November 2013 Xara Xone Tute: Page Design Part One

I think that style and on-page density is impacted by the publishing destination and its readership. At least for the first go-'rounds with a client.

Conde Nast in their Travel and Epicurious magazines, which I can envision bottles of gleeful stuff hanging out in, claim a 50-50 male/female subscription ratio. This is doubtful to me. But even taking their numbers at face value, a good design should fit both the publication type and the readership demographics.

The product photo we are given to use is a rather glam shot. How does the reader demographics and intended publication dictate the design concept given the product image?

If I had a client who wanted a heavy ad page going into either of these publications, I might do some arguing, er persuasion. In the end it's their call and whether I tilted my initial design towards sparse/heavy, they write the check. I have done ads and other design work where I was less happy with the result than I would have been going a different

I like the salt and tequila bit...

I think Conde Nast publications seem geared toward women, but I think men, too, can appreciate sheer beauty for its own sake, and there might be a lot of guys who read and look at Conde Nast pubs but won't tell their buds at the pool hall.

I deliberate gave up a glam shot for this exercise. I think those of us who do this for a living would find a beauty image a nice break from snow tires and cottage industry chachke.

And yes, what one would do to fit this image into a pub absolutely dictates the layout and use of fonts. But I thought I'd give the process a rest for the sake of pure(er) Creativity here.

:)

-g

Hey, next year I think "Typography" will be a necessary chapter in the Page Layout series.

I found this list online and tried just a little to get creative typographically with it.

Anyone want to take a crack at doing it better? With fonts? With negative space? With geometry?

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My Best,

Gary

An attempt to improve the Love Rules Image but I don't think I succeeded, I think I made it look "trashy" :o

Stygg

Trashy? Not at ALL, stygg.

I believe you gave the sentiments justice with your artistic treatment and it was very pleasing to see and read.

Happy New Year 'coss the pond, stygg!

My Best,

Gary

I like the use of that font "Russel Write" and "Bouton Cursive"! :) It's very weird to see your own handwriting executed by someone else!

Burning off some nervous energy awaiting the birth of a grandson...

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Nice one Mike, that would look nice in a anniversary card. Happy New Year to you Mike and your awaited grandchild :)

Stygg

Cheers Gary, hope you didn't mind the slight alteration to your Cursive text. :D Got the idea of the Russel Write text after downloading all the Font Education PDF's from their site and read the lot. Lot of good stuff in them, which I hope to absolve so looking forward to when you do some tuts. on typography, it's a great subject. Happy New Year to you and Barbara.

Stygg

@stygg—

It's all good, I'm proud that a talented individual (you, IOW!) sought one of my fonts to complete a challenge, and Happy 2014!

@Mike— Congratulations to you and your son and the family, I like what you did but it looks a little "dense" to me at a first glance, I've seen much better typography work you've done, and I'd love to see a second go when you're not so busy/preoccupied (because you do Great Things), and Happy 2014!

Go here!


-g

Hah...less dense than the challenge piece ;)

But yup. I forced connections between the lines of statements to connect descenders/ascenders. Here it is with the line spacing a little more opened, background knocked back a bit. And a second quickie for your enjoyment.

Mikey
(no birth yet...)

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