Flex Student Newspaper: #31 Freshers 2012

Freshers Mood Board Cover

Production has begun on the Flex Freshers issue for 2012/13. Above is the mood board for the cover and we are pulling in articles, building the mood board and designing as content comes in. I am currently trying to find illustrators for the issue as well as the cover. Myself and the Editor-In-Chief Dan Simpson know that this issues cover should set the standard for the rest of year and this is what we want to kick off with.

There have been a few changes over the summer. All of the design team I had in 1st and 2nd year and left so they can focus all their time on their 3rd year. That was also my plan, to pass it on to a new designer but I could not find anyone willing to take it on. I sort of understand it because being a design director is a lot of pressure. So far I have one other, soon to be 2nd yr, student designing a long side me and I am very grateful. I will have a lot to balance for my third and final year but I will have less on my plate than I did last year as I was freelancing as well as Treasuser for the African Caribbean Society at University College Falmouth.  In October is the fresher fair where we hope to recruit new people for all departments I will have to find some new designers. We also have a Facebook group but will try to rely more so on email and phone calls for communication as simply being Facebook can result in procrastination.


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Flex Student Newspaper #30

Flex #30 June 2012 is the final issue of the academic year and I am very pleased with it. Being the last issue of the year meant is was produced while people were trying to meet last minute coursework deadlines. I felt some departments looked quite strong and I will go into the summer holidays with a few ways we can improve our design. I will need to take some time to evaluate the year, production process and my team before making changes. Below are the pages I did the design & layout for in this final issue.

Flex #30 June 2012 Cover

Flex #30 June 2012 Editorial/ Contributors

Flex #30 June 2012 News Page 4-5. We have started to run the very short articles along the bottom. The black, blue and yellow bars serve as links to online and social media.

Flex #30 June 2012 News Page 4-5. We have started to get more vertical with some of the layouts as well as work things across the page and use the space more creatively.

Flex #30 June 2012 News Page 12-13. The centre page spread was one of the cover stories so we did something a little more special working closely with Sheri Matthews the Features editor. We decided to run the two articles along with a timeline of the queen at the bottom running the length of both pages to serve as a visual hook.

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Arem Duplessis, Design Director for the NYTM

I came across really good video on SDP (Society for Publication Designers) vimeo channel of Arem Duplessis, the Design Director for the New York Times Magazine. His seminar is called "NO FORMULA: Intuition is Underated" and although tt is over 3 years old but I found it inspirational and I really like his work. I would have applied for an internship at NYT but I have already missed the summer 2012 deadline. Although I am an an animation student I still have a thing for editorial design and since working with. Enjoy.

Here is an interview with Arem Duplessis on SDP
http://www.spd.org/2009/12/behind-the-new-york-times-maga-1.php

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"Where Do Magazines Come From" - with Nicolas Brett, Managing Director (MD) of BBC Magazines Worldwide

On Monday 14th May 2012 I attended a seminar entitled "Where Do Magazines Come From" by Nicolas Brett, Managing Director (MD) of BBC Magazines Worldwide.

I took some notes during his presentation. Below are some of the key points and questions I took away.

Can you take a company property and turn it into a magazine?
What is a magazine?
1) the dont disappear
2) companion & friend
3) people feel they own them
4) advisor
5) personal and community

Key Points to take away:
build (what the readers want) and they will come.
build a community around peoples common passions and interest.
set and lead trends. do not follow.

Keep the audience at the heart of everything you do.
Build a brand with international appeal.
Embody that across several channels; print, web, motion, newsletter, social media, podcasts, events, etc.
Define the role each channel will play in embodying the brand playing of each ones strengths


Market Segmentation: Present reader with (illusion of) choice?
same topic/ different viewpoint.

The Problem with children's magazines: (do other publications face same/ similar issues?)
forced to find new audience every few years.
feast and famine because of age group

____

At the end of the seminar I approached him to speak about internships of work experience at BBC Magazines and Nicolas was nice enough to give me the contact details of

Having wokred on the student newspaper I can now see more of the strengths of print, digital and online so I plan to learn the following.:
Learn HTML, CSS & javascript
Learn to develop for the iPad, iPhone and Android devices


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Flex Student Newspaper #23

#23 Cover

Rugby World Cup double page spread

London Fashion Week double page spread

Lifestyle section

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Flex 2011 Redesign Complete

You can see the full design process 'here'

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Flex Re-Design: Freshers Guide

On of the articles in the Freshers Guide is called '10 Things To Do Before SecondYear' by Hollie Anderson. I asked if I could see the articles before it was proofed so I could get an idea of what I have to work with. I will also be doing with for the other sections too.


