Week 1 - Observation Exercise: Let's look at some designs!

One of my homework assignments for the week is to take a look at designs.

We are to bring some of our favorite designs to class next week so our instructor recommended that we get some magazines to cut out and bring in.

She doesn't seem to much of a computer person haha.


Anyways so I went to down to the bookstore and picked up my two favorite magazines... back when I used to buy magazines: Psychology Today and GQ.

My have times changed...





Right from the get go, I open the GQ magazine and I see my favorite type of web design.



This page is so sleek. My favorite part has got to be the center of the phone mockup, where there's the colored GQ logo. The margin above and below are the same size as the icon itself, giving it the right amount of attention. It also serves as a clever indicator separating the title and the content.

The text found on the right side of the phone give a good amount of information and it's not overpowering. Plus there are 3-4 word headings on each section to give the user a TLDR.




Damn Matthew Mcconaughey looks so fine with his children here (well I think that's his children). What I really like about this design is how well everyone is dressed equally. Not even dad is outdressing the others in the shot. I like how the girls are looking in the same direction as dad, but the boy is looking away giving a hint that he's a troublemaker.

I must say this is the type of family I want to be in (at least from the outside). And of course the Dolce & Gabana logo is positioned perfectly in the empty space and right next to the family making that association.


Up next is the cover story and I gotta just point out that I think this looks like SHIT.



First of all the typography is so difficult to read and secondly what the fuck is the "Beckiest Man Alive"? Oh it's "Becksiest Man Alive"... supposed to sounds like "sexiest man alive". Sigh... case in point, the font is hard to read. Have they heard of whitespace?

Sigh... Beckham deserves better...



I was pretty disappointed by the lack of good design (or at least what I consider good design) in the GQ magazine.


So I switched over the Psychology Today and found much better designs.


Immediately I stumbled upon a quick one-pager about the myths of sex.



What I really liked was that the background image was not easy to figure out immediately but quickly soon after it became apparent that the image were to people kissing. The most important aspect of this design to me was the color. The faded-red, pink color really gives that hot feeling which is so fitting for the content. This would be so different if the image was tinted with blue.


Up next was article about kids and autism.



The color scheme they chose is so child-like it's amazing. I couldn't have picked more "childish" color scheme than this one. The colors have such a play time feeling as a variety of these pastel colors can be found in any kids toy box, especially a boy's. I think culturally girls would have more pinks and softer tones than boys.

Furthermore they also printed the colors in a pattern that it invokes a "scrabble-like" essence, a board game played by many in their childhood.



The last design I found was the title page for an article talking about how men are underachieving in life than their ancestors.



The black and white gives a more simple and serious tone.

To me the arrow was quite symbolic. The arrow symbolized masculinity and the way that tip was being cut off kind of made me think it was to symbolize a penis. I asked someone else that and they didn't get the same feeling. Haha maybe my mind is in the gutter.



So there we have it, after looking at 2 whole magazines, I only found 5 designs that I really liked. The other ones either seemed like they were cramming too much content in it or it was just so messy and difficult to get what the meaning was.

I have a design mentor as work and this is precisely the type of exercise that he wants me to do. He told me to look online and on Pinterest and find designs that I like and explain why I like them. This process will accelerate my learning because I will know by example of why some thing works and why some things don't.