Article design is something I have never even considered, it seems easy but once I began I realised that the way you layout a page is just as important as what the text and images mean.

Analysis of Article

For the page layout we had to analyse I went with a the Q magazine contents page. I went with this as it seemed like bad design to me personally, It isn’t clean, minimal and somewhat contradicts my current understanding of page design. It goes against the idea of white space and aims to get as much information in as possible. Littered with images and text but when you begin to look into it further it’s obvious that it follows a fairly obvious structure. It has a large header for a Page title with the Q logo aligned to the top left. It has a three-column layout with a small 3mm(ish) spacing. They use font and text very well. There is a uniform font and size for the main contents list, but they use different sizing of the page numbers along with larger images to divert your attention to the main articles. This draws your attention and makes you want to turn to that page despite there is only an image and page number and no other information about the article.

Design

I read all the articles before I even began thinking about the layout or design. The one that Interested me the most was the one about The Donald – Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America.
Before I began my own design I done some basic research into other political articles. I managed to get copies of The Spectator and Private eye. Out of these what stood out to me the most was use of symbolism in their images and felt that I would go down this route.
To begin my design I set out a rough idea of the margins I would change then as I needed to. I wanted a clean look with bold images. So, I set up my margins with plenty of space for the title and set up three columns. First, I put the text in just to give a rough Idea. I then went to Illustrator to start making images, I first made a lamp post vector styled from the old gas light street lamps. I then made an version of the evolution of man using the republican party logo implying that it was going in reverse this was an attempt to create symbolism. I had various versions of each of these images. I created one of the gaslight ones with ‘light’ radiating out of it in the colours of the American flag. I Decided to use this one in the final result, this was one of many versions. I had what I felt was a good start. I then sat for 3+ hours playing around with text, and images completely rearrange everything. Creating new logos, adding watermarks as I felt that there was something missing. I then deleted all of the 3+ hours work bar a few alignment changes and changed the title until I felt it was right.

I was annoyed that a lot of work was wasted but know that I was convincing myself that what I had was bad and that without doing that I wouldn’t have felt sure in my work. My design I meant to be clean and basic, a strong bold title designed to hammer in the message with the image acting as a symbol of what the article means.