Today's class really opened my eyes to a lot of new magazines that are out there. I guess that I just have my mind set on such popular magazines that sometimes I forget about other magazines that I have yet to be exposed to. I've always loved Texas Monthly's design because it's big and glossy, but today I came face to face with some magazines that I'd never heard up but have AWESOME design elements. Like Boston magazine for example. I was impressed with the broad design scope of a city and regional magazine. It also made me realize that although New York and LA are HUGE cities in the magazine world, there are plenty of other magazines around the country. (A good thing for a girl like me who doesn't have her heart set on these cities...)
I also realized how much I need to open my mind when I'm designing, and also how many elements there are for designing. Especially noting the illustrations - there are some beautiful pieces of art in the magazines that we looked at today and some awesome techniques that I'm definitely going to make myself learn. Thankfully enough, I'm grateful that we are literally able to find just about anything that we need on the Internet.
I agree with you that the judging opened my eyes to a variety of magazines I had never come across before. Like you, I am not strictly set on heading out to New York or LA after graduation, but I do want to end up at a magazine that appreciates and makes use of great design. The judging assured me that there are plenty of publications out there that are willing to take design risks and create beautiful magazines. Another thing I liked about the judging was how it made me sit down and critique a publication's design as a whole - not just features, not just table of contents. I was able to see how magazines employ design techniques to create a unified and cohesive feeling among all of their pages without being bland or predictable.
ReplyDeleteI feel like all three of us are on the same page. For me, I wanted to venture out to NYC or Los Angeles... EVENTUALLY. Until then, I was a little clueless that there were magazines other than the national, mainstream ones out there. The judging really opened my eyes as well to new magazines that appreciate design and could potentially hire one of us to design right off the bat.
ReplyDeleteI really hope we get to check out more "underground" magazines like these.