Magazine Concepts and Ideas

After spending a couple hours at borders and looking through several fashion/cultural magazines, I found them to be fascinating, creative, fresh, and ridiculous; Clear, Rose, Lulu, and I-D to name a few. I made note of some of the cultural trends and styles of grid, large font types, beautifully large studio photos and decided that rendering my own photography would be way to challenging. I then had another brilliant idea. I decided to take the same basic concepts as something like Portland monthly and design a magazine entirely directed towards children just old enough to read but young enough to still feel important reading an adult mimicking children's magazine. Somewhere around 6-12. The magazine would be have categories similar to a newspaper: Living, Opinion, Business etc. Each article would be interesting comments, stories, or facts, hot-new items which kids would primarily appreciate. Imagery would be mixed photography and illustration. Essentially it would be a children's newspaper set into a Portland Monthly type of layout and grid

Commentary on The Grid

It was interesting to notice just how long the grid has been used and how it has evolved over time. Although grids during the Renaissance where largely used for perspective drawings or aligning an image, the grid hasn't deterred that much from the original concept. Aside from visual structure and reference, our modern grid has evolved into a stylized concept and tends to push itself outside the boundary lines. Personally I love working with grid and find its structure comforting, yet confrontational and I look forward to working on the magazine spread and the use of grid.

First Draft of Visual Storybook

There are certain things in life which deserve a spot of recognition for their life-time support; sharing joy, happiness, and satisfaction to all those whose lives they have touched. I speak from personal experience of the pure delight that every little cup of coffee brings me day to day. I believe the world would be a truly grim place without our daily increments of joy.

Somehow in this economy I manage to afford my coffees, however I like to make my own at home as often as possible. My favorite part of the process is opening the freezer stocked with coffee grounds and taking in that refreshing whiff of roasted coffee beans. I imagine that few things in life could smell better that coffee beans but that is only opinion I suppose. Anyways, as I proceed to prepare my mocha, I love to anticipate the first sip. The first sip in fact is almost better than the entire mocha itself. Because the first sip is such an important aspect of the coffee making, I also make sure that the temperature is just right; there is the right amount of chocolate and milk before I make an official first sip. Of course, the testing sips don’t constitute as a first sip however are often mandatory in the preparation stage. Another mandatory aspect for the perfect sip of happiness is the whipping cream. Although seemingly unimportant the layer of cool thick whipping cream with warm delicious coffee underneath is the only way to fully embody your mocha experience.

Although making coffee at home is great and economical, I have a hard time resisting the amazing convenience and taste of coffee-shop coffee. Not every coffee shop possesses the powers to give joy and happiness to those who drink of its coffees, however most do the job quite sufficiently. Such internal happiness from a material substance can be abused like all good things. Personally I always try to fabricate a reason or justify my need for a coffee splurge after I have done something associated with a task. This could be anything from finishing homework, working homework, or even as simple as being motivated enough to even start homework. All of above are great examples of valid reasons to partake of coffee happiness.

Without elaborating too much further, I believe that coffee is our gift from above to not only bring us life and sustenance, but joy, happiness, and internal satisfaction. Our own personal little cups of happiness.