First Assignment

Your first assignment is to decide on a topic for your magazine, a GQ department page mark-up and a swipe book.

1) Concept:
Think of a theme for your magazine.
Try to make it something that fills a niche or one that is not too broad. It would be easiest to do it on a topic you enjoy/feel passionate about. Something you'd feel like working on for 12 weeks. Make it as narrow as possible. Write a paragraph describing it.

Figure out a target audience:

• age group (make it a narrow one)
• income level (yearly)
• education level (some school/high school graduate/some college/2 yrs college/4yrs college/postgraduate)
• geographic locale (urban/suburban/rural)
• gender (male/female/gender neutral)
(think about what the target audience want, what they aspire to...)

Make a contents list for the magazine including the departments. Figure out what type of stories run in your magazine considering the concept.


2) Swipe book:
Find inspiring sample images, a color palette, layout ideas and typography related to the topic.
A swipe book is very informal. Just try to collect at least 10 pages of images, type, words, anything that you find interesting or

inspirational. Remember this swipe is helping you with your magazine, there is no right or wrong way to make a swipe book.
For swipe check the blog posts , ffffound.com, etc.


3) GQ Magazine Mark-up:
Get a GQ magazine and pick up a department page such as Manual where there are lots of little details and scan and mark it up.
• Try to describe the sections you see on the page. Grid, body copy, caption, credits, rubric, folio line, etc. Be as specific as possible.
• Mark the grid as well.


4) Readings:
• For next week, please read the first two chapters of Ellen Lupton's : Thinking With Type.
• Also, get a Society of Publication Designers (SPD) annual. Try to get one that was made in the past year or two. (Latest one is the 44th.)
Amazon: SPD
• Read the Crash Course in InDesign which I'll post right after this post.


***** Everything must be in two forms, one on your blog and the other printed to be reviewed in class.

Contact me if you have any questions.

good luck!

Ayca