Executive Summary

This reports provides an analysis and evaluation of the articles of Creative Review, a trade journal that mainly revolves around the ideas of design that involve innovative ideas, design issues and creative inspiration. 

 

Methods used

The methods of analysis used in this report include overview, visual, discourse analysis. The overview analysis contains a brief synopsis of the trade organization, what the trade journal is about, their main audience, mission, publication frequency, and a brief description of their issue articles and columns.The visual analysis includes the page layout, typefaces used, type hierarchy, effective uses of negative space, titles, headers, footers, decks, alleys, bindings, drop caps, pull quotes, captions, images, and other accents such as colors and borders. The discourse analysis contains the type of specific terminology used for a targeted audience, grammar style, overall structure, paragraph size, sentence length and its complexity.

 

Results of Analysis

The results of the overall analysis shows that Creative Review is an organization that targets those who are interested in design topics and have consistent publications to satisfy their audience. Their attention to their visual layouts also reflects on how important design is for their organization. There are apparent design elements incorporated within their article layout, such as effective use of type hierarchy, gestalt principles, negative space, text formating, and accents. In addition, their discourse is written in a way where it targets a larger audience instead of just designers. This is efficient in gaining more readers as well as informing more people around the world about what they have to share.

 

Recommendations

Creative Review overall has a presentable composition of its visual and discourse components. Though, there are still room for improvements. Since this is a trade journal that is involved with design, there are some design related recommendations that should be acknowledged. The trade journal articles do not have an effective or interactive impression when looked at as a whole. Even though it follows several design concepts and principles, others who are not aware of them will not appreciate the layout design due to the lack of a unique overall visual. These recommendations include:

 

• Incorporating more infographics that help guide their readers throughout the readings

• Integrating more colors to give the articles a sense of excitement towards the topics

• Playing with word and image placements to create a creative flow throughout the reading

 

Limitations

The analysis of Creative Review in this report contains limitations that consist of the components that cannot be visually analysed such as the reasons as to why this trade journal is designed and written the way it is and other background information that are not presented in the trade journal’s articles.