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Shakeel Mohamed

MFA in Graphic Design - 3 Yr Path — Graduate Graphic Design
Course:
GPRT-103 Type 1: Fundamentals
Faculty:
Cheri Gray

Weekly Magazine covers (Plus 81)

When: FA22. Tools: Adobe InDesign, Illustrator. We were assigned a fixed amount of content and hierarchy to design 45 typographic magazine layouts. Each week we had a different set of constraints, beginning with one weight/point size, and eventually ranging up to “type as image.” The goal of these exercises is to learn the fundamentals of typography through repetition, constraints, and experimentation. Every week we critiqued these layouts as a class.
Learning Outcomes:
Though I had used Adobe InDesign before, I have a stronger grasp of practical uses for the tool. Above all, I have a much better understanding of essential type concepts (hierarchy, white space, kerning, tracking, leading, rags, alignment, scale, rules, bars, and color). Learning more about the typographers in the copy we were using helped me stay inspired and to try new ideas. I would have liked to continue this assignment for an additional week because my design eye has improved greatly!
Out of 200+ magazine cover layouts, I think this was my most successful design.
To kick off fall term, we were assigned a “transformational” typographer to research and present their work to the class. I was assigned April Greiman. After five weeks of designing these magazine cover layouts, I was at the 2022 AIGA National Design Conference in Seattle and got to meet her (in my hometown)!
Thumbnail sketches. Generating ideas for 45 layouts every week was difficult for me early on. Cheri’s advice to focus on concepts through sketching was incredibly valuable, and I’ve applied that insight to projects in other classes as well.
Weekly classroom critiques. After five weeks of designing these layouts (over 230 in total), I received a triple check (signifying an excellent layout) during our final critique.
Each week our class pinned up all 45 of our individual layouts and had roughly 500 layouts on the walls. The applause after we completed five weeks of these exercises was incredible!