In this self-initiated project, I decided to create a magazine centered around national parks to add to my portfolio. The goal was to create a logo, three magazine covers, and an article in print and online.
The logo I made was primarily square, but with a section removed from the lower right side to add some uniqueness to it. The magazine name was written in two different typefaces (Franklin Gothic Heavy and Brush Script MT) for further personality.
Next, making the covers. I found images in Pexels of Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Gateway Arch National Parks by Siva Seshappan (Source), Lukas Kloeppel (Source), and Federated Art (Source), respectively. The photos were combined with all the other typical elements of a magazine cover: the masthead, the issue date and number, and cover lines scattered about (including at the bottom of the cover).
The Gateway Arch cover was the trickiest. I wanted to combine two different parts of the day in Federated Art’s image. In Photoshop I used the new Generative AI tool to extend the image since there wouldn’t be enough space for the Gateway Arch and the masthead. Next, I used the Sky Replacement tool on one copy of the new image and then combined the two most recent images into one.
The article below is from the January issue up top. It was created in Adobe InDesign with some work done in Photoshop. The article was written with help from Chad G. Parker-Thompson (aka ChatGPT).
For the intro page, I designed a headline in Photoshop where the image can be seen through the lettering. I wrote the headline with the typeface “Permanent Marker” and rasterized it. I then found an image featuring the Merced River from Unsplash taken by Franky Magana (Source), made a selection around the headline layer over the image layer, and deleted the part I didn’t need. I used a darkened and desaturated copy of the image from Unsplash and brightened up parts of the headline to create a significant amount of contrast.
Finishing up the intro page in InDesign, I combined the headline image with an image of a map by Filippo Peisino via Pexels (Source).
The rest of the article was done in InDesign. It includes text about Yosemite Park and the Merced River, free images with captions from nps.gov (Source), and a pull quote from the article written in the Permanent Marker typeface over another section of Peisino’s map image.
I made an online version of the article here.
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