OUGD502 - Studio Brief 02 - Deuce Studios: Layout & Imagery

As the colour scheme and type was now confirmed, I was able to move on to considering layouts and imagery.

Harrison was mainly in charge of the imagery of the publication. For this, we agreed to follow a tennis theme, as we found out in the interview that Jonny is a huge tennis fan and the other two members are getting into it. Such a theme also obviously links to their studio name. The main concept Harrison came up with was to use old, and new, photos of tennis players that have been successful. This was to visually make the tennis theme very identifiable, but to represent Deuce as being successful, celebrating their achievement to set up a studio in such a short space of time.

As our Designbytwo page is very colourful and vibrant, we wanted to tie in a fun element into the report. By sketching playful, Deuce-lime lines over the images, we were able to create a striking aesthetic that is modern, engaging and suitable with the colour scheme set. Some of the illustrations and images that Harrison provided me with can be seen below.

Despite the required outcome for this project being a digital report, we wanted to consider how we would physically make the publication, as we want to eventually send Deuce a copy of the work we have done. I would personally love to work with them in Summer/next year; therefore, this would be a great chance to physically show them my skills in editorial design.

Rather than having a publication with the same stock on every page, we wanted to make the report more interesting and tangibly exciting by using a variety of papers and materials. As a result of this, it was agreed that the lime-green illustrations would be printed on either acetate or tracing paper. These could be laid over the images, so that Deuce could see the full tennis images if they wanted to. A quick mockup was made highlighting how the tracing paper (right) could be printed onto and then inserted into the spine with staples (or possible sewn).

For the front cover, I kept it simple and made use of different layers. The two circles that make up the Deuce logo would be cut out of a black cover. This would allow the two dots on the acetate/tracing sheet to show through. Another mockup of how the front cover (left) and inside spread (right) can be seen below.

The main challenge that I had to consider was the layout of type and images in the publication. As I always put a focus on using Vignelli's rules in publications, I wanted to try and follow a different approach in the report. Rather than sketching out some ideas, I focused on the set tennis theme and took inspiration from tennis court markings and the sport itself when approaching the layouts. As the majority of modern publications have equal page margins, it was appropriate to follow such an aesthetic and keep the content centred in the middle of the publication.

When considering the placement of type, I looked at the serving positions of players. Keeping within the central margins, one layout choice was to use the diagonal placement of players when serving. This can be seen in the example to the left below. Other layouts were inspired by the actual court markings. The 'who' and 'how' page layout was developed entirely from a birds eye view of a tennis court.

In terms of the content, I had already condensed the majority of their responses in the 'Interview' blog post. This made the design process much more efficient to complete. By using the type sizes set for headers and body copy, laying out the information was very straight forward. One aspect that needed to be considered however was the width of text columns.

Too wide columns are harder for the eye to follow, which results in the reader becoming lost more easily. Too narrow columns can cause the structure of text to break up and annoy the reader, as they have to constantly skip from one row to another. Both of these problems really reduce readability. 

Magazinedesigning.com have some really great tips to consider when considering columns. One point that they make is that:

"Optimal line length is 40-50 characters. These line lengths will be mostly seen in 2 and 3 column layout that are spreading across the whole page width. For example, 10pt type laid out in 3 columns across the width of an A4 or similarly sized magazine will have 35-45 characters per column line. Two column layout can have around 50-60 characters per column line."

For pages that have just one, or two columns in the report, I roughly used a character count of around 50. For pages with 3 or more columns, a rough character count of 40 was used. This ensured that readability is good, and that it is not an issue in the publication.

The 5 main spreads produced can be seen below. They include all the questions asked, and try to clearly depict who Deuce is, the challenges they faced, advice and their future prospects.

Whilst justified text is considered as 'fundamentally contrived' (Vignelli Canon), the positioning of quotes and column boxes in the report works much better than flush left type, as paragraphs look visually more uniform and structured. To ensure that no rivers were formed, every line of text was manually tracked and re-formatted. The result of one spread can be seen below.

Harrison produced some illustrations of the Rice Krispies characters to use in the publication, as Deuce said they would be Rice Krispies if they had to be any box of cereal. After designing the spreads, I realised that I had not included their favourite emojis in the report. To try and therefore incorporate this, I made 3 illustrations in a similar style to Harrison's (for visual consistency).


To make the report slightly more personal to Deuce, I used a low opacity for the emojis and put them throughout the publication. This way, it is more subtle and hopefully Deuce will pick up on such small details.