Polari Editorial: 4

For the past two years I have been the art director and designer of an online magazine. I thought I would share some examples of my work during this period. The magazine was titled: Polari. In it's original format, the magazine was an interactive Flash website, however what you see here is sadly a flat un-interactive version.

Patrick Wolf Review

I have chosen to upload this page because it is a good example of one of the design elements I used throughout the magazine: full-bleed photography.

I think that it was, and still is, a rare design feature to use full-bleed photography throughout a magazine - certainly you'll find it in interviews but in Polari we would use full bleed for album, film, book and gig reviews too.

The problem that would often arise is that when you use full bleed, you need a lot of negative space so that you have room to place text in areas where it can be read easily. This meant that I would often have to extensively photoshop the images so that they would work within the article.

The original image of Patrick Wolf used here, for example, was only two thirds of the size it needed to be, which meant I had to extend the image and remove some detail in order to make the image work for the design.

This was also one of the pieces of writing I contributed to the magazine.

I have uploaded quite a large file so that anyone wishing to read the text can do so if the download the full size version...

Time: 1 day
Medium: Photoshop & Flash
Reference: Photography by crazybobbles on Flickr