The content I chose for this particular design critique was the magazine cover for the official star wars information magazine. This magazine contents contain the main magazine title, subtitles and text referring to said titles, and minor news text. This magazine’s cover is mainly trying to draw the user/reader's eye so it mainly only has major titles on the cover so people will have to pick up the magazine and read through it to find out what said title was referring to.
This particular designer used multiple different typefaces in different weights to not only draw focus to each title, but also to create visual hierarchy over each other so the titles don't look identical to one another. For the title’s that the designer wanted to draw more focus to they made them larger in scale and heavier in weight compared to the rest of the text this can be seen in the words, Star wars, Kylo Ren, Rebel romance and true grit. Another heading I didn't mention above was animated adventure, this is due to it being the same weight as its body text but it still classifies as a heading as it is set in a different colour typeface than the rest (white). As the main cover features the character of Kylo Ren (as a focus) the text is set behind and around him to create a balance in focus, this positioning for me is quite effective as it gives the text and the image its own space in a way and they aren’t conflicting a heap. There was quite the contrast with the background and the type as the background was quite dark and the type was white making it pop and stand out clearly.
Overall there are many elements that work well, some of these are the headings, the layout and the images used. The heading works well as they are bolder than the underlying text and stand out clearly from the rest of the cover, mainly the dark background. The layout allows the user to follow and understand all the information that the designer wanted to get across, this is done clearly by using clear headings and following the contours of the main image (a picture of kylo ren with cape somewhat billowing.) Mentioning the images they’re only two featured on this cover one being the main character the magazine is covering in this issue (Kylo Ren) and the other being a shot from the animated series star wars rebels. These are both great images used as they both are clearly related to their headings and are also complementary to each other. Not much didn’t work in this cover but the one issue i do have is the heading that says animated adventures. I don't believe it works as it's difficult to read with the red text over the black, the particular font the designer has used has thick and thin sections the typefaces the thicker parts stand out from the background but the thinner parts get lost and disappear into the background making it difficult to read. Mentioning that typeface I probably would have changed that out completely as even the white while it is a lot easier to read than the red it is still quite difficult to interpret.
As we were asked to keep all the information on the page but to mix up the layout and create a new version of the page I didn't change much. As mentioned above i liked how the page flowed with the background image (following his cape), with this being mentioned i had a strict rule to follow as parts of the image behind couldn't be covered. With this being said i changed two elements in two ways, i'm showing both interpretations as they have equally great features, these include a more even allocation of the text creating a framed balance and creating a different pattern of focus. On my first image (one with original cover image positioned above.) i changed the cover a minimal amount by moving the animated adventure text to the center bottom. This makes the bottom of the image reflect the top half with equal spacing along the top and bottom, i also moved the kylo ren text down to the center of that side portion equaling it out. The main issue with this change is the text moved to the bottom center covers the characters helmets which contain silver meaning the text might become illegible and difficult to read. The other change I made on my second image was the text placement. I changed where the kuylo ren text is to the bottom right and moved the little plus section across to the left side and moved the rest of the text up. I changed this so the characters text was closer and under the background image. There's a few issues with these changes as it does not balance the overall cover well and as the right hand corner is quite small the text has a chance and possibility of covering the helmet partially. both designs could be possible solutions but as I stated before the original cover image in my opinion shouldn't change and is aesthetically pleasing as is.
