Students dabble with design at the magazine making workshop
In order to encourage students to experiment with creative writing and layout, HT School organised a magazine-making workshop for students of class VIII to XII. Students were introduced to the basics of visual design and the components that make up the look and feel of a media format like magazine or newsletter.
It was conducted by Monica Gupta, art director, HT Media, who has been working on feature design for over two decades. The workshop, held at HT House, New Delhi, was attended by over 50 students from schools including GD Goenka Public School, Vasant Kunj, Bal Bharati Public School, Noida and Dwarka, Ahlcon International School, Mayur Vihar.
Students were excited to receive hands-on training. Some of the attending students already held editorial positions in their respective school magazines/publications. As a result, they came armed with specific questions pertaining to layout and design.
The workshop focussed on how to make magazine design and layout step-by-step. The fundamental concept introduced by Gupta was that design was subjective and there wasn’t a strict formula to it yet there were rules that one needed to abide by. At the same time, she informed students about the need to not be arbitrary in design decisions. She followed this up by asking students to be cognisant of their target audience as well as the format or purpose of the publication. “For instance, your school has certain values and your magazine must reflect that spirit. Remember design language can change as you move from page to page,” explained Gupta.
She then took the students through the five basic building blocks of design: masthead/nameplate, font, colour, grid, structure.
She took examples from an article in HT to explain the key components of laying out a story on the page: Headline, byline, intro, body copy, images and captions.
Students asked multiple questions particularly related to the relationship between font and colour in design.
Gupta shared anecdotes on how she created her own scrap book to derive creative ideas and advised students to keep looking for new ideas themselves. She highlighted the need to experiment, diversify and find their voice by not hesitating to explore new ideas and avenues.
“My biggest takeaway from today’s workshop is three-fold. First, consistency is key; second, the structure is important; and third, you can use colour to keep the theme the same but change the mood,” explained Anya Raheja, GD Goenka Public School, Vasant Kunj.
“I aspire to be a designer and I am grateful that in today’s workshop I managed to learn a lot about how to make design clean, interesting and innovative,” said Arya, student, Bal Bharti Public School.
At the end of the workshop, the students were tasked with designing a 3-page newsletter.