Project: Magazine Spread
Class: Graphic Communication 2
Assignment Brief: Create a magazine layout for the fake high-end snowboard/ski company, "Synergy".
I'll be honest, I don't interact with sports much. Watching or participating, I'm rarely around the athletic scene. So when Professor Helfrich shared this assignment brief with us, I knew this one was going to take a little extra research. What are snowboards often designed like? What makes them high-end?
I started with the fake company's name - Synergy. To me, that brought thoughts of both snow and energy, a name that seemed to fit with the sport. I came up with the awful and simple slogan to go with the name, and went back to Google.
After a little more research, and a basic outline of a snowboard, I focused on the idea of the brand emulating the energy of nature. Both skiing and snowboarding are fast-paced sports that are entirely reliant on how the earth decided to be today (outside of a little artificial snow every now and then). The higher-end brands had themes of being built to withstand the natural terrain and handle the roughness of more aggressive participants.
Combining these two elements, I focused on the idea of the brand name/title relating to the wild power of nature. From that, the lightning bolt was an obvious choice. I went through a couple of different ways of laying out the logo on the board, and ultimately decided to stick with the one that would be most legible to an audience (in person or through television) when the bottom of the board is in the air.
Continuing the theme of nature's wildness, each snowboard was designed after a different temperate climate and the storms that occur in that area. I created a green tropical snowboard, a red desert snowboard, and of course, a blue snow tundra board.
