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RayGun was a very interesting experience. Working under crazy turnaround times and never going to press
checks, one was never really sure how the magazine would turn out - that was part of its charm. In a
sense, RayGun was much more like web design than any other print projects I worked on. It was not
highly controlled, and was left to an element of fate, able to twist what you had intended into
a new form.
I was challenged by Carson's philosophy of creating designs that had to be unfolded and deciphered to receive any information; I used my time there to experiment with his style in ways that still kept the information accessible. The Reviews section changed dramatically each issue. We had such an incredible amount of original artwork to choose from that many times the art chosen set the tone for the design. On this specific piece, the depth, weight, and texture of the art was balanced by the use of whitespace, grids, and thumbnail photographs - pulled together by the headline treatment cropping off to the right. Offspring's punk style is balanced here with the rough, blurry photograph juxtaposed with the clean, flowing whitespace throughout the article. A simple text layout with multiple textures and layers symbolizes the band's layering of melody with textures of punk. The Girls Against Boys article starts off referencing their somewhat existent mustaches - which I used as a design element and point of focus. Working with Polaroids, I cropped their heads and stacked them on top of each other. Then focusing on a rigid grid for the story, I force-justified the type, adding texture and color for variety. The bleeding of the images versus the border of whitespace surrounding the text creates a nice balance with a touch of tension, similar to GVSB's punk lyrics. |
