Monday 17 September 2012

Design Practice III//Negotiated Briefs//Jessie Leong & Elle Magazine.




As I continue researching examples of photography, and branding, for the development of my own brand and identity project for student photographer, Jessie Leong, and gaining an understanding of her own personal portfolio style and tastes, I felt that Elle Magazine would be a great example of demonstrating a bold, commercial photography branding approach and style that could be useful in terms of my own design practice towards this negotiated brief.

Launched in 1945 in France, Elle (translated as 'she' in English) has now become the world's most popular fashion magazine with 42 international additions in 60 countries. 
Much like Jessie's own photographic portfolio, Elle is known for it's portrayal of independent and successful women as photographed on the cover, in balance with a timeless, and often quite feminine use of branding and type with a mixture of bold serif uppercase type and a regular use of serif italics for a romantic and elegant design aesthetic. In more recent years, the use of bold, sans serif typefaces has been more common, and an interesting variation as the magazine adapts to contemporary tastes and styles.

The branding and use of type throughout Elle is quite consistent, ensuring that a clean and minimal look is maintained, in contrast to some of it's fashion and lifestyle magazine contemporaries, such as Cosmopolitan, as I experienced on a placement, which uses more typefaces than you can count on your fingers throughout the magazine. 

One of the most important things in terms of Jessie's branding, which we have discussed, is to keep the look bold and consistent, something that Elle is very effective in visually communicating- and something I will undoubtedly return to as a source of inspiration when developing my own brand and identity designs for Jessie's portfolio and body of work.


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