Initial layout designs for 'THE ART OF POLITICS' magazine

These design are my initial design ideas for a online magazine on art and politics, I began by using the TIMMONS NY typeface seen in the Adbusters magazine for the cover, I wanted the designs to be iconic and eye catching, using white text white black boarders helped display this, the initial designs are only a ruff idea and need to be reworked and changed as my research and practice work moves forward. I would like to look at using some photographs for my cover image of the publication, this needs to be as eye catching as possible to get as many readers as possible. I want to experiment with a few different cover ideas to see which might be most effective.

The first spread will include a small introduction into the content and then this black page with white text on on the different artists featured on the right. I have experimented with using a number of typefaces to try and convoy the various different styles and mediums seen in the publication.

This next spread I am yet to really think about, including the Calder Mercury Fountain as it is in response to the mercury mining that provided the money during the Franco era in Spain, Calder has put beauty into the material and tried to express how Spain can be against the Franco dictatorship.

 This spread is on murals made in response to political and social issue, the design I feel should reflect the scale of these works, I am yet to include any information but the layout so far I am pleased with. As each of these pieces is so different the designs are very interesting alongside one another.






These images depict the Donald Trump effigies burnt over Easter, trying to celebrate them as pieces of political sculpture as well as mocking Drump at the same time. This design needs to show the evolution of making to burning of the effigies I feel I have done this here, and the larger images bleeding off the page means the images really stand out.

 This page on the artist Ai Wei Wei I feel really needs some improvements, depicting his involvement in online ways of highlighting social and political issues. The quote to the left relates well with my essay and is something I feel I must include in the publication. Including a coloured background for one of these pages will break out the publication a bit and put more emphasis on the content on show.

James Bridle's Drone Shadow designs is a totally unique piece of art and should definitely be included in the publication, getting the photos composed however is proving more challenging. I wanted to show all the images of the drones going one direction but this proved difficult I then instead made all the drones point into the middle creating a focal point in the designs.

 Alongside the Drone images I am thinking of including this essay written about the drone shadows by James Bridle. How to make this page more engaging is something I could look to highlight. I may try and create a drone image out of the negative space of the text. this is something that would bring the designs to life a bit more and be much more engaging.

 This spread looks at the French Graffiti artist JR. As the images were already so iconic and graphic the design then just had to reflect this, using the TIMMONS NY type again and putting in large letters in the darker part of the image the letters JR along with some text. This spread doesn't take away from the quality of the photographs and in a way emphasis's them.

 This spread is a continuation from the JR spread onto he previous page. Again using large images to emphasis the scale of the work will make the designs much more spectacular. Overall I am pleased with these initial designs but definitely think they could be improved on.