magazine layout

in the beginning...

i wanted to do a classic 50s magazine layout on motorcycles because the 50s era magazines really appealed to me and the style i thought would go well will the style of bikes i wanted to feature, and i chose motorcycles because i really enjoy riding mine and most the the magazines out there are just soft-core porn, so af far as i'm concerned there is a niche that needs to be filled.

the pictures i used were from motorcycling photographer Josh Kurpious, but he declined to let me use his work, just i just stole some pixilated ones to get my layout down. This is the style i want and i like the layout, also the title page needs a lot of work, i plan on having my info graphic here as an exploded engine.

Final... yes it's me standing on my seat.

I took all the photos for this layout myself, as i was unable to find anything online that i liked. i'm pretty proud of the result.

book cover final

here is the final, i struggled with typography but thing it ended up alright, i still am not completely satisfied with the title.

Book Cover Progress

Project 1: Finished Pictograms

Here are my completed pictograms, my first project in illustrator.

these are my small black and white examples. the common theme for all three are types of engineering.

The first icon represents mechanical engineering, i chose to use an abstracted gear. I chose gears because they have a broad use in the mechanical engineering field and gave an interesting pictogram.
I did two colored icons because the first is a little prettier to look at but can get confusing with the pattern print.

the second icon is used for nuclear engineering, it is an abstracted atom. The atom is the bases of nuclear engineering.

Civil engineering was the third icon which i chose to represent with a bridge. A large portion of civil engineering incorporates transportation systems and bridges are an iconic symbol of that. the inspiration of this bridge is the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco.

Pictogram Sketches

The assignment is to create at least 3 original, icons that communicate associated actions, processes, concepts or objects. Each pictogram must be done in color and in black and white.

First few were done before i knew that there assignment required 3 pictograms with a common theme...

Next i chose a few different themes and tried to decide which i liked the best...
the top three were music themed (and i expanded the cassette on the bottom). while the next three had an automotive theme (the far right pictogram was a tachometer, didn't translate well.)
Next i wend with a type of snowboarders theme, back country pro - parks - noob
finally i went with hair styles  dread - faux hawk - bald and bearded.

I liked the music one the best at this time... record - cassette - cd...

but an explanation during class made this less appealing and i sought an alternative. but with the music theme i played around with different shapes of the pictograms.

in the bottom of the image above you can see that i was getting a little hungry...

I have an interest in automotive so i thought i would play around with a few ideas here, the top one above has the theme of car problems and the bottom three and one on the next image were car parts.

I also thought hats might me interesting... but not really...

Practice...

And it seems to function.