13.Gather Inspiration
from magazines and websites
T
oday’s highly image-driven world serves up a visual feast for designers. Magazines and websites are storehouses of fun, innovative and eye-catching design ideas. Glean design approaches from a variety of sources and then put your own fresh spin on them. Get inspired and create your own unique look.
Stacy Grice Thomas L. Sims Middle School, Pace, FL
“It’s good to be up-to-date on the current design trends so your yearbook appeals to the student body and is in line with what they are seeing in the world around them. That said, we never take a magazine style and incorporate it into our yearbook 100 percent. We always tweak ideas or conform them to our style for the year. We combine different ideas that we are seeing.
22
|
spring 2013
We have gotten a lot of sidebar ideas from US Weekly and Sports Illustrated. In terms of websites, onextrapixel.com and adweek.com are two places I check regularly for inspiration. Then I pin different design elements onto a pin board on Pinterest so I can look back next year. One year we went to Barnes & Noble and stared at the magazine rack for a cover design idea. We found a typography treatment that fit with our concept on Watch! magazine. I would have never thought a watch magazine would inspire me. It’s important to look for ideas that tell a story or can be manipulated to fit into your purpose and goal of a yearbook. For example, the new Dr Pepper ad campaign featuring “/1” promoting one-of-a-kind-personalities.
Stacy’s Tips 1. Always be looking for and be open to inspiration. I have based yearbook themes on a Liz Claiborne ad, a Michael Jackson song, and a random web search of suffixes I did for my Language Arts classes. I have found design inspirations online, in magazines and on billboards. 2. Use your phone to snap pictures of designs that draw you in and then post them to a share site like Pinterest. Several of my students follow that board and if they create a similar board, I follow them. It is a great way to collaborate outside of school. 3. We also have a physical inspiration board in the classroom where students can pin things they have cut out of magazines.