Poll: Gaming Magazines: Design issues & research

[Joshimodo]

I'm a graphic designer. More recently, I've also become a student (again).

My current project is to conceptualise, design and manufacture a pocket-sized magazine. Being a lifelong gamer, I chose to go along with my passions and come up with an unusual kind of magazine.

Without going into too much detail (if you wish to know more about my idea, read it on my fairly extensive blog post: http://joshimodo.wordpress.com/), I wanted to create a visual style for the covers that both resolved my hatred of messy, cluttered magazine covers and yet informed the audience of it's content. Due to the content of my magazines, it made sense to have each cover designed in the theme of the game that particular issue is exploring.

This is the kind of thing I'm creating, though both of these are just exploratory experiments - My actual magazine is based on Portal. I made these just to toy with the idea and show the visual treatment I want.

So my questions, Escapists:

Do typical magazine covers as they are appeal to you, with their gaudy imagery and text-saturated visage, or would designs such as this be more likely to catch your eye should you be browsing magazine shelves?


Any and all feedback is welcome - The more in-depth, the better!

 

[Terminate421]

The design should have sometihng appealing, a creature or possibly some sort of landscape. Not just a title.

 

[Phlakes]

Yeah, these are kinda in that limbo between regular and minimalistic. Look at Game Informer since their redesign [http://www.gameinformer.com/mag/covers.aspx]. Usually one large piece of art with the title of the magazine at the top, and sometimes the title of the game somewhere small and out of the way. If you're going for that kind of eye-catching minimalism, you need to cut down on the elements.

I know your trying to keep those seven squares, but if you take them out of the Bioshock one and give the text a little lighting, that would be unique and attractive.

 

[Joshimodo]

The design should have sometihng appealing, a creature or possibly some sort of landscape. Not just a title.

I had considered this, but it two problems crop up when I played around with imagery from in-game or concept art/promo images:

Size concerns - This magazine is A5 size, which limits landscapes/environments, and characters become dominant.

Content concerns - As I mentioned, the concept of this magazine isn't ordinary. Again, without going into too much detail, it's focussing on the universes within games, the fictional worlds that we visit every time we boot up a game. It touches on a broad spectrum, so having anything too specific may screw with that - I wanted to keep it thematic/visually linked on the cover, not just pasting existing imagery in.

Yeah, these are kinda in that limbo between regular and minimalistic. Look at Game Informer since their redesign [http://www.gameinformer.com/mag/covers.aspx]. Usually one large piece of art with the title of the magazine at the top, and sometimes the title of the game somewhere small and out of the way. If you're going for that kind of eye-catching minimalism, you need to cut down on the elements.

I know your trying to keep those seven squares, but if you take them out of the Bioshock one and give the text a little lighting, that would be unique and attractive.

Yeah, GameInformer are one of the (very few) magazine designs that are visually attractive. Again, my problem with that is if I go down the road of removing the n/7 squares (which represent pixels, of course), it leaves too little to be effective without changing the background element to something from the games, like GameInformer. I'll experiment a little without the n, anyway.