Labels

Monday, February 12, 2024

Contents Page Research and Development

This is my research and development for my contents page. 

Research
I researched multiple minimalistic travel magazines in Google and Pinterest to find their genre conventions and similarities in order to gain ideas for my own contents page as I plan to follow their genre conventions. These are the result of my research. 




After looking at a number of minimalistic travel content pages such as the ones above, here are the things that I noticed: 

1. Firstly, I noticed that majority of them stick to a column or row guide, usually 2 columns. This may be to contribute to the clean and organized look stereotyped by minimalist magazines, therefore I will conform to this as well. 

2. Like the front cover, there are also significant amount of white space, also conforming to the stereotypes of minimalist genre magazines. Majority of their background are all white and not any other colors whether it'd be neutral or not. I will conform to this as well. 

3. Similar to the front cover, I noticed that most of their typefaces are simple bolded fonts such as San Serif or Vidaloka as well that gives off a sharp strong look. There are no italics, outlines, and other typefaces present too to preserve the neat and clean look. 

4. All of them have images displayed along with the texts where they are usually related towards them to give the readers ideas on what the magazine will show them. 

5. Most of the time, the page number is in a bigger size than the titles of the contents to direct the readers clearly and faster to their desired content. Not only that, most of the travel magazines I've come across usually go up to 40-60 pages. 

Thumbnail Sketches
After that research, I will create thumbnail sketches as a foundation of my ideas in developing my contents page. Below are my thumbnail sketches.
This one was my original idea before researching any contents page of a magazine online and I think it turned out alright for me to develop further as when making it, I tried to still have a significant white space present and a few other genre conventions in as well. 

I took inspiration in the 3rd picture of my research as I thought that the image collage looked really nice and I can use the many pictures I took since my double-page spread images will be limited. I will most likely experiment a lot with this one. 

The idea in this 3rd sketch is to make it look like a YouTube post, however since it's only a sketch, I'm not sure if it'll turn out alright and match the minimalistic style I'm going for, therefore 

Development
After doing the thumbnail sketches, I will start developing 2 of my sketches digitally and choose one to experiment a lot and further develop it. I will then choose one as my final contents page. Here are the results. 

This thumbnail sketch is the one I will be experimenting a lot and further develop in. Here are the results:






This thumbnail sketch is the one I will be developing less. Here are the results. 






Here's a canva link as the image is unclear:
https://www.canva.com/design/DAF8pY5MDpg/xYe2zeztGaE29E4MPddnLQ/edit?utm_content=DAF8pY5MDpg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Self-Reflection
I ended up liking the result of the development of the 2nd sketch more than the first one that i experimented a lot in. However I was still contemplating my decision for the final contents page because both of them match the genre conventions and both have different attractive elements to their designs. The image that takes up half of the page that was developed from the 1st sketch has an "Icon Bali" text displayed that may be visually memorable for the readers while the image collage that was developed from the 2nd sketch may be more visually pleasing to see and the many landscapes displayed at the same time may continue to capture the reader's attention to read more of the magazine. Because of the contemplations, I had to put it in an actual flipbook website to see which one matches more with the front cover and the result of that is that the second one matches more from both the color and design as it balances together, therefore I will be using that one. 


I consulted with my teacher for feedbacks to improve my work before the deadline of this magazine and here are some changes I made for my final contents page. 



The changes I made:

1. Changed the page number of Where Bali is Truly Alive from page 28 to 19 because I wasn't careful and realized that the contents page did not match the double-page spread.

2. My teacher gave me feedback that even if I was going for a minimalistic look and wanted to have many white space, it didm't look balanced and looked empty instead, therefore I added 2 more sections on the bottom to fill up that white space.

3. I researched contents page of travel magazines online and found out that they put page numbers on the images as a mode to attract and direct the readers directly to read the page. Due to this affect, I decided to comform to the conventioms and added page numbers as a caption to the 4 images as well.

4. I added the word "Sanur" and "Kuta" as a headline towards number 18 and 19's subheading as it's the main topic of those double-page spread and I wanted to attract my target audience that way.

Self-reflection
I have to be more careful when checking as it turns out there are still silly mistakes I didn't catch on to in which I wasn't careful in arranging the contents such as the page numbers that doesn't match with my double page spread's page number and if it weren't for peer checking I would have left it that way. 

No comments:

Post a Comment