10.16.2010

Getting into page layout Constructivist Style!


Recently I got the October issue of Game Informer Magazine in the mail and I found an awesome article on Call of Duty: Black Ops in it. The funny thing is, I wasn't interested in it for the game or even for the content of the article I was interested in it purely for the page layout. I'm not sure whose idea it was to go for a constructivist look, but I have to give them major props for taking the risk and pushing the envelope.

So after I saw this article I decided I wanted to try and take a similar approach to page layout, with a magazine assignment I made up for myself to help me hone my long doc skills. First I had to come up with a subject. which I chose Gran Turismo 5, I chose this because when I think of driving games I think of the crazy twists and turns that are done at high speeds and this would make the tilt of the article make sense.

Now that I have a subject, it was time to search for content. First I googled Gran Turismo 5, and then I remembered that IGN.com has tons of articles and screen shots on Gran Turismo. So I went over to IGN.com and scooped up 3-4 articles and 10-20 images. After this it was time to do some sketches, I did about 15 sketches before I found a layout I liked, During this process I determined the best ways to deal with my biggest problems.


My biggest problem, I realized, was obviously Readability, the major problem that would cause unreadable type was going to be the tilt of the article, as well as the transition from page to page over the spine. So to solve the problem of readability I decide that I would only tilt the article 15 degrees up or down. As far as the transitions I decided to run only the images across the spine and let the type stay in the live area of the page.

After solving my biggest problems all I had to do is make it look good, so I decided that I wanted this article to look super clean and sleek. with this in mind I chose a simple color palette of gray, red, and blue. I chose the red and blue because these are the Gran Turismo colors and the gray was to spice up the negative space so it wouldn't look so plain.

I ended up doing a cover plus 3 spreads (6 pages). and I think it turned out pretty good.
To See it in its entirety download the PDF Here


1 comment: