Inspiration Minizine
Editorial Design Branding
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Indesign
Inspiration in the Day-to-Day
As a creative, I’m no stranger to getting inspiration from random places. When tasked with creating a ‘minizine’ on any theme or topic, the idea of a creative inspiration magazine came to mind immediately. ‘Trouvaille’, named after the French word for ‘lucky find’, is a collection of art and design inspired by a variety of sources, from historical movements, local architecture, and modern design to everyday sights like cracks on the sidewalk or the pattern of bricks on a wall.
Endless Iterations
The very first step of creating the minizine was the hardest for me. Trouvaille as a concept was just so hard to settle on a cover for. I came up with over 30 different cover designs and multiple different Masthead designs before settling on the final version. The final showcases the beauty of the architecture around the city while also using typography in the masthead and in the background to show the minizine’s artsy topic and purpose.
Advertising and inspiration
The final Minizine featured a print advertisement for Small Point cafe– a local cafe full of inspiration sources, a creative piece with a quote encouraging creatives to keep following their passions, and a full-page print ad promoting Johnson & Wales University to Creatives looking for a place to find their spark on the back cover. The creative piece featured a collaged background image and the Small Point cafe ad featured photographs from the inside of the cafe and of the food there. The JWU ad was made following the JWU brand guidelines but with a little ‘Trouvaille’ spark on the call to action.
Writing about Inspiration
For the minizine, it was required to have an interview spread and an article spread. It all had to be original content so a portion of my time was spent writing the article and collecting responses to my interview questions. This issue of Trouvaille is all about Providence so I chose to write about all of the different colleges in Providence and how the art and inspiration sources throughout the city benefit all students even if they aren’t typical creatives. For my Interview, I asked 11 different designers about the things that inspired them in Providence.
A stellar outcome
Having previous experience designing magazines from my tech school days, I was really excited to design another magazine. For a while, I was worried because of how long it was taking me to feel satisfied with the result but when I finally got the final printed piece in my hands I knew It was perfect. I went on to showcase the minizine at the Johnson & Wales Student Research, Design & Innovation Symposium.
