Exercise:Hierarchy (Graphic Design 1, pg. 99)
Design three different pages:
- An interview with a TV actor in a listings magazine entitled: Will Sheila tell the naked truth?
- A review of a new piece of hardware or software in a specialist computer magazine
- A book review in a newspaper’s weekend edition
Research these types of publication and identify three different combinations of typefaces appropriate for each magazine. Set these combinations so that your header is above 12pt in size, your body text is 12pt or below and subheadings sit in between in your hierarchy.
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- Hierarchy sketches 1
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- Hierarchy sketches 2
Naked Truth
Looking at the listing magazines there is a reasonable variation in format. Most of them seem to include blocks of colour and images. Some are based on a very standard grid with up to three columns. I decided to go for two columns with san-serif body type, (Lato, 12pt). I added a large header (Futura PT 36pt) in bold within a colour block to grab attention. The sub headers are Lato Bold in 18pt and I added a callout box in 24pt. I find the listings magazines quite busy in format so I wanted typefaces that would be reasonably clear amongst the other elements. I also adjusted the leading and tracking to try and even out the ragged end a little. Justified text using the three columns seemed to have too many rivers making it harder to read. Overall, I think it was reasonably successful in replicating the format of listings magazines, but I’m not sure it is a very creative interpretation.
Technology
Technology magazines vary in their typeface use from very contemporary to quite traditional, but many seem to favour serif with justified paragraphs so I decided to use Museo Slab with Minion Pro. The main heading is 60pt (Museo Slab), the call out boxes are 18pt with body text at 12pt. I wanted to wrap the text around the mobile phone image rather than keep it in columns and this took me a while to sort out. After some persistence I finally made it work and decided to tilt the image so it carried across all three columns.
I ran the header into one word because it is still readable as a sentence but I liked the way it lined up on the page. It makes a clear statement about the content of the article. I didn’t use subheadings because they would break the flow but added highlight boxes with larger point size for emphasis instead. I was quite pleased with this layout because I think it fits in its genre and is clear and readable. It also forced me to keep improving my InDesign skills.
Book Review
Having looked at the format of some different newspaper book reviews it seemed to me they all had a fairly clean grid layout. Most included an image but these were relatively small. They were either all san-serif or a mix of serif and san-serif. I decided to set myself a challenge and use three typefaces for this layout – heading in Corbel (60pt), subheading in Roboto Bold (20pt) and body in Merriweather regular (12pt).
After trying both formats I decided to go without hyphenation even though it makes the right edge more ragged. The format is very plain but I think it does what is expected of a book review. My sense is that the focus has to be on the review and that the design should not get in the way.
Of all the exercises and projects in this unit this is the one I probably found the most difficult, and not necessarily because of the design requirements. It was more about the frustration of feeling I didn’t have the level of skills I needed. I am sure there are improvements I could have made but it seems there are so many variables to change in terms of point size, paragraph layout, weight, leading, kerning and so on. I found the more I fiddled the worse it got. So in some ways it feels like each design is a compromise where I have achieved the best I can given my current level of expertise. I hope that each is at least recognisable as an appropriate format for its genre.
