Rolling Stone| Understanding Form & Context
10/27/2020
“The objective of this course is to help you understand the fundamental principles of typographic design, in the context of communication needs. We will cover grids, letters, typefaces, words, meaning, hierarchy, text, image, and motion — all in the context of communication.”
Introduction to Form & Context Analysis
HW: Please collect a few design samples to have handy for a class discussion on day one. These can be print artifacts (books, magazines, posters) or digital (websites, apps, blogs).
Adjectives: provocative, trendy, elegant
Basics of Grid systems:
Columns — Sections
Margins — Gutters/Flow lines
Header/Text body — Images
10/29/2020
Rolling Stone Analyze
What am I looking for?
Searching for consistent rhythm or beat. Readers like to be able to easily find their favorite sections or columns, and they like to have a sense of where they are in the magazine/web at any time. Designers have to consider about different ways of approach because we don’t know how(in what way) the audience will view it.
What holds our audience’s attention?
Magazines that generally contains many interesting and sometimes sensuous photographs attract readers’ attention. In general, magazine articles are easy to read, fairly brief in length, and may include illustrations or photographs.
The placement of images and their relation to the text make good dynamics. The typography employed also tells a lot about the aesthetics of the magazine/web. When the content is easily read, and the images complement the story perfectly, that’s when the audience can say that the magazine/web has a good editorial sense.
Rolling Stone Research
Adjectives: Vintage, Nostalgia, Eclectic
About Rolling Stone
When: First published in 1967
Who: Founder Jann Wenner and Ralph J.Gleason
It reaches a circulation of 1.4million and is published by the company Wenner Media. (Magazine is based in New York)
What:
“You’re probably wondering what we are trying to do. It’s hard to say: sort of a magazine and sort of a newspaper… Rolling Stone is not just about music, but also about the things and attitudes that the music embraces”
by Jann Wenner
Target Audience?
Broad spectrum of audiences, with the magazine content being largely popular culture often focusing on-actors, television and pop music. They have sections for music, TV, Politics, music, etc.
“middle of the road rock fans of all ages” (in the past)
“all ages of fans who’s interested with current/past trends” (recent)
Important aspects to focus:
- Long history: Started as a music magazine and now contains all different type of contents, starting from politics, music, TVs, movies and etc.
- Does not have specific targeted audience but tried to embrace wide spectrum of audiences.
- In the past, being featured on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine has become emblematic of success for musicians.
Continues their tradition even time has passed:
Interesting about this Rolling Stone magazine is that design directors always look back through the history of the magazine for design inspiration and reinterpret graphic elements into modern uses. They strove for ways to exaggerate design elements to freshen them and at the same time have some brand identity that is still familiar to the original readers.
How is Design related to its history?
Logotypes
What’s in common?
- Shading, 3-D dimensionality, filigree, swash shape of the logo: All of these historic touches were continued through out the change
Latest Logo
- Now, they went back to the idea of Jim Parkinson’s design idea(2nd), uses a specially designed version of the Royal Acidbath typeface.
Still has the idea of handwritten style and created it more cohesive, clean and modernized. (Still contains the legacy of the original mood)
Covers
1967–1977–1980–2017 (left to right)
- The first issue was printed in November 1967 and featured John Lennon on the cover (started with no colors)
- At the time the magazine was founded(60's–70's), star musical acts like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, The Grateful Dead, etc. were considered major cultural icons to Wenner who he thought should be celebrated
- Depicted the icons of popular culture — Beyond music — Richard Nixon and Mohammed Ali
- 1974, colors were introduced on the cover page (started to be more artistic)
Just by lookin at these two covers with Lil Baby, who’s an up-and-coming artist, and The Beatles from the past generation, we can see how Rolling Stone tries to balance between mainstream appeals and counterculture aspects to their audience.
11/01/2020
Looking into different platforms (web/print)
Web
Link: https://www.rollingstone.com/
Initial Main page grid analysis
Adjectives: Coherent, Sophisticated, Accessible, Current
Subgroups, TV, Politics, Music, etc, are displayed into similar 2 by 3 grids that contains related articles with thumbnails and a short summary.
What do I see?
Typeface:
Both Sans serif and Serif can be discovered from the site. While Sans serif is definitely more dominant than Serif fonts, it still harmonizes well to give difference in visual hierarchy.
Which:
They used Georgia(Serif) and Graphik(Sans serif) for their website.
WHY Georgia and Graphik?
Georgia typeface appears elegant and legible when printed small or on low-resolution screens. Graphik typeface is similar to Helvetica typeface except that Graphik contains more feeling of condensed and bold.
WHY is Sans Serif font dominant for web?
Sans Serif is commonly used for web design because of its readability. Because the Sans Serif edges can be precise or rounded, it is more direct and simple to read on the web. Simplistic design of Sans serif typeface is more suited to modernism.
Menu page
Wide margins compare to the main page with strong black and white contrast colors with simple grid system. Titles are separated with subheads using stroke weight(font weight) and font size.
11/02/2020
Magazine
Questions that came up during discussion:
- What is the main theme colors?
- How does these visual aspects create the mood of the magazine?
