Exercise: back to the grid

Using some old travel magazines I had, I ‘reverse engineered’ them into grids to understand the composition with which they were made.

The first one was a full spread. I decided to use highlighters, acrylic and alcohol markers. The highlighters allowed for the text still to be seen and when it was an image, I blocked it out fully in a darker colour. I used paint pens to go around the outline of blocks so they could be seen better.

The left page had text on top of image so I keep the text highlighted and blocked the rest off. It also had many smaller images embedded. It looks quite messy when blocked in like this but the original with all the photos didnt at all!

The colours I kept swapping to indicate different topcis/sub-sets of text. I realise with these magazines with a lot of text though they also draw their own little separation lines between – which you can see as light grey. It helps visually separate for the reader when its text only. The right hand end part was an advertisement with nothing to do with the rest which you can tell more also as it runs top to bottom and has a thick separating black line which you can notice more when all this has been blocked off.

These two were a note from the editor and an article outlining various steps on how to haggle. The note from the editor I split into 4 main areas: left hand side overview on key learning from the issue, the note from the editor, the space of contributors and the two photos at the bottom. I quite like this composition and when blocked out it looks a lot more complicated than when you only see the text!

The second one I felt was typical column of text with a photo inside. Pink I left for little side notes and titles etc. and the rest was all the steps outlined in blue.

These two pages were questions and answers from different people so I gave a colour to each one, blacked out the photos and also gave yellow to the little insert of people involved with their photos. There is a lot going on with this too and when blocked out you dont naturally see the flow of how to read it. This is much easier clearly when you can see the text and the little separation lines. This made me realise how many different tricks to putting small quotes, photos, extra details, more information between text there are which you never consider really when reading these things. For example on the last one above there is a little quote inserted. On the left the smaller text and photos of the people involved. On the right hand pages there is always the title of the on the top right that runs through all the pages.

At the same time, in most of the examples, it really is a grid pattern of horizontal and vertical lines. The very few times photos are tilted or round I actually quite like as it looks more dynamic and gives more white space and thus room. The other blockier ones I feel are more stuffed in – which is fine and a choice I support in terms of what content needs to fit in there.