Here's the progression of the grid system I was working with. I initially started with a very simple 4 column grid with 8 ruled rows that allowed me to anchor text and images. As the layout became a little more complex I needed more and more columns to the point where I had 16 to play around with. This amount of columns allowed me to be quite creative because it's a robust set up.
SECRET SOCIETIES AND THE LIZARD MEN SPREAD
Here is the development of my first spread. I started with the body copy I'd written (posted earlier) and tried manipulating that around a 4 column grid. Initially I began work without having the font that Gasi was designing for me yet, so I used a nice open font and rounded font (century gothic) as a very very rough tool to help me. I just spent a while laying out on the page in ways that interest me, before beginning to gather imagery that I thought suited the spread. Initially I started really abstract, composing a Obviously the spread is about world leaders or influential people belonging to secret societies. SO I had a few different people to chose from, George Bush is an obvious choice, being a figure of obvious public mistrust, as well as Rupert Murdoch and finally Barrack Obama. I turned the images in to duotone and monotones to reflect the style of some of the UFO and 'amazing story' book styles from the 50's through to the 70's (some examples displayed below) because I really like that aspect to those books. I want to create a magazine that reflects those stylistic flares with a very modern, minimalist feel that is often used in high culture magazines and books.
examples of mono/duotone in mystery/unexplained books:
I eventually got to the point where I was happy after deciding on the Obama photograph. Once I got the header typeface from David I started putting that to use, but I was using it at quite a small point size. I had a brief chat with Joe Gilmore about it, he suggested that the typeface David had designed needed using on a much larger scale to show it off. Thankfully I took his advice, he was right and once I'd increased it's size to around 140pt or so it gave me a few options to play around with. The photograph was pretty effective as it was, very dark and almost moody so manipulating it into duotone worked really well and reflected both the idea of mystery and conspiracy being shrouded in shadow, but also reflected the sort of high culture feel I wanted because I can imagine seeing a photograph similar to it in a fashion magazine. I haven't really played with the potential of what I can get out of duotone so that's something that I can play around with. I like the type sitting over it, particularly the way it sits over hi eyes, it creates just the effect I wanted with the font almost doubling for weird and unusual symbols whilst also being quite a readable typeface.
What to do next
-Now I've got a rough layout to work with, I'm going to print it along with the others off and start looking at what typeface to use as the body copy and really start tweaking the leading and line spacing in order to create a really readable body of work.
-get people to crit the prints of spread so far.
-Mess around with the duotone settings on the Obama picture and see where that goes.
-Play around with the colour, I chose this dark blue really rapidly without exploring any other colours first, so that's something to explore.
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ASSASSINATION AND DEATH
Once I'd taken the first spread to a point that I was happy with, I wanted to quickly start progressing with all the other spreads so I moved onto the spread about assassination and death. There was a layout style that I liked from developing the first spread that I quite enjoyed, I wanted to try and incorporate it somewhere in the book so I thought I'd see if I could get it to work here to start with. The layout is (I guess) in reference to this piece of work I'd seen:
(incidentally, this is where I also got the idea for laying out the page number in the top corner at a 90 degree angle)
I then started working in photos of the celebrities mentioned in the section: John Kennedy, Elvis and Princess Diana. I started off by using the weird triangle shapes to try and reflect the illuminati symbol that will hopefully become a little more prevalent when I add the black light ink/spot varnish layers to it. But I tried and I tried with it and I didn't really think it was working. i also became very aware that if I continued with this that the first two spreads would be filled solely with pictures of celebrities and I wanted something a little more ambiguous than that. I found the large picture of bullets on the internet and thought it was an appropriate image without being too obvious. The fact that it was bullets on a sparse white background really allowed me to play around a bit because there's no square frame to it. It meant I could be a little more inventive with it's placement.
Things to do:
-Print it off and have it crit-ed both in terms of layout and then looking at the readability of the type.
-Play around with the monoton/duotone of the image to really get best results
-tweak layout according to feedback and playing with the non-rectangular format of the photo a bit more.
