Bluemotion Polo

This advert is not only an amazing example of flip book animation, it also talks about carbon emissions! Kerching!!! 2-in-1!

Name Change

I have decided to change the name of my magazine to something a lot broader and less obvious, therefore allowing some intrigue and a wider range of ideas and images to be incorporated into the design. I’ve chosen the name ‘TRACES’ rather than ‘FOOTPRINT’ as it implies the traces we, as humans, leave upon the earth – the traces we leave that cause destruction to the environment.

DEFINITION:
trace 1 (trs) n.
a. A visible mark, such as a footprint, made or left by the passage of a person, animal, or thing.
b. Evidence or an indication of the former presence or existence of something; a vestige.
c. A path or trail that has been beaten out by the passage of animals or people.
d. A way or route followed.
e. To follow the course or trail of: trace a wounded deer; tracing missing persons.
f. To ascertain the successive stages in the development or progress of: tracing the life cycle of an insect; trace the history of a family.
g. To make one’s way along a trail or course: traced through the files.
h. To have origins; be traceable: linguistic features that trace to West Africa.

Chocolate Advertisements

A requirement for the magazine project is to design an advert and as my magazine is based on the environment and making the planet greener and a better place, I decided to design a fairtrade chocolate advert. I couldn’t find any fairtrade adverts, but I managed to find some general food advertisements including:

Magazine Design: Content Page

Magazine content pages indicate page numbers where each part starts. The contents usually includes the titles of the pages and a description of its content. Content pages can also include editor’s letters and other contact information.

Grids

The most important thing to consider in magazine design is clarity, efficiency, economy and continuity, and the grid is the main way of achieving this. In designing a grid, you must consider the multiple kinds of information, the nature of the images and how they will be used, the length of the headlines and captions that may need to be included. The grid can be obvious – as in a column, hierarchical or modular – or can be hidden, as in interlocking or floating. A grid offers several possible solutions to the layout or structure of a magazine and helps a designer choose how to arrange the elements on a page, by limiting the choices.

Otl Aicher described a grid as “a tool not of coercion but of liberty”, whilst Josef Muller Brockmann said “To function successfully, the grid system, like all workable systems, must be interpreted as freely as necessary. It is this very freedom which adds richness and a note of surprise to what might…be potentially lifeless”

Steven Harrington

Steven Harrington is a printmaker that I came across in a magazine. I think it was the latest Marmalade Magazine, but I can’t be 100% sure. Anyways, I took his name down because the piece in the magazine was stunning, and here’s some of his other works:

Carbon Footprint

A Carbon Footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (usually CO2) produced to support human activities, for example when driving a car or when heating a house. Greenhouse gases cause global warming.

Your Carbon Footprint is the SUM of all CO2 emissions which came about by any of your activities. Any other gases that are emitted by your activities e.g. methane, are converted into the amount of CO2 that would cause the same effect. Your Carbon Footprint can be calculated taking into account your activities over a year.

Activities that affect carbon footprint include car travel, air travel, boat travel, other motorized transport and electricity use

It’s very important to minimize your carbon footprint and prevent much further damage to the environment. To see how, press here!

Barcode Design

I think I’d like to design a related barcode for my magazine as it would add an extra dimension and quirkiness to the overall cover. Here are some I’ve found which show what type of thing I want to do:

Environmental Magazines.

Here are a few Environmental Magazines I can use for inspiration and influences.

Audubon—————California Wild———Canadian Geographic——-Conscious Choice

E————————–Ecologist—————Green Futures————–World Watch

A History of Photomontage

Photomontage as an art developed from the Dada movement. Photomaontaging began when Kurt Schwitters was unaccepted by Dadaists, and therefore named his artistic outcomes Merz. The term Merz came from a fragmnet of newspaper that originally read ‘Kommerz’. Dadists did not accept Schwitters as most of his material came from the street, rather than from photographs and relevants. Schwitters montages and collages, created from gathered refuge, are in no way political yet have great integrity of vision. Schwitters went on to make his ultimate work of art, connecting numerous pieces of his work. This took over the downstairs of his house, and later took over all floors!!!

Another well renowned photomonteur was Raoul Hausmann who created images with enthusiasm and anger. In a definition, Hausmann describes the power of photomontage as:
“…its contrast of structure and dimension, rough against smooth, aerial photograph against close-up, perspective against flat surface, the utmost technical flexibility and the most lucid formal dialectics are equally possible…The ability to manage the most striking contrasts, to the achievement of perfect states of equilibrium…ensures the medium a long and richly productive span of life…”

A more recent famous photomonteur is Peter Kennard who took up phontomontage for its ability to show the “unrevealed truth” behind an image. He believed that photomontage was able to show the causes rather than the results.

Sean Hillen is also an amazing photomonteur