Author Topic: Layout Concept  (Read 273 times)

Cramulus

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Layout Concept
« on: May 29, 2013, 12:36:38 PM »
I found some public domain magazine layout files and spent a little bit making a short mockup, mainly as a proof of concept:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/144394990/Intermittens-1-29-layout-concept?secret_password=v5ooyboitonkpl0m3ss

thoughts:

-The drawback of this layout is that almost none of the submissions perfectly fit the article space. It reminds me of why real magazine editors require articles to be a certain length - 200 words, 500 words, 1000, 2000 words. It's taking a lot of coaxing to get the material to fit. Obviously the template can be screwed with, but the more of the original layout we can use, the less work this will be.

-This underscores the need to pick out which content is IN vs which content gets CUT. If people could please please nominate their favorite stuff, it would make these decisions much much easier. Dingo, I know you said "I don't want to be an editor" but you gotta get your hands dirty! Don't make me do this alone!

-The majority of the submissions are fractalcult related, which almost makes me want to make it a fractalcult themed issue. But I also don't want to be a spotlight hog, and there's a substantial amount of material NOT from fractalcult. Could use some advice about how to position this stuff. I always hate laying out a project that's supposed to be a collaborative group thing and then putting in 80% of my own content, you know?

-The current cover is a riff on the internet meme "I am 12 and what is this". I love trip's cover design, I just don't think it's a very good joke. It's not terribly Discordian and if you're actually familiar with the rather obscure meme, you'd realize we're not even using it correctly --- unless the magazine is filled with adult content.

-On the note of content - Magazine layout suggests magazine style articles. Most of our submissions aren't really magazine themed. I mean, magazine articles are usually things like tips, advice, journalism, stuff like that. Fiction doesn't look quite right in this format. A few of the submissions work perfectly - like bwansen's discordian chakras - because it reads like a wacky health article.  I can't help feeling that if we had a real theme, it could act like a writing prompt which we could use to solicit a few more submissions.



ElSJaako

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Re: Layout Concept
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2013, 10:00:45 AM »
Do we really need a theme? Don't most magazines just have stuff most of the time, and a theme sometimes? A themed intermittens is fine of course, but I think we shouldn't be scared to just put stuff together. If we want to do a themed Intermittens I think it would be better if someone has an inspiring theme and we start off from that.

I will go through the stuff and say what I really like. Especially your stuff, because I would be more at ease putting my own stuff in a magazine if someone told me I should.

The cover point is good. I really like the cover - the picture, the font, the colors - but the joke isn't necisarry and doesn't make sense. Besides, it will still work for intermittens 12 to 14, so maybe we can find a better fit.

I'll try to write a list of something fluffy, a list or something. Also, I think there are plenty of images already, but a lot of them are mostly stand alone. If you want images for specific pieces of text please tell us.
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ElSJaako

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Re: Layout Concept
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2013, 10:16:40 AM »
Oh, and I like the concept.

The only points I have are about my things: My image should have a transparant background, so you shouldn't need to have a grey box around it. If that's on purpose, that's fine of course.

And in my letter there should be a break between "Vatican City" and "The Netherlands", because now it looks like I'm claiming Vatican City for my country.
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Triple Zero

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Re: Layout Concept
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2013, 05:16:15 PM »
I agree with Cram and Sjaako about my cover. The colours came out really well (if I say so myself), in combo with the picture that is nice, the font works well, but the joke is pretty random and obscure.

You use the font, still, if you like. You can get it from here: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Pusab

Please note I used a trick that a lot of magazines use (the guy that used to do layout on my students club magazine taught me this), it works really well and I recommend that you use it for any page that combines bright text with a darker picture background: duplicate the text, put the copy in black behind the brighter colour, moved a few mm down and to the right (try to make this distance less than the thickness of your font strokes), this creates a sort of "shadow" effect, and it greatly enhances the contrast and ease of reading of text on a picture background.

In case of a bright picture with dark text, you can use the same technique but with a white "shadow". It's not quite as pretty, but it does still help the legibility a lot.

In case of the cover picture, I didn't actually use black, but instead the darkest colour I could find in the picture (that was a dark green, IIRC). Sometimes that looks better, other times it's better (or easier) to just use black for max contrast, see what works.

I really suggest you try out this technique with the page about the "Monkey Experiment", it's readable fine right now as it is, but with a black shadow, you get more contrast and the text will have a nice "pop" and clarity, especially in paper print.



on IRC, I gave some feedback on the general layout:

<triplezero> hey, ok I've quickly browsed through the rest of the pages of the intermittens layout, and they are generally really pretty and cool, there's just one thing, I think that a lot of the columns are really too thin. you should be able to have 5 or 6 words on a line, on average, but a lot time you only fit 3 or 4 words

on the pages with 4 columns this would be easy to fix, just use three. but on the pages with 3 columns, I dunno, it seems like you can't always make the font smaller (if you do, best keep the line-spacing/height the same for some breathing room). and definitely do not make the margins smaller because IMO they are also already tight as they are.

probably best to just look at a real glossy magazine and see how they fit their 3 column layouts (I don't know actually, and I don't have one nearby to check)

but I really like that this template comes with all those cool grid lines and blocks and stuff, that makes it interesting and professional looking

<Cram> yeah the template is bad ass
<Cram> it's just frustrating because most of the copy space is for text blocks which are like 200 words long

<triplezero> can't you just only use the types of pages for which it does fit?

IMO it doesn't matter if you re-use a bunch of templates

in fact the few times I made a magazine, I only like had 3 or 4 different types of content pages (not counting the cover, editoral, and such) and re-used them all over the magazine--it doesn't matter because the titles are different and the images are different, and that's also why you can use big take-out quote things, to mix pages up a little.

IMO re-using page-templates is much better than trying to fit good articles into spaces they don't really fit

<Cram> Butts butts butts

<triplezero> You're absolutely right about that, Cram.

As a good example of what to aim for, I think the piece "I heart intangibles" is just about the minimum column width (measured in words or characters) you can go, that one is good, but any less (on other pages this happens) it gets a bit problematic. And personally, I'd decrease the margin on the left side of the page a little bit, to be able to put a bit more space between the two columns



In general, unless this is a lot of trouble, you could solve a lot of the column problems, by decreasing the left/right margins on the page, to make the columns wider, as well as increase the space between them a tiny bit for breathing room.

Also, best to just not use the 4 column templates at all. It's not immediately obvious to me how to make them work without making more than a few tiny tweaks. Just use the template pages that *really* fit the articles and make the articles work well, don't worry at all about re-using some of them for 10 or even 15 pages, if they work well. It's better than the alternative, making a nice article cramped in a space it doesn't really fit.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2013, 05:23:21 PM by Triple Zero »