As part of BMGT458Q: Computer Graphic, students had to create a magazine spread to demonstrate an understanding of Indesign, Photoshop, and use of grids. I choose to model my spread after the travel publication Travel and Leisure, and demonstrate my skills of Photoshop through color filters. The result was Harvest Holiday, a minimalistic grid layout featuring photography with pops of autumn colors to highlight nature in our most urban environments. 

In order to create a spread reflective of the style and audience of Travel and Leisure, I first had to do research on the travel magazine industry. What I found is that the typical audience is typically older, educated, married individuals with a large household income. Travel and Leisure reported that the median age of readers is 51 years old, with an average household income of $291,000, so the magazine had to reflect refined, luxury taste that was still family-friendly. The design of these magazines also heavily centered around photography in an effort to fully immerse readers in the locations they could be going, rather than just telling them. 

My original drafts, while a good starting point for the spread, ended up being too crowded and busy for the style Travel and Leisure typically has. I ended up stripping away some of the extraneous content for a more modern, minimalistic look. However you can easily see elements of both drafts, like breaking down copy into sections of cities featured and a single photograph on half of my spread, in my final design. 

As most travel magazines set a large portion of their layout for photography, I chose to do the same and utilize around 3/4 of my spread for photography. As I pulled all of my content from the internet, I began to find that the original photos did not all match in style. My solution was to use Photoshop to edit the photos into black and white, to carry through my minimalist design. In order to keep with the theme of autumn I chose to filter the nature in the photographs in warm seasonal colors, 

I would start the process by changing the overall photo filter, in this case using warming filter 85, to the autumn color desired.

Then using the quick selection tool to pick to the city elements, I would desaturate those elements of the photo. This process normally took 2-3 filters to ensure all of the details, like the truck in the left picture, were the proper color. I repeated the same process for the rest of my photos, for the completed look. 

The star of the final spread was the photography, highlighting the traditional fall colors in the famous landmarks the article sites. This photography takes up nearly 3/4 of the entire spread, with the rest of the space left to the copy. The text is divided into two-columns, an introductory paragraph and list of cities featured, designed for easy skimming of information. Overall the spread encapsulates an air of sophistication that appeals to the wealthy target audience through luxiourus portals of the cities and modern, geometric design of the spread.