OUGD601 PRACTICAL WORK INITIAL IDEAS

Following my research, I began collating several initial ideas for my practical effort towards this project. My practical work had to be a clear reflection of the written work or one of my case studies so I began taking them apart and finding the issue within each. 

My first idea was to revert back the Mute magazine and their downfall. I thought that perhaps I could go to Mute magazines website and convert their content back into print, following their roots. I'd take inspiration from their original print run which was done on a newspaper/tabloid format and printed on a modern interpretation of old pink newsprint. I'd use this format and combine it with some more modern design disciplines to make it more engaging and attractive to readers today. They designed their original print run to be new and interesting so I will give that belief a rebirth. The idea is that perhaps Mute magazine can be saved by print and that print is in fact not dead. 

Another idea I had was to play with the theme of magazine genre. In my research, I uncovered that a lot of great magazines today are developing already existing genres into more of a niche market. The result of this is more readers and magazine sales. This has been done by turning these mundane topics into more passion projects. My idea is to follow these footsteps and select a glossy mag with no effort behind it and turn convert its genre into one with a much more specific target audience. In doing this and exploring more abstract elements of that certain topic and also reflecting that in its design, I'd end up making a more successful piece of editorial design e.g Put an Egg on it.

This idea would celebrate both digital and print within one piece of work. The idea that print cannot survive without digital was fascinating to me so I thought that perhaps I could create a zine in celebration of these two practices. This could feature such things as the augmented reality app Artivive which connects the digital and print world together perfectly. I could also use QR codes to link sites to articles within the physical print.

A final idea I had was in reflection of the success of cut magazine and how it managed to get where it has done without any digital aid whatsoever. The idea was to create an online platform for cut magazine to give it that digital aid it never had or perhaps will never really need. The platform would feature small articles and features to keep a small community of readers online, giving people around the world a small insight into their DIY mag. The idea is that this would generate even more readers for the magazine.