HOAXES AND FRAUDS
I had quite a clear idea in my head already where I wanted to go with this, I've been looking at a lot of space photographs and images (context blog) that kind of informed some of the way I've looked at this magazine, but I really wanted to use them in the actual magazine and I thought this section about the moon landing was perfect. I wanted a bold circular image to reflect the shape and idea of the moon so I duotoned a space photograph. The result was really visually pleasing so I began setting to work around that. I initially used the title 'they did' they didn't' in reference to the moon landing, But I felt it was a little tacky and cheesy so I switched to to the more simplistic 'hoaxes and frauds'. It worked effectively, hoaxes has a lot of the more unusual letterforms from David's typeface in it, so it looked really interesting. The layout came together really quickly for it, and I'm quite happy as it is.
Things to do:
-print it off and get it crit-ed
-look at legibility and the specifics of the layout
-play around with the image's colour properties.
IT"S IN THE WATER
I quite liked the title for this one, it's a phrase commonly used in conjunction with this conspiracy and other similar ones across popular culture.I started with an obscure photo I found on the internet of sea smoke in the antarctic. I thought it was really ambiguous and quite a poetic photograph which suited both the high culture and ambiguous qualities I wanted for my magazine. Again I put it into duotone, though I should of perhaps played around with this more. Anyway I went in two directions with this photograph and the layout. I put it onto the page and had it go full bleed on one side which provided a nice contrast with the cut off edge on the other side where 2 columns have been reserved for the magazine name and page number. I then also tried putting the water photograph into a few droplet shapes. I didn't really like the effect of this as much as the full bleed, it didn't have the same level of sophistication or simplicity to it. Basically I then started playing around with the full bleed idea and different ways of laying out around that. It took a while to try and create a balance. Where I've reversed the text out against the photograph is a nice idea, however I can already see that it severely reduces the legibility of the type. I then had to find ways of getting around that. The layout that I managed to get to in the end is satisfactory for now.
To do
-Print and crit
-tweak layout and body copy for readability
-Play around with the colour quality with the duotone image.
-Colour experimentation
ALIENS
Finally I started developing the spreads for the alien conspiracy theories. Jonny Packham had lent me some magazines that his Grandfather had owned about UFOs and such. They were really great vintage magazines with wonderful greyscale images. I basically took some of the photos from there as image content for my spreads because I'm not going to be able to source pictures of UFO's from anywhere better really. I spent some time playing around with the way these photos could be used before settling on one photograph that I'd thinned out to avoid any of it going into the gutter. I think that this started to look really odd and unbalanced because the title font is really quite spacious and the leading is pretty wide on it. So put against a narrow image, it began to look a little odd. I decided to embrace the image at it's natural size and had it overlap the gutter and go right into the other page. I thought this created quite an unusual dynamic as a pose to separating everything by individual pages, allowing a fluidity through overlapping.
Once I'd done that, it was a case of playing around with possible titles. The first title I used was a bit too long and thin, it didn't have a good presence to it on a page, so I opted for 'little green men' which sits better on the page and has more balance between it's horizontal and vertical spacing.
I realise that I've got a lot less detailed about what I'm doing and the technicalities as this post has gone on, but honestly I churned this stuff out and it's just a nightmare to write about it.
Things to do
-Print and crit
-Play around with what the image is and the quality of the duotone
-Look at different colours to do.
OTHER GENERAL NOTES AND COMMENTS
-laying out the actually content that I've written, i realise that I haven't actually got a 32 page book at all, but at most 16 pages. This means a quick rewrite to the brief is necassary, but it also works out cheaper per book which is helpful in terms of budgeting.
-This means I need to create a further two spreads, so i need to figure out the content for them, as well as a contents page and a glossary/appendix/credits page.
-I need to figure out what else I'm going to package with it (stickers, posters etc.)
-I need to start exploring what the content for the special finish will be now I've got more of an idea how my spreads are going to work.
