Dread Canvas

Dread Canvas: A Gallery of Nightmares is a Magazine Layout Project I did for a College Assignment. I was very inspired by David Carson's Grunge style, and wanted to create a magazine displaying one of my interests: Horror.

Challenge: Create a Magazine Layout, 1 cover and 4 pages.

Personalities: Grunge, Contemporary, Horror.

Deliverables: 1 Cover Design, 4 Magazine Page Layouts, 3 Mockups, Color pallet and Mood Board.

I started with creating a mood board to give me an idea of what style I'm going for, this also helps me develop a color pallet and type inspiration. I gathered all these photos from Pinterest and gathered my colors from them to give me my color palette.

Next, I started to create sketches to get an idea of what I wanted for the layouts of the inner pages.

Then I took some time to brainstorm a logo. I spent a whole day staring at fonts until I found what I thought would be best for the brand. Something bold yet grainy, to give the reader that "grunge" feel.

After I had an idea for my layouts and logo design, I went ahead and focused on my cover. I created two drafts.

Here is Draft 1, I like this original concept, but I wanted to experiment more than just text on top of a large picture.

Here is my final draft. I wanted the word "Dread" to seem like it's oozing down onto the picture below it. I also played a bit with the type under the photo to create a sense of vertigo, as if the reader is getting dizzy. I did this to try and emulate discomfort.

After creating the cover, I knew I wanted the background of my magazine to have texture to it, I wanted it to look rusty and dark to help contrast my off-white text, so I created two backgrounds with very subtle changes between them in Procreate and uploaded it into my InDesign. I wanted them to be cohesive but not exact copies of one another.

Finally, my layouts, I used my sketches from before and filled the body paragraphs with filler text (Lorum Ipsum).

This project was very experimental for me, and it inspires me to do more Grunge-style work in the future. I'm very passionate about the artists and their work within this project, this was a lot of fun to work on. Mockups below.