Magazines

=Magazines: Magazine Business= BY CINDY WONG

Rationale
In this project, I originally wanted to examine the life of a magazine and its cycle. Through exploration, I came to realize that it was quite a broad term, and decided to go about to discussing the business/company aspect of a magazine company. From the initial concept maps, the ideas were thought out quick and short, and evolved to become bigger things when I ended up changing direction. A magazine business basically does not just consist of a simple company that prints and manufactures, rather, it is a company that includes what any types of business would regularly have. It is interesting to understand that magazine companies not only have to advertise for themselves, design for themselves, but to also have the responsibilty to manage their own expenses and manage their own money. One can learn from the final concept map is how interesting a magazine company runs- more than one can imagine.

Initial Concepts
When working on the ideas, I managed to come up with a small number of ideas when I asked myself what a "magazine company" does. Based on my initial ideas and things that I already knew in my head, I plotted them out in CmapTools.


 * [|first concept]
 * [|second concept]

When researching, I looked for things that reminded me of concepts of a magazine (i.e. the masthead, the table of contents, where a magazine is found) and kept them as references.


 * [|magazine rack1]
 * [|magazine rack2]
 * [|magazine spreads]

Different experimentations:
//First Idea//

The initial concept map's rough work were last-minute changed from the title "Magazine Company" to "Magazine Business". It became a struggle to interpret into a visually interesting design because of the fact that "magazine" reminded me more of a fancy and fun kind of thing to read, while "business" reminded me of structured, bold and straightforward type of feel. With the strong contrast, I was able to come up with a not-so great concept map.


 * [|hand-drawn rack]
 * [|colored rack]
 * first idea concept map

//Second Idea//

The first idea was scrapped and revised, planning to be executed in a completely different direction. The hand-drawn imagery DID reflect a fun, fancy and colorful thing to see as a visual, but lacked the business aura. I realized that I had to do something that had bright/bold colors, but a more structured type of concept map rather than an-all-over-the-place map. Therefore, the next map redone would be bold words, bold colors, being influenced by a magazine -not a BOOK and be NEAT.

I began again with a sort of typographic element to keep the "fun" in the magazine, so I came up with a masthead that connected together with a magazine shape.
 * [|new_masthead.jpg]

Some of the rough work.
 * [|rough_1.jpg]
 * [|rough_2.jpg]

The beginnings of the new concept map.
 * [|new_masthead_concept.jpg]
 * [|new_concept.jpg]

I changed up the colours eventually to become more vibrant.
 * [|magazine_business_2.jpg]

Final Concept Map
[|2005p_pro01_08_cwong.pdf]