Problem
Despite the majority of current video games being released are being made by small independent studios this niche group of developers are heavily underrepresented in video game media.
Project
Concept, brand, and design a magazine that addresses the desires of gamers and indie game developers, presents notable releases and current events in the space.
Timeline
Ten weeks
Roles
Market
Creative/Art Director
Copy Editor
Illustrator
Layout
Tools
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Render Magazine
Research
I started by creating a mood board: collecting color swatches
Finding these stories was as difficult as I had thought it’d be but the articles I found we’re gold. Learning of the emotional highs and lows that come from making these beautiful games and that that’s what makes these games so important. Can you go into more detail here? The games themselves are collections of human experiences contained in code.
Art and Layout
Although this magazine is focused the developers stories, the game style itself drove the style of the magazine and because the art styles of these games are so varied I decided to focus my magazine and the design style to one field: 8-bit or “pixel-art” games. The art itself was sourced from in-game screens and sometimes pulled apart to create landscapes for the type to live in making varied and dynamic page layouts.
This style enveloped everything I created. Portraits were made into pixel mosaics, pull-quotes and page numbers are backed by sparks of semi-opaque pixels, and the text flows around the pages covered in epic screenshots and elements from the games themselves. All of this comes together in a magazine that tells the stories of these people and the art they create.
This style enveloped everything I created. Portraits were made into pixel mosaics, pull-quotes and page numbers are backed by sparks of semi-opaque pixels, and the text flows around the pages covered in epic screenshots and elements from the games themselves. All of this comes together in a magazine that tells the stories of these people and the art they create.
