Magazine Project

The magazine I envisioned was one that was funded in a similar way to NPR or PBS. The magazine, entitled the Freed Press is meant to offer a balanced response to world events, without being influenced by advertiser demands. The magazine is meant to provide socially conscious, cosmopolitan citizens with a reliable news source. The magazine is also targeted to a younger crowd because I assumed that older readers are used to reading papers like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Time. Thus this magazine is meant to drawn in the next generation of news consumers.

The objective of this magazine is to provide clear balanced journalism. So, the graphic design of the magazine means to be consistent with the content, by being clear not misleading or sensational. Also, in trying to serve a younger audience, the articles are shorter and laid out to focus on readability, meaning use of white space to increase this readability. The magazine’s primary purpose is to be educational and informative, so all images are meant to have an informational or conceptual purpose.

My feature page has a clear conceptual meaning, that Muslim women are breaking a business stereotype through the use of color and dominant imagery. The text compliments the image by through a large and organic typeface. The deck head also uses a rounded typeface to maintain consistency. The front page is also conceptual by breaking the border into the organic F in the Freed Press. This employs the metaphor of being ‘inside the box.’ Even the title eludes the quality and reliability of the magazine’s content. The image on the cover is consistent with the image used on the feature spread. The jump spread is airy in order to increase readability, and the images provide hard evidence of Muslim businesswomen that the content of the article lacks to some extent. The pull quotes are meant to draw the reader in with provocative but uncontrived statements directly relating to the state of female business in the Middle East.