Vicarious was a project for my BFA seminar in the Spring of 2017. We were each given a random page from the dictionary and told to pick one of the words from the page. Using the meaning of that word we would create a magazine. The word that I chose was vicarious: experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person. I began the project by thinking what kind of things you could experience through another person through print medium.
Masthead Design
One of the first portions of the project that we worked on was the masthead or banner of the magazine that would be used on the cover. There were many iterations, but the all revolved around an abstraction representation of travel. I found a relationship between the shape of a V and that relation to a plane — a plane is angular like a V and the shape of a V reminded me of a plane’s wing(s).
The first iteration made a 3D shape out of the V to resemble flight. I felt that in this design, the rest of the letters of Vicarious and the V felt very disconnected without a pleasing way to connect them.
The second iteration made the use of one side of the V and the gestalt principle on continuation to make the viewer imagine a circular shape being created.
The final iteration built off of the second one in that it used the gestalt to create movement around the spherical shape. This V and stripes are meant to instill a feeling of movement and speed around the “globe”/sphere.
Layout Designs
The layout of each spread of the magazine was designed to focus more on the photographs. The information was to be supplemental to the photos, which were the primary source of information for the reader. Because Vicarious was about experiencing Travel through another, I thought it would be appropriate to showcase the visual aspects of the city rather than a wall of text.
