Hyperallergic Magazine Spreads
Brief
This project was designed for a Typography for Web & Print course at La Salle University. The assignment was given as an exercise in making typographic design choices that create hierarchy among multiple sections of text. Although the copy is pulled from a real article by Eileen G’Sell for Hyperallergic, the professor did not link to the article and gave minimal background on Hyperallergic as a brand. The information provided in the assignment brief is as follows.
Name of the magazine: Hyperallergic
About the magazine: Hyperallergic is a forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking about art in the world today. Founded in 2009, Hyperallergic is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.
Headline: Depravity and Delights in Nicole Eisenman’s Prints
Pull Quote: If God (and the Devil are in the details, the craft of printmaking proves a powerful outlet for exploring Eisenman’s most enduring themes.
Author: Eileen G’Sell
Page numbers: 24-27
Requirements: All images must be used in some way, but you do not need to showcase each image like a gallery. You may crop, zoom, and manipulate the images as you see fit.
Typography
Six Hands
Designed by Alexander Lubovenko and Alexandra Korolkova. Released by Paratype.
For the headline, I wanted a hand-drawn font the mimics Eisenman’s intentionally rough, sketchy style. The jagged edges of each letterform’s brush strokes and the alternative glyphs made Six Hands Brush fit in easily with the rest of the page.
The font automatically alternates glyphs as you type, but to emphasize the natural handwriting feels, I adjusted a few of them, such as using the alternate “D” in “Delights.”
For the pull quote, Six Hands Brush was the only option that made sense to bring attention to it and tie back to the first two pages. It’s in a slightly smaller font size to fit the space. Originally, I had pictured using extra large quotation marks in a light color behind the first and last words, but it didn’t make sense given the long, thin shapes that Six Hands Brush provides, and using a different font felt out of place.
I chose to type the page numbers in Six Hands Brush to tie the design together.
Bebas Neue Pro
Designed by Ryoichi Tsunekawa. Released by Dharma Type.
On some level, I realize I may be falling for the trap of this font being a new designer’s crutch for a sans serif option. I chose this font because it looks similar to what is used in Hyperallergic’s logo.
For the captions, I used the book weight so it would be thinner than the body text. I made sure to give the captions at least a quarter inch of padding between themselves and other text and set the tracking to 25 to try to compensate for the legibility issues that would arise for some readers (the contrast on this color combination passes all but the WGA AAA for normal text.) Alternatively, I used pink for the caption on the first print with a maroon gradient background so it would legibly fit on the same page as the print.
For the folio and byline, I used the bold weight to establish these elements as important by ultimately secondary information about the article.
Colors
To help differentiate between sections and the purposes of each, I established a color palette pulled from Eisenman’s “Contagion,” the first print shown in the article.
The two shades of green used in the pages’ border and the folio, and the khaki color of the background compliment the grayscale palettes of Eisenman’s other three prints. Meanwhile the maroon and pink add a pop of color that help the headline and pull quote jump out at a reader who may be skimming through the magazine.