TYPE AND GRID - revisited

The Times Magazine

Previously, I had created 18 thumbnail designs for an existing article on gardening. As I had left the original magazine behind during the holidays, I didn't want to redesign without having the images. 

I therefore decided to revisit the task, which will not only allow me to redesign a layout but I will also be able to get a much better understanding of the process by repeating particular steps. 

I took an article from the Sunday Times in order to do this.

The article was on Eileen Ford, the creator of the 'supermodel'. The article was a bit boring, if anything, to look at. I actually really liked the opening page, it was what came after that wasn't anything special. The layout was kind of annoying, and nothing really matched up to each other. The subheadings didn't fit in with the size of the images, and it also didn't match the aesthetics of the first page. 

The desaturated images used, however, were brilliant, and gave a sense of what Eileen Ford was all about. It was just the way they were placed that wasn't anything special. 

Redesigning the double page spread

When it came to looking at mixing up the layout of this spread, I liked the idea of focusing quite a bit on the main image of Eileen herself. Unfortunately, the text of the article, goes right over the top of her head, so I had to take this in to account when re-designing the layout. I therefore though about getting rid of the background altogether, and simply focusing on Eileen Ford herself, by using the lasso tool to cut around her body (this would also allow me to chop the top of the head off where the text is visible). 

Separating the images and desaturating them

Allow the two images on the second page were already desaturated, they had a sort of weird sepia tone to them, so all images were changed to black and white. The images were made ready for InDesign in photoshop, where they had to be made into the appropriate size before being placed onto the new document as you cannot resize whilst in InDesign. 

Setting up an InDesign document

I used a red pen to mark the grid onto the magazine, which was a simple 3 column grid throughout, with a gutter and bleed. This layout could be seen throughout The Sunday Times magazine.

- number of pages = 2

- page size = A4

- number of columns = 3

- gutter = 4.233mm

- bleed = 3mm

Creating new layouts from my redesigns

Instead of just producing one, I looked at creating a number of different layouts to see which was going to work best. In some cases, I had to make a few changes from the drawings, just because of size issues and so on.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

I feel that layouts 1 and 2 have worked best. Whilst 1 displays a lot of the information within the article, layout 2 is something a bit different, and is fitting to the whole quirkiness of the article itself. As Eileen Ford is the creator of the supermodel, the layout needed to be quite sophisticated and clean cut.
I used Georgia as my typeface, as I wanted it classic and in-keeping with the magazine design. The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, FT and The Independent all use Georgia as their main headline font, and most use it throughout also. Although it could be suggested that it is overused, it rules this type of environment, and it is effective. 


An interesting article on Georgia's domination of web design can be found here.


(final prints on disk)