- How are those design helpful/effective for the readers?
- Has the print/web changed through out the history? If so, how?
- What’s the goal of their group(for me, Rolling Stone)?
Analyzing August 2020 Issued
Adjectives: Vintage, Distinct, Liberal
Questions that came up during discussion:
- What is the main theme colors?
- How does these visual aspects create the mood of the magazine?
- How are those design helpful/effective for the readers?
- Has the print/web changed through out the history? If so, how?
- What’s the goal of their group(for me, Rolling Stone)?
Studying specific spreads
What do I see?
Just by looking at those pages, I was able to realize that Rolling Stone continues these traditional color palettes that has been the iconic red color of Rolling Stone.
- Uses of different typeface: Sans Serif and Serif —
Typeface depends on the mood/atmosphere of the context — creates the general tone of the spread. Depending on the tone of the context, Sans serif can build dark, heavy atmosphere like the left article while Serif can create energetic, free atmosphere like the right article.
- Different grids/columns/gutter lines are used depending on their layouts.
But still can find certain repetition within those spreads.
- Pull quotes, images, and captions are used to support the article / give strong impact about the story
Color themes:
Iconic logo colors are used as a theme for the magazine. They’ve been retaining the traditional color theme for past several years.
Why is Serif font dominant for the print?
This is because the serif make the individual letters more distinctive and easier for our brains to recognize/understand quickly. The curves on the letter form helps our eyes to travel across a line, especially if lines are long or have relatively open word spacing.
Interesting features:
Drop caps:
It is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The use of this font feature catches the reader’s attention right away and leads the audience where to start and focus on.
Commonly used grid System(12 columns x 12 columns)
The ration for the left page is 3 : 3 : 3 : 3 while the ratio for the right page is 9(image):3(text).
Patterns within the gird system
Each Spread has its own unique grid system and design behind it. Continuity can be found on the spread. For example, “The Plot Against America” article is printed in 3 by 3 column layouts on both page. They’ve also included unique features like text wrap and relatable illustrations to support the article.
Spatial zone, group of texts/images are combined can be seen in between the text.
Using design Tools for Analysis
Things to consider while doing this:
Columns can be subdivided and grouped within each other.
Ex. Huge picture taking more than a half space of the page
(Think about which color indicates which part)
Flow lines help the audience to differentiate the new, important content of the magazine from the body text and create the certain mood/tone of the spread(whether the spread has more open space or packed).
11/03/2020
Draft Presentation
Draft Presentation Feedbacks
Some takeaways:
- Beginning of the presentation was a bit text heavy
- Key colors given will make the audience to follow easier
- How are those information connected?
- How did the audience changed over time?
- Cut out a lot of unnecessary details and rehearse
- Faster visuals
- Make sure the audience gets a chance to see the original content before analyzing the grids
- Think about the time for videos(GIFs)/image and verbal should match
- Think about the quote “Rolling Stone Is Not Just About The Music”
- How can web/print be different within the same content?
11/04/2020
Additional Research
How is web and print different?
By comparing and contrasting the same content, we were able to figure out that Rolling Stone displays the same stories with a different method(in an aspect of design/tone).
Why do we have to consider about this?
Because, as a designer, we have to keep in mind that magazine(print) is not the only way how readers can approach to the story. They have an access using technology. It can be a computer screen(different size, version), mobile phone (also different size, version), and even an iPad. When we are designing for the content, we also have to consider who’s going to be the audience(general age group) for that certain platform.
Even though both displays the same content with Serif and Sans serif, we could see a difference on the grid system. While the print version on the left has a lot of context and imagery that creates a familiar/close(somewhat friendly) atmosphere, Rolling Stone’s web on the right, approaches to more modern trend by having more open space and straightforward.
For this TV review section, we can easily see how those two mediums displays same content. While the print version shows more traditional, memorable TV series for magazine subscribers, the web version vividly contains more recent/modern films from Netflix, which is younger generation’s media.
11/05/2020
Final Presentation
Final Presentation Feedbacks
Some takeaways:
- Red spot color on the presentation definitely relates well with the Rolling Stone theme
- A lot of changes have been made (reduced text and added more visuals)
- Animations were helpful to follow through the presentation
- Maybe more distinct color difference for slide 16(text and illustration)
- Verbal and Visuals were matching
- Nice to see the difference between the web and print — could’ve talked about it more
- Nice demonstration of color and type system, maybe could have told us what typefaces are being used
- “What did we learn” was interesting, and I appreciated the use of contrasting takes on the magazine and content
Self Reflection
This was such a nice experience to do because we don’t usually analyze how the web and magazine work when we’re reading it. Finding a deeper meaning, principle about a certain publication was interesting for me. Throughout this project, I’ve also realized that design is not just about looking fancy and artsy but actually includes a long legacy and value that the group has continued until now. Thinking about how and why people decided to do certain things was a new approach for me. Since it is meaningful/valuable to analyze a certain group that was past, present, or even future for some readers.
Getting to know more about how the grid system works was also new knowledge for me. Learning how grids can be combined, divided, and related to other important features, allowed me to successfully finish this project with no difficulties.
