Planning - Official Style Guide

Style Guide

    Hello! This is going to be the style guide for our magazine for both issues. After deliberating what we were going to use for fonts, colors, and motifs, we're compiling it into the style guide and including all copy fonts, grammar conventions, and audience/message.

Audience Overview

    Our magazine aims to pander to all pet lovers and owners, including both advice and comedic pet stories. Using advice from veterinarians and veterinary students, we offer advice to new and experienced pet owners. We will share information and spotlight stories to keep readers entertained and informed. We will keep a casual tone, keeping info easy to access and readability high for quick readers, especially young adults. All ages are pet owners, so lifestyle with pet ownership is what we aim for.

GRAMMAR CONVENTIONS

In our magazine production, we will have.....

- No use of contractions, to ensure this magazine conveys a professional and sophisticated image, I will refrain from using contractions in all articles and headlines. 

- No use of modern-day slang, slang is deemed as improper, and to successfully maintain a professional image, I need to avoid it at all costs.

- No excessive use of passive voice. Using passive voice sentences makes them feel slow and unclear. Using the active voice creates energy and makes your articles easy to understand.

- Avoided filler words (like, super, etc), filler words weaken the point you are trying to make and come off as unprofessional. 

Headline Fonts and colors

    For our main theme colors, we chose a palette of 3 different colors that were bright, but not overbearing. They're named cornflower, banana cream, and sweet salmon.

    Our fonts are Dream Orphans Bold in uppercase for headline accents and our masthead, and Amarieta in lowercase for headline normal.

    

    For modules, we are using Butterpop for small headlines.

Article Design and fonts

For all articles, we will use the baskerville font family for subheadings, copy, and names. here is a list of our specific font sizes and types.

    - Baskerville pt. 11 - Copy

    - Baskerville Semibold Italic pt. 15 - Dominant Subheading

    - Baskerville Semibold Italic pt. 14 - Module Subheading

    - Baskerville Semibold pt. 12 - Names

    Design Motifs

For our design, we will use overlapping and variable opacity on different geometric shapes colored in our main 3 theme colors behind cutouts and headlines. 

We will use text wrapping around both cutout subjects and geometric photos. We will place importance on large images to establish hierarchy.