Grid Assignment- MIDTERM

Your assignment is to design the opening page of a magazine article. You should design it so that it is clearly layed out, easy to scan, it looks engaging (use of photography and text effects), and it looks clean and unified.

Specifications

With a topic of your choice, create a 72ppi, 8.5 X 11 inch, RGB composition. This will work for our class, but know that if you wanted to print it out you would need to create it in CMYK with a ppi setting of at least 150ppi, and optimally at 300ppi.

The advantage of the recommended setting is that it is easier to find images for your composition.

Topic

The topic is your choice, but you must have a minimum of 7 images and multiple paragraphs (body copy can be lorem ipsum), but title, subtitle, headings, and intro paragraph must be real text.

YOU MUST HAVE ALL OF THESE ELEMENTS.

1. Article Title,
2. Subtitle
3. Introduction paragraph.
4. Side article that is either not related to the main story or it is side topic that is somewhat different than the main content.
5. Headings for at least 3 sections within the body text

Your heading should visually tie into the content of the article (layer effects, type of path, masking image w/ type). Utilize the type assignment strategy in your approach to this section.

Part of the challenge to this assignment is creating one page that feels like everything is unified, but at the same time, elements are different enough (contrasted) so that the viewer can quickly scan the different elements (headings, introductions, subheadings)- allowing them to quickly absorb the page layout.

Be careful not to feel trapped into filling all the space up- remember "activating" and using space to make a page feel uncluttered and approachable. Try to make the page organized but still somewhat spontaneous and open.

Finally, make sure that the hierarchy of the information is clear. Without even thinking, a viewer should be able to identify the title, headings, paragraph flow, etc. Think about how to bring the viewers eyes to the title, and then through subtle gradation of text treatment and imagery into the body text (control eye movement using careful balancing of visual weight).

Guidelines

You will be graded on:

Layout

• how well you structure the content using columns/rows/guides
• how the grid is strategically broken to create interest

Unity/Contrast

• on how well you unify the page's contents through positioning, color, similarity, etc.
• how well you use contrast to separate contents so the reader can easily scan the page and see the distinct elements and form an understanding of how the content is separated

Visual Weight

• by how well you control eye movement and distribute the visual weight to achieve both balance and logical flow through the content
• try to use images to gain the attention of the viewer in strategic places

Typography

• Choice of typeface to represent the concept
• Leading (especially body text), Kerning (in headline only),
• Legibility of type
• Overall creativity with type

Photoshop:

Technically the only new tools you'll need are:

Character Palette:

This palette gives you access to change the size, kerning, leading, tracking, colors of the font. There is also a fly-out menu with more options that you get by clicking on the top right triangle.

Paragraph Palette:

This palette gives you access to change the alignment of the type (centered, left/right, and justified). There is also a fly-out menu with more options that you get by clicking on the top right triangle. This fly-out menu is useful to precisely determine the justification and hyphenation of the type.

 

Point Type Vs. Paragraph Type

The first image below is of Point text. This line of text will go on infinitely and can be useful for doing things like type on a path. To create this type of text you simply click (while you have the text tool selected) on the screen and type.

VS.

The image below is of paragraph text. Paragraph text is constrained by the dotted lines. This is very helpful in shaping large blocks of text. To make the blocks of text very geometric and smooth you can justify the text (in the paragraph palette). Justified type is very attractive, but if the lines of text are very short, it can create very awkward spaces between the words. See the example below (line 2). To create paragraph text you click and drag out a box (while you have the text tool selected) roughly the size of the paragraph that you want. It is easy to use the handles on the outside of the box to resize the borders of the text box.

Converting Point Text to Paragraph Text

If you have a piece of type that is point text, you can right click on it (in the layers palette) and "convert it to Point text".

Viewing Grid, Guides, Rulers and Snapping:

Below you can see that in order to show the grid, the guides, rulers and to turn snapping on/off you go to the VIEW drop-down menu. Guides are lines that you can drag out from the sides of the composition (the red area below). If you haven't turned rulers on you can't drag any guides out. So in order to turn rulers on you can select rulers (confirmed by the check mark next to it). By right clicking on the ruler area (the red area) you can select whether you want the measurements to be in inches, pixels, points, picas etc.

Snapping allows objects to automatically line up with other objects, with guides, with grids etc. To modify what is snapped to, use the second option in the purple area (shown below).

Creating guides (indicating possibly rows and columns) allows designers to make sure that items are aligned properly. Whether or not things are properly aligned will determine greatly how organized the composition feels.