OUGD504 - SB1 - A-Z: Type in Context - Layout Ideas & Implemetation

Before jumping into InDesign I looked at some existing spreads in various magazines and journals. These helped to inspire some layouts for my own publication. The rough sketches made can be seen below. Due to the target audience chosen earlier in the project, it was decided that the photographs need to be more prominent than the text, so that people who are not interested in design can flick through the book and get a gist of the culture/environment. For this reason, the layout sketches made tried to put a focus on large scale images and minimal text.

Before agreeing on the layouts that would be used, consistency needed to be ensured across the entire publication. For this to successfully happen, a custom grid was made in InDesign. At first, a simple 6:18 grid was made. This particular size was chosen because 2:3 proportions are good proportions for books (Tschichold). Whilst this allowed the two paragraphs of text to have fairly optimum character lengths - on average 50 characters - the gap between the paragraphs of text and image above felt too wide. Furthermore, the gap between the two paragraphs of text was too tight when the boxes were aligned with the grid. These two conflicting gap sizes were aesthetically ineffective.

For this reason, a much more complex grid was used. Whilst it may look overcomplicated, the closer intervals between columns and vertical grid lines allowed a better template to positions text and images in. This grid size also allowed a consistent gap size between images and paragraphs too (identified by the green area).

With the custom grid being applied to all pages in the document, the sketched layout ideas were quick and easy to create. After experimenting with all the layout ideas made, the 6 layouts, seen below, were chosen for use in the final publication. There was various reasons for this; firstly, having 6 various layouts rather than just one allows much more variety throughout the publication, which aims to keep reader more engaged and interested in the content. All the layouts are consistent - the type and images all conform to the grid. Paragraphs all have an optimum character line length, which is crucial for easy readability, and a combination of vertical/horizontal image frames have been used to suit the variety of photographs taken.

The 2 layouts to the right are for environmental/full-scale images of the journey only. These are dividers that will break up the publication, so that the editorial layouts do not get overly repetitive.





The main challenge after choosing these layouts was how to order the pages in a way that works aesthetically and in term so of the content. As the trip was very sporadic in terms of places visited, a contents page seemed inappropriate. The majority of signage analysed was in the city centre, as there wasn't as much interesting signage to analyse in more rural areas. Because of this, it was too difficult to divide the publication into sections. Instead, a more random page order was used to tie in the nature of the journey itself.

Rather than a contents page, I wrote a short summary that highlights what the publication is about, including the places visited and what the content is about. Both target audiences were considered carefully so that the introductory text did not come across as just design-specific. One of the editorial page layouts was used for this page too to keep consistency with the rest of the publication.

The only stage left was to put all the chosen content in and ensure the publication worked as a whole. Some content and images needed to be re-edited; for the photographs, some did not work with others on the same spread, so adjustments were made in Photoshop to ensure that spreads worked effectively. For the content, more information was added about the journey itself, covering environmental and cultural areas.