Plan

Red and Cultures

• former Soviet Union  - communism  + China and Vietnam - flags are red
• USA - Coca Cola

colour of love in most cultures: 

• Chinese brides wear red for their wedding
• red roses for Valentine's Day

• In Christianity  - green and red are associated with Christmas and Santa Claus
• Easter tradition for Orthodox Christians to colour eggs red (mean the blood of Christ) 
• Cupidon/Devil - represented by red 
• In China - red paper and red envelopes to wrap gifts of money; if you write someone's name in red it means you are cutting them out of your life or they have died
• red means emergency, warnings
• red is the colour for the STOP signs
• Red Cross
• Indian brides wear a red Sari - means purity
• Sale signs in retail are red

UPDATE

Red Colour and Moods

• stimulates the body
• increases circulation
• causes people to react with greater speed and force
• bright, warm colour - evokes strong emotions
• associated with love, warmth, comfort
• creates feelings of excitement or intensity
• associated with love, passion, fear, anger, heat, fire, blood
• red palettes: cadmium red, scarlet lake, alizarin crimson,vermilion, carmine, rose madder, venetian red, indian red, naphtol red etc
• raises energy level
• draws people together, stimulates conversation
• raises blood pressure, speeds respiration, heart rate
• pumps the adrenaline
• red blush
• danger, adventure, optimism

Plan for my magazine

Basically, as I said, the theme of my magazine will be women's obsession and I am going to focus on the first number on the obsession for a specific colour. I have decided to choose the red colour because it has a lot of meanings and can be explored more. A possible plan of my magazine follows below (that will not be the order of the articles in the magazine):

1. Editor's Letter

2. Content Table

3. Street Photography ----- a bit of Cunn

                                  ----- attribute a name(according to the outfit): e.g. for yellow- the mind & the intelect;                                                                                                               for red - the passionate

                                  ----- when to say no/yes:  - understand how to wear the same colour

                                                                          - good or bad outfit

4. Main Shoot - cover girl --> obsessed with the red colour, article about her and her obsession

5. Red Items -- gather together all the red objects/items/possessions  that you have got in your life/house and take a picture of that -  FB event

6. Meaning of colours -- associate the meaning of the red colour with photos from people (shoots)

                                  -- colours & moods - connection (shoots)

7. Colour & Culture  -- the red colour perceived by different cultures

8. Hair --- red hair styling    |        small tips: e.g. - Make it sharp & Shiny

            --- red hair props    |  

9. Weird Obsessions with red - e.g. wearing red tights
10. any must red item that you must possess
11. creative make up
12. article about the psychology of the red colour - psychology student
13. The Little Red Riding Hood - article + illustration by Dorian
14. artist of the issue + red colour swatches
15. red in other language
16.history of the red colour
17. Spain and being a matador?
18. Mars - the red planet?

Oh Comely Magazine

I came across this lovely magazine when I went to MAGMA in London. It stole my eyes from the first moment.


I love the cover. As I said I love white space so I do love the white borders of the image. It looks so elegant. I do love the simplicity of the cover. and the fact that there is not much writing on the image. The text background is white again to highlight it. What I like the most is the headline in a bigger font size. It's short but it makes you go inside the magazine. That's my kind if thing. I love writing short sentences that are subtle and with a hidden meaning.

I also like how the table of contents is made with the images that give a bit of insight into the magazine.There is a lot of white space in the magazine which of course I love.

Looking at all these magazines, I am stating to have an image of how my magazine will look like, not necessarily in great detail but some of my pages.

Leonie Hampton

I believe Leonie's project is very deep and I think that the reason why her mother let her document her illness, her obsession with boxes was because she loved her daughter and the other children and because she would do anything for them even if that means to accept to appear vulnerable in front of the others. I love the second image from above because the light is used constructively: to accentuate her desperation, to highlight that she has got problems that she doesn't want to share, memories and facts that happened meany years before and that influenced her at that moment but she preferred to keep everything for herself. And now those things are putting pressure on her so she uses those unpacked boxes to create a wall between her problems and reality, she is trying to put them on hold, to keep them steady.


I do like this project a lot  and I believe it is one of those project that you can't say no to or it's not good because it's about reality and yourself and I do believe that each and one of us have at least one tiny obsession or keep things to ourselves, things that influence us in a way or another, now or later.

JEONG-MEE YOON

This is actually unbelievable! There is so much color in those rooms. Poor kids! No wonder why when we grow up we develop certain weird obsessions!!!

Her idea is actually very good! She managed to illustrate in her images the relation between colour and consumer gender of each item. I think the images speak more for the parents rather than kids because it's the parents that introduce the colours and there is this idea that blue is for boys and pink for girls so parents tend to follow that as a rule. So that's why kids become obsessed with a colour.

