Rationale
My magazine is called “the good boy”, a dog centric publication made for owners and dog lovers. This was created for my graphics class in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. The name is quirky, cute and catchy, and familiar to dog lovers, so it can draw a connection to the audience through a point of similar understanding. I wanted it to be a chic dog publication because I have only seen very tacky dog magazines that do not appeal to a younger age group. I often think of dog magazines in the same section as knitting, when I would want to see them stacked up beside any fashion, art or interest publication. My target demographic is mid-twenties to mid-thirties considering these are the people who could afford to own a dog and are looking for the cutest new addition to their Instagram feeds – considering these are also the age of most social media trendsetters and followers. The purpose of this magazine is to be more tasteful and appealing to a younger group, through both content and aesthetic design.
I chose to use sans serif fonts throughout my entire cover. I played around for a while with the idea of serif fonts, but sans serif came out much cleaner and bolder. I ultimately chose to use Montseratt throughout the entire cover. This font has a lot of variability in typefaces, so I could play around with the hierarchy of the words. This font also looked good both in capital letters and in lower case, creating an even ow between the title and content on the cover. For the feature article, I continued using the font Montseratt and varying the typeface, but also added in Rockwell to create a playful but clean serif font. I thought it was a nice contrast to the fluidity of the sans serif look and made a stark impact when it was used subtly for only a few things. Overall, I think the consistency of the font and variation of the typeface helped pull together the whole magazine to keep it interesting and engaging without looking sloppy.
On my cover, the text is pushed either left or right depending on what side of the dog it is on. I didn’t want to use a grid here because the dog is slightly off-center to make it less perfectionistic and more playful. For the opening spread, the text is mostly centered but pushed left in parts. On my jump spread, the first page is two columns of text because the bowl takes up where the third column would go. The second page breaks up into three columns to fill the space in a more appealing way for that side’s layout. Breaking up the columns like this was stylistically the best decision because it keeps the page simplistic and uncluttered.
Throughout the magazine, my margins are comfortably set so there is room for someone to hold the magazine and read it.
I chose not to overload my magazine with photos to keep the aesthetic clean and modern. The colors I chose for all the text were matched based on Adobe Color CC’s color wheel so that they were properly matched to each image. My cover dog is an adorable but simple puppy on a neutral colored background. I chose complimentary colors to the background to make sure the text stood out the right amount, but was not obstructing from the picture as a whole. On the opening spread, I have a golden retriever in a chef’s hat on the background of puppy-related doodles. I set it all on a slightly gradient lavender background. This purple was best used to match the golden retriever’s fur. Rather than repeating the colors on the cover, I chose to make them more specified to the dog on this particular page. The doodles add a playful aspect to the magazine and break from the classic ideas of rigid modernisms. Some things can be modern and playful at the same time. On the jump spread, I used half a picture of a bowl of kibble. I chose to use this rather than newly cooked kibble because it is a more identifiable photo. The point of it being half o the page is to show it is being kicked to the side by this new recipe. If this was a full magazine, the next page would have spreads of the new food, but because it is just for this article, I thought this image was the most visually pleasing.
