Liv Siddall afternoon workshop

This afternoon we were set the task of creating a front and back cover and inside spread for an issue of rough trade magazine. We were asked to work using analogue techniques such as collage. After the completion of the designs Liv cast an eye over them all and commented on certain positive outcomes. We were also asked to consider the grid structure of our pages from the 8 examples given during the full briefing.

I produced this outcome:

Using a consistent and harmonious colour pallet was especially important to me after last weeks studies into colour theory. However it could be argued that Rough Trade magazine often deliberately contrasts colour for it bold, energetic aesthetic but I didn't want to make a pastiche. The main teal-y green does in a sense contrast the far warmer yellows and orange but in a very concise manner. Visual planes within the layout was always something that was on my mind with the front page following a fairly experimental diagonal plane that was inspired by the work of Josef Müller-Brockmann. In contrast the middle spread uses a far more conventional Van de Graaf, vertically orientated grid. This is in accordance with the need to display information. The information itself is laid out imaginatively on the left page with text and image borrowing and lending with each other as the women head is made up of text. Although not actually fully formatted and very rough I do think this application was appropriate and too inspiration from the layouts of Rough Trade. The back page is minimal and clean and could definitely be developed further. One oversight however is the miss-inclusion of the 'Rough Trade' tittle on the front, which had been intended to be hand drawn however time didn't allow. Liv picked it out as being effective due to the humorous nature of the front page with the tittle 'where have you bean' - fun, energy and humous were key points to get across due to there relevance in Rough Trade so I was really happy to receive some appraisal. 

Liv also commented on a number of other covers pictured bellow with some of my personal favourites:

I feel the main thing I could learn from these to further my own work is to experiment with a greater range of media. The way in which some images have been monotoned, presumably via a single colour photocopy is very effective. Also I think further collaging, layering and abstracting would an interesting development for mine as its very clean in its approach whereas others that are effective ( especially the bottom one) use less of a defined structure and are in some ways more visually interesting.