Magazine Flat Lay plan

My finale part of experimentation comes in the form of flat lay consideration, this means not only the basics such as how many pages my magazine will have and the contents of each of them but the style my pages will take hold such as image overlap with text and what I will add to my double page image spreads which ensures a water mark of my magazine. To begin I created a basic flat lay plan in my sketch book, this plans the amount of pages I will have and a basic outline of the content I will include, as I must take my magazine going to print into consideration I wanted to ensure that the amount of magazine pages I included were a multiple of four, due to this I decided on page number 16 as it is divisible by four. Once i decided this i then set out to look for inspiration for my layout, i did this briefly during my secondary research blog post however i wanted to go in more depth, looking at why i liked what i did and how i could incorporate this into my own.

I began by looking at front covers, after looking at influence from magazines such as Paper, i really liked the boarder effect used where by the front cover image is much smaller however the title also is incorporated, its difficult to explain but in the most simple of terms it means that the title and the cover image of the magazine are separate yet still tie in well enough. I think this really effective as it gives the minimalist approach i am attempting to take on yet still delivers on quality.

Next i began to look at contents layout for my magazine, when looking i found myself more drawn to layouts that had overlapping images and text, i thought this gave a scrapbook feel the the information presented. I really liked how the text balanced well with what the image how to offer by the design of the text begin inside a text box, separating the image but still combing the two. The same could be said for double page spreads where by two images are incorporated into one whole spread, i thought this was a really effective use of page management, as i am aiming to to a 16 page magazine i must also be restricted with the amount of space used.

 After looking at the types of layout i like i then began to look at the graphic design side of magazine layouts where by magazines had dedicated one page to large sections of text to introduce the article, i found this really effective also, i liked how it is a new interpretation of the a form of 'read bait' where by the reader is caught in not by misleading titles but title pages that introduce the article with large fonts. This is something i would really like to introduce into my own magazine as i believe this will fit well with the acetic i am attempting to re create.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                         








                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Once finding styles of layout think were to my preference for my magazine i could then begin to think about my magazine page layout such as where would my content go, where could my double page image spreads be etc. I wanted to ensure i at at least two articles for my magazine and one smaller writing page such a decided to dedicate to a poem, one top of this i wanted to incorporate a few image pages created around quotes i liked as after doing my research in a magazine shop i found this do be a great way to fill pages without using typical fillers such as advertisements, i want my magazine to have quality to it. After adding up these considerations, i still believe that 16 pages will be enough however i wanted to create a mock up to of my magazine to ensure so, after my research i have also fallen in love with the idea of a collage style page dedicated to some of excess images i will take from my photoshoot.  My first draw up of a flat lay plan i did not like as i thought it was too image based, not only this but i feel like i have not planned enough for if my articles are larger than two pages, therefore i created a second flat lay plan which i believed fitted my scheme better as it does plan for if an article is too large but also i believe there is a good balance between image based pages and none.

By doing my research into flat lays and also lay out of magazines in general i now have a clear idea of what i need to get done for my magazine for example; how many images to take and roughly how long my articles need to be. Once taking my magazine i will create another mock up my magazine to truly have an understanding of how much writing space i will have. Once writing my articles i will can then translate my work into InDesign before i can send my magazine to print.