. Web pages: home page and indicative article pages (you may want to develop more than one mock up for internal pages - think about how the different article types might need different layouts)
2. iPad and iPhone mock ups

This is my first design of my Trashion website. I decided to base mine off of Vogue's website as I felt that this would ensure that I had a good stereotypical layout for a fashion website. This is why my layout is very plain and simple with not a lot of colour in it (mainly black and white). 

The layout of my links and stories is again copied from Vogue's design as after doing research into different fashion magazine's online profiles, I felt that this was the most eye catching layout.

I then decided to change this slightly as I wanted to incorporate the main colour palette of Trashion (yellow, CMYK (C= 0, M= 0, Y=100, K= 0)). I originally put a black box behind the title but felt that this was too dark and too large a contrast from the white of the rest of my page, so decided to go for a dark grey. 

This is the article layout for my website. Once again I have copied the layout from Vogue as I felt that it is an effective design and is interesting to look at. 

This is the phone app version of my magazine. I decided to set it up slightly differently from Vogue's app version as I wanted to have the stories still laid out how they were on the website but with links to click onto them so that you could read them (hence the outlines square around the stories).

Here is how the layout would look when reading the article.

I then did the iPad version of my website, incorporating the same layout as the phone version, however using the space more effectively by shifting the positioning of the links so that they didn't look boring and ineffective in a simple straight line. I felt that this made the page look fuller and more intriguing to look at.

Finally (as a little extra to our task) I decided to show what the article layout would look like on an Apple Watch, again transferring the phone layout but fitting it suitably to a smaller screen.

Production Day - Trashion Magazine

In this week's Production Day, we were given as folder of material and given the task of making a magazine called 'Trashion'.

We were given the following background information:

"Trashion is a fashion and culture magazine aimed at an alternative scene.

At Tashion we love creativity, quirky and handmade crafts, thrift finds, customised clothes and vintage fashion.

The 'make do and mend' culture is booming and becoming cool. Trashion embraces this new wave of stylish cool.

Our target audience is mostly female, with a core audience from 18-30. Trashion also appeals to more mature teenage girls. Our readers are university students or graduates, with a keen fashion eye, and an interest in arts and culture. They are likely to spend a lot of the disposable income on clothes and accessories as well as gigs and club nights."

We were then told to decide on a house style for the magazine. Mine is as follows:

1. Masthead: Bell MT font, size 82pt, Regular, coloured Yellow. Tracking - 230 (thousandths of an em), Vertical Scale - 225%.
2. Typography: To fit the page (range from 11-12.5 depending on appropriateness)
3. Colour Palette: Yellow, Black and White
4. Style guide for Pull Quotes: Minion Pro, semi-bold italics, 15pt, coloured Red.
5. Page Template: Grid - 3 columns
6. Titles of each article: Bell MT, 55pt, coloured Black.

My Front Cover

For my front cover I decided to use the house style for my Masthead (as explained above). I then used Helvetica, 12pt, coloured White, Bold for my date and selling line above my Masthead. I then used Helvetica for most of the cover, ranging front 25pt to 35pt. I made the colours of the stories white and black, depending on the background colour where they're placed. I used Baskerville for the 'revolution' story to make it stand out and used Bell MT for my 'Guide to' story as part of the branding of the magazine. 

I chose to make the Masthead yellow as I felt that this made it stand out and was also a nice contrast to the colours already being shown through her clothing (blue, red, white, black). I then decided to increase the tracking and the vertical scale in order to make the title spread across the page and be large enough to stand out above the picture. I also allowed the title to run outside the margin as a style choice as I feel it sits better on the page this way and allows it to spread across its entirety.

I followed inspiration from 'Vogue' and 'Fashion' magazines as they both follow the same format for their front page. I followed the same layout of story placement and style of both of these magazines when producing my one as I felt that it made it look more professional and followed the stereotypical layout of a fashion magazine. 

I incorporated yellow into my story headlines where I felt that the branding of the magazine was needed in order to make the story stand out or allow the reader to know that it was linked directly to the magazine's writers. 

Advertisement and Contents

I decided to include an advertisement next to my contents page as I have seen this as a stereotypical placement of one in a fashion magazine. I could not find an advertisement image on the internet with a higher dpi than 72 so I created my own (hence why it looks very amateur). I decided to brand it as Topshop and tried to use as similar font as possible to make it look realistic. I also increased the tracking, again, to allow it to spread across the page. 

I then moved onto my contents page which was influenced style-wise by Elle fashion magazine contents page. I decided to add an image out of the ones we were given to give it my own twist. I ensured that every image I put in my magazine was changed to CMYK in Photoshop and was above 240dpi (as Aaron told me this would be ok). 

I coloured the different headings in Red as I felt this would make them stand out and then put the stories in black. Again, I used Helvetica font in order to have good continuity. I put the stories in Baskerville in order to make them look different to the headings and made the product/main name of the story bold and brief description regular so that you could distinguish the difference between the two.

Article 1

I put the title of my first article in capital letters as it is an arts and crafts section, so it encourages the reader to participate. I also used the house style for the title. 

I used Helvetica font for my main type, 11pt and black in order to make the story look like a standard layout. I then used Minion Pro for outlining one section of it which we were instructed to box off and increased the size to 12pt and coloured it yellow. I did this as it was explaining something that the magazine had done so hence I put it in the branding colour of the magazine. 

I arranged the pictures according to the step-by-step guide in the text and enlarged the end product so that it would catch the reader's eye straight from the off, making them aware of what they are going to make and therefore allowing them to decide whether they want to or not.

Article 2

For the second article we were given, I decided not to put it in full capital's as I didn't feel that it needed to stand out as much as the previous one did. I used a different picture that I found off the internet as my main picture for the article as the one we were given was only able to go to the size seen above (the photo featured within the text) which allowed it to have reasonable dpi for printing. Noticing this was commended and I was advised to find another picture to use as my main one as the other one was too small to be used as the only picture. 

I decided to use pull quotes in my article as it made the spacing and layout look more filling and also makes the article look less boring to look at. 

Article 3

We were given loads of photos to accompany this article, however I only used the ones that I felt fit the text the most and made the article look interesting to read. I decided to put the profile photo of the woman who the article is about directly next to the title as there was room to and I felt it made the article more interesting so that they don't all have the same 'standard' layout. 

I again decided to use pull quotes and insert pictures within the text as I feel it breaks it upon more for the reader and make it more enjoyable to read.

Article 4

For the last article, because of it being 'The Trashion Guide To...' I decided to us the branding colour and font for beginning of the title and then reverted back to the house style for the rest of it. I feel this make it look more appealing and allows the reader to understand that it is the magazine's personal opinions within the article. 

I decided to make the picture of the store I was given the main picture under the heading as it links to the heading and drawers the reader in to see what is to follow. I also made the design of the woman shopping in London a large feature as it makes it clear that the article is talking about British shopping now American (as most fashion brands and magazines are American).

Back Page Advertisement

I decided to make the back page an advertisement page as this is the stereotypical layout of a magazine. Again, due to not being able to retrieve an advertisement picture that had a suitable dpi, I made my own using one of the pictures we had been given.

Overall I am very pleased with my magazine, especially my front cover and wouldn't hesitate to submit my work.