The design
When I set up this website and blog, I always intended to make magazine feature pages of my blog posts as a way to practise layout and visual design.
Therefore, I created my own images and content to accompany the copy! Pretty early on, I had the title in my head as well as a general idea of how I wanted the cover to look. I knew I wanted to:
a) include references to the Finding Nemo mid-credits scene
b) to portray how I am feeling in one image
So it had to include jeopardy and a bit of humour. In fact, the image was so clear to me, I had the cover image 80% completed before I started writing.
The images all started as rough sketches in notebooks, before being translated into vector/pixel art in the Affinity suite. As someone who is not adept at drawing people, I settled for my own style, with iconography and colours inspired by my personal journey.
As this was based on a Disney cartoon, stylistically I wanted it to be fun and bright. I played around with the textures and contrast between illustration and removable elements of ‘pieces of paper’. This highlights how the stage is changing around the main character. The use of a serif font reflected that ‘academic’ sense, particularly as this was a piece about moving between life as a student to a graduate. I was inspired by publications such as VOGUE or TIME in terms of styling.
Throughout I wanted to convey a story of this journey through the stages of grief. Once I had settled on the sub-headings, it made it much easier to visualise the scene. I played around with a lot of the elements in oceans and had a lot of fun adding small details here and there. Some of the things, such as the sky in the sunset image, were a complete accident.
The writing
It took about 4 weeks to pull both the images AND text together.
The text was the hard part. Getting my thoughts down wasn’t difficult – it was making sure they conveyed what I was trying to say.
I haven’t done English since GCSE; engineering degrees have a limited amount of essay writing (which is one of the reasons I went for it…). But I have grown up loving creative writing and writing prose. So the writing hopefully reflects that. It is much more descriptive and whimsical at times, but it is the best way to describe what I am thinking.
It is a personal piece. In the past few years, when I haven’t written stories to focus on my degree, I usually wrote for myself. Writing in journals proved to be an outlet for me to wrap my head around my feelings, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of it is very much unreadable, but I felt better for it.
It went through a lot of editing. Sometimes I was in a critical, logical mood, thinking ‘it’s too long’ so I cut out some unnecessary stuff. But sometimes I was in the mood to lay down wayward thoughts, so it got extended again.
This article is a polished version of that. I just wanted to be as honest and authentic to myself, as expression through writing (or even visual design) is the easiest route for me.
Putting these things together and displaying them in a public way is scary. Numerous times when I was writing I stopped and checked myself – is this too dramatic? Is this too rambly? Why do I sometimes love this or hate this? What would people think? Is this embarrassing?
But in that spirit to be more open, first and foremost I wrote it for me, not the public. I wanted to push myself with a different creative process – combining writing and an interest in publication layout. In the end, I enjoyed it!
Writing like this is still new to me. But through each one I write, I hope to improve.
[icon name=”tools” prefix=”fas”] Affinity Suite (Publisher and Designer)
To read the full article, click here: So, I graduated. Now what? | BLOG POST
