Combining Passions

Although design is the form of expression I spend a great amount of time on, theatre is my first love. When not designing, one may be able to find me rehearsing with the JWU Players, as it feels like a second course of study with the amount of time I spend on it. For our editorial class, we were tasked with creating magazines based off of quite literally anything, as long as it was appropriate and thought-out. This was my chance to talk about theatre, design for it, and make something beautiful.

Cause for a Cover

The whole magazine turned out well, but the cover is what was most intriguing. To expand on the project, it was the most fun and productive to create a series of magazine covers based off of different theatre topics. Throughout the year, I’ve been to many different theatre events, so I used those as my imagery. The images, unintentional as it was, all followed a red color palette that fit perfectly with white type. The original cover design had yellow accents in the typography, but was no longer needed with how much clearer the white was to read. For content, recent theatre events came to mind, whether it be something that I experienced or not. Of course, the JWU Players had to make a couple appearances.

The Editorial Mindset

For editorial pieces, fonts are incredibly vital. The font, Niagara, was used for the masthead since the original project and continued to serve it’s purpose for the final. However, the headlines changed, as Acme Gothic was used for titles and Bely italisized took the subheadlines. For spacing, a 6×6 grid was utilized to evenly space headlines with 0.1622 inches of space between the headline and subheadline. In editorial pieces, every decimal matters with spacing and creating a cohesive layout.

So What?

Theatre as an artform is grossly overlooked although it is one of the most physically demanding of them all. Creating these covers helped appreciate local theatres in headlines that normally do not get nearly as much love as they deserve. Although graphic design is my major and my future, I will always carry theatre as a hobby and have so much respect for those who work so hard just to entertain.