MAGAZINE LAYOUT

School Project
2024

Software:
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop

On Publication Layout Design course we were tasked with designing a layout for an article on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters founded in 1948.

Known for their great attention to detail, I wanted to emphasize the paintings by using a lot of negative space and transparent typography. Thus my design aimed for a sophisticated and delicate aesthetic, resembling an art catalog.

Named ‘Ylistämällä alistetut — Viktorian ajan maalaustaidetta Tennispalatsissa’ (eng. ‘Subjugated by praising — Victorian Era Art at Tennispalatsi’), the article discusses how women in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings are often depicted as embodiments of ideal and ethereal beauty, and how historical motifs allowed what was otherwise considered taboo, such as eroticism and sensualism. We could freely choose from a provided selection of paintings for our layout and I chose to feature artwork that highlighted eroticism and symbolism, as these aspects of the article intrigued me the most.

I was especially drawn to ‘Midsummer’ (1887) by Albert Joseph Moore and decided to feature it in the opening spread. Though I initially thought of cropping and enlarging the characters with just the headline, I decided to keep the negative space around the masked image as I preferred the surrounding space instead. I was particularly taken with the painting’s color scheme and chose to feature the gold from the fans in elements such as the headline, drop cap, pull quotes and numbering.

Using grids in my work as usual, the layout and text block composition of the article came together quite effortlessly which allowed me to devote most of my time to concentrate on typography. Due to the refined and delicate nature of the paintings, I chose to ignore my personal affection for sans serif typefaces in order to reflect the paintings' elegance and the period in which they were created.

For the article’s headline, I wanted to use a very ornate and stylish display typeface and set on Roslindale Display Condensed Medium designed by David Jonathan Ross. Additionally, I wanted to experiment with a slab serif typeface — likely for the first time in my work — and ended up choosing contemporary slab serif Lexia (designed by Ron Carpenter) for subheadings, lead paragraph, pull quotes and footers. For body text and captions I used Bressay designed by Dalton Maag. As using two typefaces for contrast is a common design practice, three might seem unnecessary but personally I found the typefaces shared complementary characteristics which made them work well together.

Although I'm not usually fond of drop caps, I decided to include one in the first spread of the article; with the prominent, masked Albert Joseph Moore painting I felt like the text block needed some balance and visual weight — I tried a drop cap and ended up liking the result.

Sticking to my usual preference for left-justified text in columns, I carefully adjusted the justification of word and letter spacing to remove any distracting irregularities that might compromise the visual appeal and legibility of the text. For improved typographic hierarchy, I italicized the captions towards the end to further separate them from the body text due to the close placement of text blocks in the design.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on the assignment and I feel that I reached the art catalogue tone I aimed for through both dynamic composition and precise typography adjustments that reflect the highly detailed nature of the featured art. Having had a clear vision from the start and settled on typefaces early on, the design didn’t go through various significant changes which allowed me to spend more time refining everything. In retrospect I would adjust the leading of the lead paragraph just a little bit tighter, but I’m very proud of how I managed to adjust the word and letter spacings even in the more narrow columns.