‘Crop’ Magazine is a design culture magazine, aimed
at inspiring professional graphic designers and design
enthusiasts with a particular interest for typography.
Those with a passion for innovation, experimentation and pushing the boundaries of design will be the target audience for the magazine, inspired by the informed words of Ellen Lupton in her piece White Space and Kenya Hara in The Discovery of White. The aesthetic features of the masthead was inspired by the word itself; crop. The word ‘crop’ is used often as part of design terminology, facilitating a name for a design-based magazine. The frame that slices the letter-forms at their outer edges creates and edgy and sharp effect; the crop marks drawing the eye in towards the letter forms from the corner.
The concept for the magazine cover is inspired by the intersection of modern art and typographic experimentation, as suggested in Kenya Hara’s piece, ‘The Discovery of White’. Part of this modern art movement was the deconstructionism movement in the 1980’s and 90’s, a movement which defied the core principles of harmony, unity and stability. These are characteristics that ‘white’ may bring to a space, thus confirming Lupton’s case in White Space; does white space have a future in today’s digital world during a time were technology and media has developed a wider range of influences across the arts. According to Hara, deconstructionism brought ‘a new historical wave that aimed to deconstruct forms of the past completely and reconstruct them according to new aesthetic standards. Typography was often chopped up, layered and fragmented and purity of form was contaminated.
This interplay of imagery and type symbolises typography as a whole during this phase of experimentation, which deliberately are deliberately as they overlay each other on a complex grid in order to challenge traditional ideas of continuity. The use of pink and red is an extension of this idea, using colours that clash to disturb one’s perception of order.
