Continue Watching is a, independent, monthly magazine, a guide for what is releasing on streaming platforms, a modern take on the TV guide. The examples I have created are from October to December with covers for all 3, but interior design for Octobers issue only. The covers feature big releases for that month (The Walking Dead in October, Wednesday in November and Jack Ryan in December) and their main stars inhabiting the cover and will do every month. The stripes are a consistent and continually run when placing all covers next to each other, with changing covers montly.
The magazine series when printed, cut and bound
Some of the journey to the final cover design. I started with October, with a more seasonal approach to the covers, with the original release featuring a Halloween themed background. The cover had lots of text on the front, I took lots of inspiration from film and TV magazines such as Empire or Total film. However, this felt very formulaic and not very independent. Small changes, as simple as replacing the background image with block colour and removing text helped this a lot. I also ended up touching up the masthead and how the image was cropped, featuring more zombies, and then a boxed approach with the Omaha not filling the whole page bleed. The image straight on the page didn't feel right, so I applied a comic book effect, 2 tone colour that give the impression of cheap printing, like old tv guides, this was my way to keep some of the old in a modern and evolving landscape on film and tv. Once changing the image to one singular it was a matter of getting the stripes and colour right. The stripes were taken again from the past, the old TV colour stripes that would sometimes appear when turning off a TV set, something Netflix have now taken on in their loading screen.
Octobers issue cover featuring Norman Reed as Daryl Dixon from that months featured story about The Walking Dead. The spine features an alternative photo of the cover star as well as over content from the issue. The back cover for each issue is an advert that fills the whole page, I haven't shown these here as they are someone else's work, but are used as advertisements for other shows or films streaming.
The first introductory image spread opening the main Muti-spread story. This is linked to the one. seen on the cover and continues using the stripes as a navigational tool for important entry points.
Development of the opening spread, the biggest issue here was how to handle text hierarchy, and colour most importantly, this was often dictated by the background image.At one stage this would be a plain white background with the stripes being used as a continuation from the cover into the story, yet this was the same image from the cover. I also wanted to make the most of having the double spread to include an impactful photo.
A spread within the same story, again showing the stripe being used, this time to highlight a pulled quote. Development of this spread can be seen belwow, with text spanning multiple numbers of columns and images having different relationships throughout.
Here are some more pages from the magazine from top left to bottom right; a contents page, a spread from The Walking Dead article, a 2 spread page about Guillermo Del Toro's new series, a intro spread for an interview with Stephen King, the 3 pages that inhabit this interview and the final spread being an highlights section, featuring other releases that do not have their own stories. This project was submitted twice, with a resubmission allowing us time to improve our work, was something I took advantage of, with improvements on the above pages seen below, the final versions that were printed and bound.
Below are images of the printed and bound magazine, unfortunately the images on display here are not the best as I had to deliver this magazine in for review. This was printed on gloss paper throughout, just on a size between A4 and A5.
Alongside a physically printed magazine, we head to deliver an online alternative. This allows users the oppurntunity to subscribe, gives them an insight to what content they can expect to see, as well as how articles would be handled online. I was strapped for time here so I would change how the navigation bar at the top would work, the text is uneven, but shows how the brand would translate when I take this project further.
A promotional poster I made for the Continue Watching brand
The Continue Watching mobile web page can be accessed HERE
