What's In This Project

(The entire magazine spreads can be found below)

Sustainable Blueprint is an architecture, engineering, design, and city planning magazine that focuses on sustainability. This is a magazine for a non-existent company that I made during university. I created the brand, the name, the logo, and decided their main message. This included market research of competitors and profiles of target demographics. I also chose and edited the articles and wrote minor and major parts of some of them.

All layout and design of the magazine is 100% created by me. All illustrations (including the advertisements) are created by me. Most of the images are not taken by me however some are. I also did the entire printing process, including prepping the file for print and self-printing the magazine.

Original Advertisements

I also made mock ads for real companies. An example of two of these is on the right on desktop, or below on mobile. The brands were choose to match the identity of the magazine.

Branding

The Branding of the magazine is more then just the logo, fonts, and colors. It also includes the Image and tone of the brand, and its target audience and demographics. This influences things from the tone of the writing, all the way to the layout and types of images used.

Process

1. Initial goals: Decide what the magazine was going to be about and then create profiles for the types of people that would be the target demographic. After that I gathered data on competitors and what they were doing well.

2. Making the branding: I choose a name by brainstorming ideas and also getting naming ideas through ChatGPT. With this name I went through the process of creating a logo, choosing fonts, choosing a color scheme, and creating a brand identity.

3. Created a layout: This included deciding which articles were going to be in the magazine, finding the articles or writing them, then sketching a base layout of all the pages.

4. Designing the magazine: For this I first set up the document. This include deciding what type of grid I was going use, how many columns and rows would be in the grid, the typefaces I was going to use for what, the margins of the pages, deciding the line spacing and aligning my type to the line spacing. I then found or created high resolution images needed to enhance the articles. Using these images, articles, and other design elements, I designed the layout of each page. I also made sure to adjust the paragraphs and type to meet typographic rules like removing orphans/widows. I also verified articles and edited them to improve readability and accuracy. After this I created the ads.

5. Print and revisions: Before final prints I made multiple text prints to see color and scale. After multiple revisions I printed final versions of the magazine. To print the magazine I prepped the file with a third part extension for Illustrator and other software. I then used professional grade printers at the university to print and staple the magazines. After that I used a paper trimmer to cut off the bleeds. I did two revisions after this stage until I had a final product.