Negatives Case Study

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A Vivid Visual Journey ‘Negatives’ is a triannual premium collector’s magazine for the Indian context that aims to draw the attention of the audience towards the art of photography.

Negatives Magazine serves as a space that offers a sense of vivid visual journey to the audience through photographs as it profiles history, photo-stories, extraordinary street life that catches the attention of travellers and photographers, the personalities behind the lens and their contributions to art.

‘Negatives’ also introduces a section - embracing the fine art photography through words reminding the audience that the magazine is not ‘about’ photography. But the content itself is photography. Negatives capture the subtleness in the unseen work of living photographers. The magazine is aimed to give a sense of belonging that whelves the photographs into the readers. Letting them miss out from the present and take time to embrace the thought that defines the photograph.

As a brand, we love photographs.

We love the essence, mood and feeling that it leaves us with, and also, it becomes a way to express our own emotions through a visual art form. We believe that photographs are the universal language that anyone can understand, relate, feel and connect with. We wanted to deliver this feeling of connection through photographs and the story behind them.

The first thing we knew we had to do, was talking to photographers from different backgrounds and age group.

We spent time going through 100+ responses from our survey. We could see some similarity in the opinions and some good insights coming together. Apart from this we also had a one-to-one conversation with Artists and Photographers who were very interested in our approach to making this magazine possible.

Conversation Give them more visuals to look at and less texts to read.

As photographers they just need images which is more than enough to satify their hunger for content.

Social Media are great platforms and is free. It’s hard to make someone buy a magazine when they have a smartphone with internet.

People who aren’t that serious about photography would still go through it if they find it in a place like a Library, Book Store, Coffee Houses.

Reduce Ads.

There is a Tangeble aspect to printed photograph and magazine, which still makes it unique when compared to digital media.

Only people who are serious about photography might want to purcase a magazine.

Don’t make it look like a commercial piece of work.

Try having a community around the magazine.

Magazines are also important from a collectors point of view.

Brief for the magazine We understood what people had to say and saw some changes in the way we started looking at the problems. Our main target audience shifted to people of age +20 which included Photographers, Art Enthusiasts, Poets, Designers and Travelers.

The idea was to create a premium magazine which focused on prioritising the content ďŹ rst, trying to reducing the number of irrelevant advertisements.

Understanding that it’s a photo/visual-heavy magazine and justifying the use of texts.

Design decisions that look into the tangible aspect of the printed magazine and good ow of the content to make it feel premium with good print and paper quality.

Stylescape

Raleway Thin Raleway Extralight Raleway Light Raleway Regular Raleway Medium Raleway Semi Bold Raleway Bold Raleway ExtraBold Raleway Black Benton Sans Regular Benton Sans Book Benton Sans Medium Benton Sans Bold Benton Sans Black Futura

Design Elements

Colour and Identity

The Brand is modern, strong, bold and artistic. The colours had to be bright, contrasty and bold.

Negatives is a Print Focused Magazine, which delivers high quality print and is one of the important aspects of the brand, CMYK was choosen as it also worked as the brand identity.

Text Fonts are consistant allowing flexibility with different weights and sizes to choose from.

Raleway is mostly used for the Brand and Benton Sans and Futura being used in the magazine.

Raleway Thin Raleway Regular Raleway Bold Raleway Black

Benton Sans Book Benton Sans Medium Benton Sans Bold Benton Sans Black

Futura

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Design Elements

Visuals Visuals and Photographs are the key elements of the magazine and the brand.

Images which makes you think or evokes a feeling are used throught the visual journey of the brand and magazine.

The images have slowly become the styling of the brand itself.

Brand Name The name NEGATIVES refers to the negatives that the photographer gets after developing a film. It emphasizes on the importance of that critical step in the treditional film photography, where the film gets developed and the photographer finally gets his hands on the negatives. It’s that first step where the photographer can look at the images, but in NEGATIVES .

Logo

Simple, Textual, Bold.

The font used was Raleway.

The G in the logo has been modified to symbolise ‘Redos’ that a photographer goes through to get his shot!

The brand certainly has the potential gather a community and host events and exhibitions which create more opportunity for the brand.

Photo credits Vlad Bagacian Michal Osinski Sam Forson Gabriela Palai Matt Hardy Snappwire Eberhard Grossgas Jeys Tubianosa

A Vivid Visual Journey ‘Negatives’ is a triannual premium collector’s magazine for the Indian context that aims to draw the attention of the audience towards the art of photography.

Negatives Magazine serves as a space that offers a sense of vivid visual journey to the audience through photographs as it profiles history, photo-stories, extraordinary street life that catches the attention of travellers and photographers, the personalities behind the lens and their contributions to art.

‘Negatives’ also introduces a section - embracing the fine art photography through words reminding the audience that the magazine is not ‘about’ photography. But the content itself is photography. Negatives capture the subtleness in the unseen work of living photographers. The magazine is aimed to give a sense of belonging that whelves the photographs into the readers. Letting them miss out from the present and take time to embrace the thought that defines the photograph.