magazine project

I chose to graphically design a story about Taylor Swift and her night at the CMA Award Ceremony. Taylor Swift made history by being the youngest person to win the Entertainer of the Year CMA (Country Music Association) Award. Once I saw that she made history, I knew that there would be a ton of stories about her and that it would be great to design. I chose the headline of “Swiftly Making History” because it is a play on her last name, Swift. Also, “swiftly” means moving at a fast pace, which is exactly what she is doing: Taylor is 19-years-old and has already won so many awards for her talents, she also had a big night last night at the AMAs. Since the story features the CMA Award Ceremony, the visuals are limited to that night, where she is wearing the same dress. I tried to incorporate a little more than just the dress and found a picture of her performance to break up the same dress. I used the winners of the other awards to be the alternative story/sidebar for the spread.
I chose to use the colors because they all come from the CMA red carpet backdrop. The light cream color for the background of the spreads, is from the background of the CMA backdrop. The orange font colors I used for the “Swiftly Making History”, the byline, and the sidebar font color are all from the bottom of the CMA Award picture in the backdrop. The red fonts for the deck head and the body font is from the top of the CMA image. The background of the sidebar is the red font color at a tint of 25%. I tried to use the colors from the feature picture to incorporate it through the entire spread.
I used the Cantoria typeface because the sans-serif brings a sort-of country feel with a slight modern twist to help the magazine aspect of things. I chose to use Ex Ponto Pro for the headline because it is like calligraphy. I was looking for a script typeface that looked like it was hand-written, like she was writing a story about her music career. I also used this font in the deck head to emphasize the important words. It was also used in the pull quote to bring some attention to the important quote in the story. I chose to go with Bembo for the rest of the deck head and the body of the story because it is easily readable but a little stylish at the same time. I used Avenir for the captions because it is in the Sans typeface, contrasting the Sans-Serif Bembo. They are smaller fonts are to make the story more of a hierarchy than the captions. The sidebar is in Goudy Sans, which also contrasts Bembo, to bring attention to the alternative text. I used Snell for the header of the Sidebar because I thought the header should be something formal, like something for an award ceremony.
The pictures were limiting of which ones I could use for the spread and for the cover page. The ones for the story were easy because of all the pictures from the awards night. I used the feature image because Taylor was looking over and she looks like she is looking at the header. The other images were from the red carpet, stage, and Taylor’s performance. Also, there are some pictures of the other artists who won for the sidebar. I found my images on Bing Search Engine.
Cover page image: 2848 x 4288 (scaled down by about 50%)
Feature image: 2017 x 3000 (scaled down by 50%)
Kissing the award: 411 x 600 (scaled down by about 75%)
Stage with band: 400 x 307 (scaled down by about 75%)
Performance: 300 x 415
“Fearless” album cover: 170 x 170 (scaled down by 20%)
Darius Rucker: 170 x 170 (scaled down by 45%)
Keith Urban and Brad Paisley: 469 x 512 (scaled down by 80%)