Note: due to my lack of foresight and situations occurring beyond my control, it is out of my capacity to record my CCR for my final post. I've instead included the transcript of my analysis below. Apologies.
COVER
The title, as you can see, is "Full Disclosure", which I'm willing to admit is borrowed from the literary club's magazine. I'm actually the art director of the club, so the cover you see for this presentation is the also the one I designed to be used for Electric Ink. For the purposes of this assignment, I'm using the same cover for both.
The first thing you'll notice about the cover is that unlike most literary magazines, it's hand painted. Most of the covers I found in my research are obviously done digitally, and I can see why that trend persists. They usually end up looking cleaner and more professional. This could be the pretentious artist in me talking, but I feel like something's gained from being able to see the brush strokes in a painting; especially given the magazine's title. Full Disclosure: complete honesty, nothing to hide. It just seems fitting, thematically.
For the cover image itself, I tried my best to paint something a bit avant-garde. So, we have a heart bleeding out ink and other writing paraphernalia. It's supposed to be a visual representation of the expression "Art comes from the heart". I didn't mean to keep the white borders around everything; I initially drew them as a temporary boundary between the background and foreground, but they broke up all the negative space so nicely, I decided to keep them. As for the background; I kept it simple and abstract so it wouldn't distract from the foreground. The background, as you're going to see, also serves as the color scheme for the rest of the magazine.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Now for the table of contents. Throughout the design process for this page, I kept two things in mind; legibility and color harmony. The color scheme for everything on the page is pulled directly from the cover--the headings, the bubbles in the corners, the page numbers, everything except the text. With all of the other colors on the page anything other than black looked distracting. To keep things simple, I divided the page into two labeled columns. This layout may not be very fancy but it's easy to understand, which is obviously crucial for a table of contents.
I added the bubbles in to make the layout seem less top heavy. I got pretty attached to the big, pink title, but it started dominating the entire page; it was actually kind of difficult to focus on anything else. The bubbles provided something interesting to look at at the bottom of he page too, so the viewer's attention wasn't concentrated on one spot. I also used the bubbles to frame the thumbnails for artwork at the bottom. They're tinted so they don't interrupt the color scheme. I find the effect of it all rather aesthetically pleasing.
Between the top and the bottom, there's obviously the contents themselves. I wrote short descriptions under the titles in italics; partially to entice the viewer to read the material, and partially to create some visual interest. A completely uniform column of text wouldn't hold the audience's attention very well.
DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD
In alignment with my fixation on color coordination, I chose to make the title of the page match the artwork on the other side. I was inspired by a particular two-page spread I'd seen "The Walrus", which I've raved about previously in one of my last blog posts.The line under the title/by lines fits into the color scheme as well, while also establishing some semblance of space between the blocks of text.
Double columns are typically used to contain particularly long pieces of text, but in practice, it looks too cluttered. I decided to stick with a single column for this page's piece of prose instead.
The art is, as I've seen in every example that I could find of this type of spread, thematically connected to the writing. I decided to obey that convention; it didn't make any sense the break it.
