Type and Photography Reverse Engineering Post

This is a magazine spread for the Gale Magazine Spread. The designer’s name is Esther Gloria and I grabbed this image directly from her online portfolio.

Script, Modern, & Sans Serif types

For better or worse, this magazine spread uses three categories of type that I can see.

• Script – The name of the magazine is done in a script style and it “appear[s] to have been hand lettered with a calligraphy pen or brush…” (seen at the top left)
• Modern – The example of modern text is the small (contrasted to the name of the magazine) subtitle. At first I thought it was oldstyle but after further investigation I realized it is a modern font because of it’s vertical stress and “radical thick/thin transition in the strokes”
• Sans Serif – The rest of the text on this spread is sans serif including the “For the Young & Young at Heart” and everything on the right page.

Script vs Modern

This is a cropped picture of the title. This shows the contrast between the script type and the modern script. There are a couple of type contrasts here including (but not limited to):

• Size
• Weight
• Form

They focus on their brand name of “Gale” but of course if you’re looking for the details you can look closer to see that they are a hotel/residency company located at Fort Lauderdale Beach.

Rule of Thirds

Now, turning to the photo, it demonstrates the rule of thirds. It’s very simple – the happy couple are obviously the focal point of the picture, the beach/horizon provide leading lines that lead us across the page as well.

Replacement Photos

Alright here are three photos that I’ve taken/set up to be taken of me in the past. I tried to find photos that were on beaches or had similar themes but ultimately didn’t have any exact replicas. I felt these three images matched the rule of thirds and I made sure they were the same direction as the original photo to show similarity.