It’s Complicated

I continued to look through the April issue of GQ magazine. The “special issue” consists of 100 different “hot” things in the year 2012. They have everything from all the best clothes to tips on how to do everything better. I’ve been looking through the magazine layouts for GQ for years and when they tend to have a lot of information packed into an issue, it kind of looks overwhelming.

If you see from the images, you see that they have the different parts numbered so that it will be easier for the reader to see and understand the contents. In a way, it’s easy to go through and follow along because they are numbered but it looks kind of complicated. If you see, there’s overwhelming amount of copy, images, and colors. Personally, I don’t think I can pull off creating 100 different things into a certain amount of pages. It’s hard to fit a specific amount into a specific amount of pages. I give them props for fitting these components into certain amount of pages but I don’t favor compact layouts. When there are so many different types of colors and copy I just feel overwhelmed and I feel discouraged to want to read it. Do you feel discouraged by layout?