Tag Archives: Magazine Design

I realised that I’ve blogged about the development but never the actual final magazine, so here goes:

Divide is a magazine produced by 6 Graphic Design students from the University of Lincoln: Emma Dawson, Amber Hadley, Tom Matthews, Sunjay Morar, Natasha Nuttall (me) and Lucy Perkins.

Divide is a magazine about all areas of modern life – Social culture, the environment, men & women’s fashion, technology, politics and music, with each area having it’s own section.

Divide magazine has a simple manifesto – ‘Divide is your opinion against mine.’
Through the content chosen and the design style, Divide is a magazine that is there to challenge opinions by contrast and exploration. Divide doesn’t tell you what to think; Divide provides you with the information so that you can form your own opinions.

So first things first, the logo:

The logo represents our message and design style: simple, open and bold. Divide magazine gives the reader space to think.

Here’s an overview, showing 1 of everyone’s spreads:

Each team member designed their own cover, and mine is themed around my article section (social networking and communication):

The first spread in Divide is our manifesto page:

…with the contents page following…

… and then it’s into the articles. Every section has it’s own block colour title page:

Social culture is my section! I chose to focus on social media, with an introduction to generation procrastination about how social networking is affecting our lives.

For the main bulk of my section, I featured the diary entries of Tom Bishop, a Graphic Design student who undertook a social detox for 7 days, with imagery which fitted with the diary brilliantly from local photographer, Phil Hearing.

Whilst creating my spreads I was quite conscious that I had a lot of text and that it needed to be balanced with white space and images. I tried to make sure that different entries from different days had their own page or spread so that it was clear when one day ended and another began.

For some pages I decided to split an image over 2 pages. This was to intrigue the reader and make them want to turn over to see the rest of the image. It was also a good way to continue an entry from one page to another. If it was quite a long entry, I didn’t want to have just a page full of text – it would have been very daunting!

I used a mixture of black and white and orange tinted imagery to keep them consistent and show that they were part of the same article.

We each created an A5 size tip in for our own sections. For mine I showed what happens when you try to delete your facebook profile – you’re basically guilt tripped:

Front: Oh no! Facebook is obviously the only way that people can communicate nowadays so you will lose all of your friends if you delete it…

Centre: Josh will miss me. Amber will miss me. Sam will miss me. Alex will miss me. Chris will miss me. Oh no, I can’t delete facebook and upset all of these people can I?

Back: But actually, if you deleted your facebook, you’d probably keep in touch with your REAL friends rather than the 100 odd people that you added because they’re a friend of a friend and you met them once for 5 minutes!

So now you’ve seen my spreads, but how do they fit in with the rest of the team’s work? Here’s a quick general overview:

Overall, I think our style was executed pretty consistently and still allowed space for individuals to add their own twist on their articles.

And to finish, the credits page.

We’re in Sleaford right now after a meeting at the Printers to discuss the details, so we’ll have copies to flick through soon – exciting!