creative skills - Figure and Ground - 10/11/15

Figure and Ground-
The eye differentiates an object from its surrounding area.
Lead the eye.
Figure = positive shape.

Everything that isn't a figure is a ground.

White space
blank space negative space between elements of your design.

• active white space
• placid white space

Active White space is consciously added to the design for emphasis and structure.

Gives a sense of luxury and lifestyle.

Doesn't always have to be white.

The skinny is a monthly independent cultural magazine based in Manchester. Though the size and the stock ,paper, printed on is the same used as a news paper but the contents within and also the layout makes it clear that this is a magazine. The images used are big and bold and there positioning within the magazine are all thought out and gives sense of a grid being used like one a news paper would use.

The blank space used at the top of the pages left for the title to be put in gives the sense of a magazine as a newspaper wouldn't leave blank space like this, yet it is common practice for magazines the large images used are to entice people into the articles and the type seems second to it being small yet legible enough to read. The magazine also uses extracts which are magnified segments of important texts within the article, this is another technique used to make the article more readable and exciting. 

Another way in which it is clearly a magazine is pages devoted to images to start or follow an article, to emphasis and show a story within, these pages have very little type other than captions of the images and possible a title. These pages hold a lot of black space to create clearer images and a nicer looking spread for the reader, a news paper would not do this style of page.

NME have currently gone through a huge change in there business structure going from a weekly music magazine sold at £2.70 to a free magazine which feels more like a teen tabloid which talks about film and fashion, it has lost a lot of its fan base and is now filled with adverts. It has some similar aspects to 'The Skinny' using a similar cheap news paper stock to be printed on yet it differed from the other magazine as the NME is more aimed at a younger audience, you can see this through the little use of blank space and the images behind the text, it doesn't really have a structure and is confusing to follow. While 'The Skinny' has a much more thought out structure and grid in use, it is clear and legible, the way it is spread out is classy and very easily digested unlike the clunky design used by the NME.