PROJECT TYPE: 24-Page Magazine

For this project, the focus was to create a new magazine about a topic that there isn't really a market for. The magazine had to have a formal magazine structure (front brief, features, and back brief)

I chose to create a fashion magazine for this project. I named the magazine Fit Check. The magazine would typically go over the fashion from athletes, music artists, influencers, and more generally, just celebrities. The magazine look that I was going for with this project was more of a modern/experimental look. This specific issue of the magazine would cover NBA (National Basketball Association) fashion and how it has gained attention over the years and highlight a few of the players, shoes, outfits, and jerseys that have stood out over the past season. The theme of this project included almost "smudged" image treatment and vibrant gradients. I wanted to create a sense of movement and motion within the pages, relating back to basketball and how fast-paced it is as well the title, "Fashion Forward".

When coming up with an idea for this project, at first, I couldn't think of a creative magazine idea that there was necessarily a hole in the market for, all of the ideas I had, had already been done. It wasn't until I started combining my ideas, that I came up with combining basketball and fashion and honing in on that topic, which has became pretty popular and caught attention over the years. I wanted to target the "younger" demographic (20's - 30's) with this magazine because that's who I thought this would appeal to the most. I decided to name it "Fit Check" because it is more of a slang word that that demographic would say, meaning "let's check out the outfit". With a more modern name came a more modern look to the magazine. I really wanted the magazine to stand out just like the outfits that the players wear. When I was looking at inspiration, SLAM, Sports Illustrated, and GQ were the magazines I looked at the most because they were within the same realm of magazines that I was creating.

For my logo sketches for this project, I decided to try and include a good mark in most of them. Although most magazines just use a logotype, I thought it would be nice to add a mark within the logotype. I decided to go with the option of having a fire icon replacing the tittle of the "i" in Fit Check. The fire relates back to the modern theme I was going for and would help reach that target audience.

Below are my type experiments for the magazine. I went through a few different options for type and when I selected my type, I then went over a few different size points for my type to find a size that worked best. I was exploring a few different pairings and I ended up wanting to go with just a sans-serif to complement the modern look I was going for. If I was going to go with a sans-serif, I had to make sure it was a large font family so I could have options to play around with. The font I selected was Montserrat, I felt that it would complement the magazine pretty well. After selecting the type size, I then tested out the chosen sizes at different widths to help figure out a grid structure for the magazine.

I created a brand style guide for the magazine to follow throughout the magazine. The color palette was the only thing that was not followed because of the theme of the magazine and how there are many vibrant colors throughout it.

I wanted the cover to stand out a lot because magazines that have an eye-catching cover are the ones that ultimately get picked up and read/bought. So I wanted to make sure it was a cover that I would personally pick up  to read if I went to a newsstand. For my sketches, I mainly wanted to focus on having a player on the cover wearing a nice outfit, preferably whoever the feature was going to be about. So that is something I had to think about as well. I went with Russell Westbrook for my cover for this project because he was someone I felt had a good amount of info to use for a feature story. Below are my sketches for the cover, some digitized iterations, and the final cover selected.

This was a very exciting project to work on, especially with it being my first time working on a magazine publication. Once I finally got my concept down, I was able to create the rest of the magazine with a bit more ease. This was a more experimental project, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone a bit and try something different style-wise. I think I was successful with achieving the initial vision I had.