This is my revised cover for my magazine. I am targeting mid 20's to early 40's who are trying to eat healthier and live a healthier life overall. I want all my imagery to stand out which is why I stayed with a neutral background.
If you want images to "stand out" you should use black or white to frame them. This gray background doesn't do much for the images at all, and just dulls the page. Reconsider this approach... for the sake of your images. Consider a wide black frame around the margins, and use color between the images?
Your masthead is a bit goofy for anyone over 15 (or who isn't into comic books).
Who IS your target audience? Find a specific person you want to design this magazine for, and make your decisions based on what that person would be drawn to. Currently your age range is overly broad.
The layout has some promising areas - the rhythmic images that are separated by the taglines is quite nice, and the directional dotted lines and little circles seem to speak to a young adult.
Maybe your audience is a 25-30 aged young urban professional who works in the city and is trying to live a healthy nature-based lifestyle (not necessarily an easy thing). He/she would want to imagine themselves connected to a nature that doesn't exist around them on a day-to-day basis... and so your images of the countryside will feed their hunger for what they don't have. Your typography will be urban hip and contemporary, and your layouts will allow for a good amount of fact-driven content... because this person is intelligent and looking for information.
I've started to really create a specific person for you to visually communicate with. Change the person if you want, but you need to do the same - so every decision you make (from colors, to fonts, to images, to layout) is speaking to that person.
If you want images to "stand out" you should use black or white to frame them. This gray background doesn't do much for the images at all, and just dulls the page. Reconsider this approach... for the sake of your images. Consider a wide black frame around the margins, and use color between the images?
ReplyDeleteYour masthead is a bit goofy for anyone over 15 (or who isn't into comic books).
Who IS your target audience? Find a specific person you want to design this magazine for, and make your decisions based on what that person would be drawn to. Currently your age range is overly broad.
The layout has some promising areas - the rhythmic images that are separated by the taglines is quite nice, and the directional dotted lines and little circles seem to speak to a young adult.
Maybe your audience is a 25-30 aged young urban professional who works in the city and is trying to live a healthy nature-based lifestyle (not necessarily an easy thing). He/she would want to imagine themselves connected to a nature that doesn't exist around them on a day-to-day basis... and so your images of the countryside will feed their hunger for what they don't have. Your typography will be urban hip and contemporary, and your layouts will allow for a good amount of fact-driven content... because this person is intelligent and looking for information.
I've started to really create a specific person for you to visually communicate with. Change the person if you want, but you need to do the same - so every decision you make (from colors, to fonts, to images, to layout) is speaking to that person.
Make sense?