Helga Steppan

I like this project of Steppan. I like the chromatic of all the images. I think they care quite seductive and very engaging. I believe they make the viewer consider looking at them more in depth to find out the artist's personality. 

I love this project!!!

Examples of pages

         
              PAGE 1 -->

PAGE 2

PAGE 3

Examples of covers

This is the first thing that I created only to arrange the title.

Example no 2

Example no 3

Geometric forms

As I said in my previous posts, I have realized that I have a passion for geometric forms, probably because I studied Maths since I was 8 throughout school. Then, I thought that I must choose something for my design not necessarily to make it different but to make it my own.

So then I decided to use geometric forms as part of my layout. The layout will be based on photographs rather than illustrations but I will also use a few.

I have tried to create some bits in Photoshop:

I quite like how these 2 look. I never tried to create something like tha. It might be something small but at least I ve tried.

I have used some filters to change  a bit the texture.

Online magazines #2

1. Urban Coco

• pages 38-39 - I like the idea of presenting some options on the right, framed. I would personally transform the small images into illustrations. I would do that for my magazine. 
• 
  

2. MUUSE Magazine

• what I could take from the first 2 pages is that I could add detail related to the main issue of the magazine.

3. Flanelle

• I like how the name is written at the beginning, white background.
• I also like the illustrations and I am starting to consider the idea of having some illustrations

4. LASH

• there are some illustrations in the magazine..around page 30 that I like a loot

Online magazines

Right, so till I go to London to the bookshops I will have a look online as well at some magazines.

1. ATLAS

• I like the content page.(page 3). The image on the right looks really good. The information is straight-forward which is good for the reader.
• overall, I thinks it's a good magazine. the photographic content is quite nice. Some really nice ideas.

  2. Scoff Zine

• I came across this lovely magazine called Scoff Zine. The name drew my attention. It is quite a nice magazine, funny. I like the illustrations a lot, some of them look very realistic. 
• The magazine is about being obsessed with food so that's why I decided to post it here. It might be something that I can consider for my magazine as an idea and if so, maybe the illustrations might be useful.

3. ONE

• there is a lot of things that I like about this magazine. The font of the title is very nice and goes really well with the whole publication
• I like the layout of the 2nd,3rd,4th page
• the 5th and the 6th are about the content of the magazine. I believe it is presented differently and I quite like it. It looks a bit empty though. I would have added a few more things - maybe give the images a nice frame?
• The editor's letter looks very neat and elegant. I love that.
• further away in teh book, there is an article called" Life as a model". I like the fact that the magazine presents the models first and then there is a small interview with them and all against white background and an image of them. classic but very nice!
• There is another section with Fashion Picks. I like how they are presented very simple and with a number and then at the bottom of the page there is the description. It's not too busy but it's not empty either!
• Also, I like the last page where it says" FIN."

4. Quiescent

• pages 75-79 present some illustrations with a message. If you read the message you realize how clever the illustrations are done. Like that!

[I might convert photographs into cartoon, illustrations as I am not good at drawing!!! ]]

5. Lash Magazine

• page of contents - I like how they use the S from LASH as a background.
• the illustrations are also very good

Going back #3

            

ELLE Magazine - again the square images and the white background with a few bits arranged very nicely.

 This is John Lewis's free magazine. I was quite impressed to be honest. The fashion section is really good and is very elegant and glamorous. Exactly what I want.






CONCLUSION
  If I were to  draw a conclusion from all the magazines that I had a look at, my ideas for the magazines would be:

• white background 
• simplicity
• geometric shapes - squares images
•  a few illustrations
• framing images
• vintage look
• looks/images in a series

I have realized that I have an attraction for geometric layouts/features/images. My first page on my website presents 3 images as polaroids so now I realize that I haven't noticed that before. I shall keep that in mind for my magazine!!

I cannot wait to go to London at the bookshops for more inspiration!!!!

Going back #2

Left: I like that layout as well, how every

category(shoes,watches, clutches, jewelry) is framed separately. Again, the background is white which contrasts the colours of the items.
Right: I like how that page gives an insight for the reader and how the small images are positioned on the left.





This is VOGUE Italia. I have found many things inside that I liked.

Once again, I love how images look on white background. It's so simplistic but at the same time so good.

I also liked the illustrations on these 2 pages. I know I said my magazine is not going to be based on graphics but I might try just a few to see how it looks. These ones are really lovely

 I like how the 3 images are positioned, one under each other It reminds me of a movie roll. 

This is from Harper's Bazaar. I like the illustrations and how they are combined with the images.

Asos magazine also has some really nice layouts that I like and that I had in mind for my magazine