Feedback on Design for a Japanese-English Magazine

sarabdeep

New Member
Hi, me and my friends are amateur designers for a Japanese-English Academic Magazine.
It would be awesome if I can get some feedback on how to improve this design2018-07-16 10_52_27-master your time5.psd @ 25% (CMYK_8) _.png
 
It looks like it goes 1 > 4 > Attention Getter > 2 > 3

The colours suggest Black = English. Red = Japanese but this is inconsistent when it comes to content.

Is the magazine called masteryourtime, deep or focus? I couldn't work it out.
 
As above with the numbering.

Have you emulated the way that Japanese can be read in columns, from the top down?
Also, the lower columns (2+3) don't line up with the upper ones (1+4).
Just a niggle.

Recently, I've been working on quite a lot of stuff with a Japanese twist/vibe so I've done a fair bit of research but I'm far from an expert.

As amateurs then I'd say you've done quite an impressive job and the black/red combo is very Nippon.

Luckily, a lot of Japanese design has quite a strong and defined style so it shouldn't be too hard to emulate and move on while still keeping things interesting.
I'd get yourself a Pinterest board set up and start collecting reference.

BTW. How do you go on for getting your translations done?

I've struggled with this a bit and it's very easy to make a major faux pas.
 
One page is a little hard to judge an entire magazine but first impressions are below:
It looks a little bland, it's missing 'something'
Red, white and black are 'Japanese' but it's kind of a literal take imo, I'm sure you could take a different direction.
Feels like you could include some calligraphy too, Japan is known for their calligraphy
Alignment issues too as said above.
 
Some good inspiration may come from searching out some of TDR's work (The Designers Republic).

They did quite a lot of Japanese inspired work and you'll be able to see how they combined layout, typography, colour and graphics in some really cool ways.
 
It looks like it goes 1 > 4 > Attention Getter > 2 > 3

The colours suggest Black = English. Red = Japanese but this is inconsistent when it comes to content.

Is the magazine called masteryourtime, deep or focus? I couldn't work it out.

Thanks for the reply!
hi. do you suggest that I put all english in black and all japanese in red?

FOCUS is name of magazine, master your time is the article, deep&ayaka are the designers
 
As above with the numbering.

Have you emulated the way that Japanese can be read in columns, from the top down?
Also, the lower columns (2+3) don't line up with the upper ones (1+4).
Just a niggle.

Recently, I've been working on quite a lot of stuff with a Japanese twist/vibe so I've done a fair bit of research but I'm far from an expert.

As amateurs then I'd say you've done quite an impressive job and the black/red combo is very Nippon.

Luckily, a lot of Japanese design has quite a strong and defined style so it shouldn't be too hard to emulate and move on while still keeping things interesting.
I'd get yourself a Pinterest board set up and start collecting reference.

BTW. How do you go on for getting your translations done?

I've struggled with this a bit and it's very easy to make a major faux pas.

Thanks for the reply!
I study in a japanese university and design this in a team. The japanese students translate the english to japanese and vice versa.

How do you suggest changing the paragraphs?
 
do you suggest that I put all english in black and all japanese in red?
You could try this and see if it works. Show it to Japanese speakers as see what they think

FOCUS is name of magazine, master your time is the article, deep&ayaka are the designers
nobody cares about the designers so you can delete that. The foucs is fine where it is. The article title needs to be in the body of the content not hidden away in the header. Putting it in the body means you have have both English and Japanese.
How do you suggest changing the paragraphs?
1 > 2 > Attention Getter > 3 > 4.
 
The space between the columns of text is a bit off and the lower and upper ones don't match.

I've put some guides over to show you.
The orange line id the centre of the page and the blue is about where the margins should be.

Margins.jpg
 
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