OUGD503 Monotype

In spite of mine and Leo's initial thoughts to focus on The Big Issue Up North, we thought that it may be more interesting and diverse to look into a redesign of Flack Cambridge, thinking that less people would chose this magazine. On top of this, Flack is much more text based than The Big Issue and appears as though it is targeted at a more specific audience, perhaps one that has more of an interest in reading the articles.

We started by re-writing the brief, giving us more scope to identify exactly what we needed to do. This proved extremely helpful as the original Monotype brief is very vague and at some points confusing.

We concluded that we would be able to get the most out of the brief if we had a selection of tasks that we would complete alone and a selection we would complete together.

We decided that we would each design our own typeface to be used for either headings or sub-headings, something we would decide on based on the outcome of our designs.

I chose to base my designs on a simple sans serif font, as that could give me the scope to experiment with it more than if I had used a serif base.

I started by outlining Helvetica Neue Light, and after doing so thought it might be interesting to give some parts of the letters a heavier line.

Doing this allowed me to do something interesting with the heavier line when it wasn't filled. I used a finer line to create a simple pattern on the inside.

After doing this I still thought the concept was a bit basic so I added a 'highlight' to the heavier side

After completing the whole typeface I put it in context by creating a quick mock up doubly page spread using my typeface as a header, however, I found upon doing this that there might have been too much going on with the typeface for it to just be a header. It had become a bit too decorative and so I decided to alter it a bit more.

I found that taking out the linear visual inside the heavier side actually made it appear bolder, as the lines had given it a delicacy that wasn't appropriate as a header.

I decided to name the final typeface Duotone Neue, taking the Neue from the typeface I had based it on, and calling it Duotone put emphasis on the almost even weighting between black and white.

One of the spreads that I was responsible for was the spot the difference spread. In the original Flack spread it is an image based game, and since we were creating a typography edition, we decided to do a typography based Spot the Difference.

I chose to use Garamond for the spot the difference as I thought that using a serif font would allow me to create more subtle differences to make it a bit harder than if it were a sans serif font. Similarly, to make it authentic I figured I would need to create at least 10 differences, and this would give me the scope to do that.

After finishing the spot the difference I created a selection of default layouts for the spreads, using the rule of thirds as a guide.

When I came to create the actual spreads I maintained the same initial rule of thirds guide but chose to alter some of the layout options I had made.

We had already decided to use a selection of pastel colours for the spreads, and so I took this into account when deciding on the layout and the use of both my typeface and the typeface Leo had designed for the subheads.

This spread includes two of the pages from the original magazine, a section on poetry in which readers can send in their poems to be published in the magazine, and the Spot the Difference.

The brief had stated that they wanted to see us making reference to the digital world and how we can create a digital counterpart to the magazine. We decided to give readers the option to download a PDF version of the magazine via the website, by submitting the QR code inside the magazine. Leo created this to be placed on one of the spreads of the magazine, as well as the listings pages that he was responsible for.

I chose to place the PDF download code on a double page spread that was based on a feature that had been in the previous issue of the magazine.

Below are a selection of front cover options that leo designed. We chose to base the issue on an 'impossible' theme as this would give us scope to include impossible typefaces as well as the content.

Below are the type and layout guidelines we made to correspond with each of our typefaces and spreads.