Form & Content 3

Form & Content 3

This week I found an article in Vol. 42 of CMYK, a very popular visual communication magazine. The article discusses the act of self-publishing your own work and some examples of how to do so. They interview four publishers of their magazine who have all had experiences publishing their own works.

The form of the article is set up almost like a scrapbook with the first two pages looking like the pages of an open book. The header is quite interesting and is definitely what initially caught my eye. Black and pink are the colors used continuously throughout the theme of the piece. This use of color really keeps the unity throughout the page layout. The header represents the text of the article, because if the artist's interesting use of heavy rules. They appear to be books on a shelf. I also really like how they mixed the use of a serif and a sans-serif font with reversed out type. Another visual aspect I especially liked was the black text boxes with the pink text used throughout the rest of the piece. It really pulled it together very nicely. All these aspects together made the piece very visually interesting and easy to read. It was also a very insightful article, and the artwork just seemed to complete all aspects.

Form & Content 1

Amanda Sabo
Form & Content 1

The article that I read for this critique was found in an issue of Communication Arts from June 2008. I chose this article mainly for its inspiration and interesting layout of the heading and text. The article talks about a logo design competition that began in Europe. The European Union Logo Design Annual, better known at Eulda, has such popularity, that it has sparked the launch of Wolda in 2008, the Worldwide Logo Design International. Now what has been known as the “Best of” in Europe is spreading the globe for all designers to participate. The winners are chosen by a panel of design professionals, corporate clients, and even members of the public.
The article is laid out well on the page, and the simplicity of it is what caught my eye. The vertical header, along with the year 2007 across the top is set up together very well making its own grid structure. I also love how the writer’s name seems to break the grid by coming in the letter “u”. Their use of white space also worked very well in the piece. The rest of the images show examples of winning work from the 2007 competition. The Best of Europe is shown with a text wrap around in the actual article, which really breaks up the monotony of the text. The remaining three pages are all really excellent examples and inspirations for corporate identity. I thought that they were all very excellent choices and they all seem to explain themselves quite well.