First collection of supplements

Here are some supplements mainly collected from newspapers over the last couple of years that I would be competing with, or working alongside:













I am planning to purchase this weekend's variety of newspaper supplements to get updated versions of these, but this initial collection helps me to quickly realise that there is a niche for the type of supplement I want to design, as the continuous themes running through these are categorised simply into women's lifestyle and well-being stories, food, fashion, money and sport. There are sometimes culture sections within the actual newspaper itself, but I hope that my slightly humorous and relaxed take on regional dialects and my fresh, simple design will bring a new look to supplements so that it doesn't become a dated throw-away item after a few weeks.













There were some interesting layouts that I can use as inspiration for my supplement design, showing overlay of text over photography and how the two can work together simply and effectively.

Digital campaign inspiration

The Daily Mail newspaper has launched a TV campaign to promote its supplements. This is a realistic example of how I could work digitally, as well as print based, to promote my set of supplement designs. It is one of the first in the series of ads promoting the fashion and lifestyle supplement.

Unfortunately, I couldn't upload the advert itself, but here is a link to it instead:

Daily Mail 'supplements' by M&C Saatchi


Another way of working digitally could be to produce an online presence of the set of supplements, which is a very popular add-on to today's print based media. Here is an example of how it could look:

Introducing Supplements

I have written my new brief and decided to 'Design a set of magazine/newspaper supplements that explore regional dialect and phrases within the everyday English language. Produce promotional material to support the launch of the supplements.'

Because I am aiming it towards weekend morning newspaper readers who are interested in the culture, depth and origin of the country's language of today, I will begin to collect Saturday and Sunday newspapers, such as Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. Images of these supplement designs will then be posted and analysed here in terms of use of size, colour, layout, use of typography, etc.

I will work within the guides of editorial layout, that I learned within the typography module, but create designs that stand out from existing weekend supplements by being simple, minimal and fresh.


Here are some supplements I have found to begin with. Many keep with the formal, multiple columned, busy layout of the newspaper it is found in. For example the Olympic Supplement and Great Yarmouth Sport below just look like pages that have fallen out of the newspaper, instead of standing out and being their own publication. I understand that they might take on the theme of the newspaper to match the target audience, but that doesn't always guarantee it to get read.































































These examples from the Cambridge Style supplement and the Eastern Daily Press take on a more magazine style, whether it be because they are aiming it towards women with their typical 'life, style and wellbeing' themes, or because they want to appear unique and separate to the newspaper, I think they work better than the formal, newspaper layout supplements above.






































































































I have only scratched the surface here with existing supplement designs, so I will now begin to research more thoroughly into what is already out there.

Editorial layout inspiration

This magazine's style and fresh, simple feel is very much how I like to work. It looks crisp and clean and is an inspiration to how I want to pursue this new brief. Incorporating photography, simple colour palettes and creative typography layout designs is the basis of what I want to achieve.

Design Practice 2

Before writing the new brief I wanted to research into contexts and products that I know I want to work with and gain a deeper understanding of. Experimenting with typography and editorial design in the form of magazine layouts is what I want to drive towards with this brief to produce a design direction for my ongoing portfolio. Because I have to consider product, range and distribution, I will obviously create designs suitable for across a range of media, not just magazine layouts, but this is my chosen starting point.

I want to play around with the hierarchy of text and be able to design bold, fresh titles for the spreads like these examples below.




































I have begun to notice that I am drawn to the combination of double page spread photography, or one impact image page with type cleverly positioned around or on top of that. These examples all have that in common:



































Denisdesigns.com












Boom Tang magazine












Life Lounge Magazine


This design below is different from the others as it involves simple illustration as the main element, not photography, but I chose it as an example of how simple colours and playing around with the space can turn a small one column spread into an aesthetically well designed piece.











New Zealand magazine, Idealog, Issue 12, pg 46