Horizon Magazine
The presence of the digital press is growing rapidly year on year and is replacing the paper press in the market. With a growing number of readers, especially the millennial generation, publishers have token abreast of the pace to provide not only high quality content but also a high quality digital product.
In the following case study, I will present my work on editorial design.
My task was to design a responsive online platform for a magazine, aiming to meet the needs and goals of Jasmine, a Social Media Assistant, my selected user persona.
Hi - fi prototypes
Hi - fi
User Persona
From several user personas to choose from, I decided on Jasmine. She is a Trendy Social Media Assistant who is passionate about fashion. She reads popular fashion magazines to find inspiration for her work. Her goal is to stay on top of trends and dress fashionably…
Why did I choose this user persona? The fashion industry is the most unsustainable industry in the world. Every year it produces tons of clothes of very poor quality, with no regard for the environment or the working conditions of its employees. The big fashion companies produce their clothes in third world countries, where mostly women work in dangerous conditions and earn little money. Hectoliters of pollution from production are not disposed of in any way. That’s why I chose this industry: to try to change it!
Brand Personality
I quickly defined the personality of this brand: it aims to create sustainability stylishly, promote fashion which is produced ecologically by people working in decent conditions, and teach people how to reuse clothes and raw materials. It also aims to advocate buying from local designers, it has to promote artists who create their works in reusable materials. Apart from fashion, the magazine has a mission to deliver a sense of awareness. Only by doing that we have a chance to change. It is going to be fascinating as to what I am about to present you.
After a long brainstorming I have chosen a name for the magazine: HORIZON — magazine for a broader view
Why?
This magazine promotes an attitude of looking beyond, noticing our environment, and seeing other people around us. Are the workers in the factories fairly paid? Do they work in a safe condition and are they well protected by the labor law? Nobly, it also guides people to think consciously, whether it is worthy of destroying the environment for a piece of clothes that they would only wear for 3 times, and whether their actions are good for the workers behind the mass production and our beloved planet.
Visual Competitor Analysis
I took into consideration popular fashion magazines — they are very stylish and eye-catching. I found one magazine that has a similar concept to ours — its design is not eye-catching, which is very common in publications dealing with ecology. I wanted to combine these two qualities: introducing interesting fashion and taking care of our planet.
Moodboard
So I did a moodboard survey, our interviewers could choose adjectives to describe our brand. As many as 67% chose nature friendly, 62% - sustainable, 56% - fresh, 39% - trendy and young, 34% - conscious. — The results are very satisfactory. The moodboard perfectly reflects the atmosphere that I wanted to create.
Style Tile
Style tile is a design deliverable consisting of fonts, colors and interface elements that communicate the essence of a visual brand and provides a bit of more emphasis on individual component details than moodboard.
Conclusions
This task was a challenge for me. The idea of combining fashion with the sustainability is more difficult than it seemed. Yet, this topic is very important and there is still a lot to explore. I hope that one day I will be working in the relevant topics to deal with such important sociological issues.