In Search of Design Ideas
All designers are constantly on the search for ideas they can appropriate (borrow) and incorporate (blend) into their own work.
You need to do the same for your magazine.
A Design Inspiration Process (My Example)
I have decided to make a magazine similar to Kerrang.
Of course I had to understand my audience and what media they consume and use this information to give me ideas for my inspiration search.
I looked at a number of back issues of Kerrang and used YouGov Profiles Lite for artists that appeared on those front pages. I took snips of their audience’s demographics and their media consumption, particularly the other musicians/ artists / bands which cropped up. Here is my research on my audience and what media they’re into.
I then went in search of picture, words, designs as well Photoshop & Indesign techniques I thought might suit my Kerrang styled magazine.
To gather my images together I used Pinterest, which allowed me to pin my ideas to a board I called ‘Magazine Moodboard’. You’ll need to install the Pinterest tool bar button in Chrome in your profile. This will give the ability to ‘Pin’ images you see in a Google search.
I used the following search terms in Google after the band names or artists listed in my YouGov research.
- ‘Lyrics’
- ‘Album Art’
- ‘Logos’
- ‘Tweets’
I also searched for ‘Design’, ‘Graphics’ and ‘Typefaces’ along with with the following #adjectives, which I associate with Kerrang and the bands / artists which appear on it…
- ‘Grungy’
- ‘Urban’
- ‘Raw’
Use adobe colour wheel for a possible colour palette and include visual denotations and connotations that embody your brand and visual design.
This is a link to my Pinterest board
This is a link to a Pop inspiration board.
This is a link to an Indie Folk board.
Use INSTAGRAM for a source of fantastic images, ideas.
TASK – Get Inspired & Do some Research…
You should follow the same process as above.
- Do your audience research on a magazine similar to the one you want to make.
- Sign up to Pinterest, install the button in Chrome and create a new inspiration board.
- Search the media your audience is into, as well as designs, logos, colours, lyrics, tweets.
- After you have pinned about 50 images, go back to your Pinterest board and delete about 10-20% of the pins so you’ve got a board of around 40-45 pins, which seem to have some design coherence.
- Explain your pins
- It is important that you explain why you have chosen the images and what design features are attracting you. If you look at my board, I have edited the pins to explain what feature I like about them and how I might use them in my magazine.
- If you can edit the comments so that they can be seen easily then do so, otherwise summarise in the introduction what you have chosen and why and pick out one or two examples to examine in depth.
- Link your Pinterest board in a blog post called ‘Developing the Brand’ and reflect on how useful you found this as a way to gather ideas for your own design, which starts next week…