After reading the article I felt that it would lend itself well to a poster quality approach. As you scroll down you will be able to see how the design has developed. I plan to experiment with illustration for maybe 5 of the 10 'things' and upload this later. But i personally feel that the last one, the most simple is the best and will continue to develop this.

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Flex Re-Design: Lifestyle Section

Today I decided to take a shot at the lifestyle section. Photography will play a large part in this section and is ideally at the forefront of the writer and editors mine. The only catch is that Flex has had consistently poor not to mention low resolution images. I want to take much more of a magazine approach to lifestyle as I feel it would lend itself well. Text-over-image is something I have been discussing with Henry but I will also need to run it by the printer. I would like to get the editors confident enough in letting us run full page, full bleed high resolution photos. Below is what I have in mind for lifestyle.

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Flex ReDesign Progress

Over the summer me and the Flex Design Team began redesign the student newspaper. Just to remind that the work you will see from Flex posted here has been a team effort and could not have been done without them, the editor and our new but small marketing team. Below is a sample of that design. We began by looking at typography and grid systems. The 12x12 grid was chose because fo the flexibility of use for a grid. It can be used at 6, 3, 4 or even an off number of columns for white space. Being  newspaper we felt this was the best option.


I have decided on some general rules for design and layout.
1) Establish a visual hierarchy:  Every page is structured from top left to bottom right. Important articles are placed in the top left, the less important ones are placed in the bottom right. Don't use the same headline point size for each article, it must vary.
2) Big pictures, big info graphics, use the strength of the paper medium (the photography is dependant on the story so this may not always be possible.)
3) The center fold should be like a poster and fill the field of vision. The centerfold should be so nice that you want to take it out and hang it on the wall. (I have begun to develop some info-graphics to go in the centre pages and online.)

12x 12 grid for Flexibility, 10mm Margins, 5mm Gutter.

Visual Hierarchy test

When it comes to typography we new the old Mercury and Ziggurat typefaces had to go as they did nothing for the publication. We wanted a much stronger serif/ sans-serif mix. We all settled on Baskerville, designed by John Baskerville in 1757, for body copy, pull quotes and captions quite easily. It was chosen because of its good legibility as a result of the difference between the thick and thin parts of the letterforms. We have used slightly looser leading; Baskerville will be sued at 9pt on 12pt leading where as Mercury G1 was used at 8.7pt on 12pt leading but when you realise Baskerville has a smaller 'x height' we wend up with looser leading making any long runs of copy look softer in tone and easier on the eyes.

Baskerville Regular for Body Copy. 

Baskerville Test

The headlines were not that easily decided. We put forward font such as Gotham and Futura but found although they work alone they did not have what it takes to be a headline. When Knockout came into the picture we experimented with several weights and were eventually able to settle on it.

  

Knockout: Headlines

Knockout Test

We have been talking with the editor about changes in production, distribution and design over the summer. It looks like the future of the paper will be exciting. I would also like to send it to Its Nice That magazine as well as a few others to see if we can get featured and some exposure. For now the deadline is fast approaching and there are still a lot of changes to be made as well as the looming Freshers Issue deadline. Keep an eye out for the full redesign at the start of September.

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Flex: Student Newspaper Issue 19

This term the design team says farewell to Rachel Maria Smith our regular Lifestyle section designer who is leaving the paper since being with us from the start of 1st year. She has done a great job and being a Designer for one of the UK's few student newspaper will look very impressive to employers on her CV. We are still looking for a new designer to take up the mantle. If you know anyone then tell them to get in touch with directly.

Despite our loss I feel this is the first issue of Flex that has been published after easter. I feel it is one of our best covers yet, something which we all need to put more time in. As you know I am Head of Design for the paper a role which involves working closely with the editors to achieve a quality and timely publication, managing a design team of of now 5; Mo, Nadya, Guro, Henry, Lou, designing a providing feedback on various designs, ensuring consistency across the publication, pre-press and enduring the printer gets the files on time.

There are only three issues for this final term so they should not conflict too much with course work and if they do it usually means I am up until about 3am on a Thursday night/ Friday morning with the printer screaming at me. (No, I kid. he does not scream he always seems very calm, I am the one who gets stressed.)

Next year there will be a new team of editors who are currently shadowing the 2nd year editors. I plan to arrange a meeting with them an improve the relationship between writers/ editors and the design team. Its will only the make the paper stronger. I have also had a few ideas about launching an online magazine to run a long side the paper. But i'll save that for another post.

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