Monday, 22 April 2013

Style Guide - House Style


House Style

The publication Tourist was intended to provide information on destinations, ways to travel, experiences, and other travel related aspects.

To do this, I wanted to create a template design and writing style and build a platform for the publication to continue, and develop.

My main attribute with the writing was to ensure it was informative, yet informal, with insight into the content. The style was intended to follow a format of some articles being tourist information, a guide to the place or travel experience. Others were meant to have an element of humour, first person insight, and a personal style of writing that endeared the reader. I wanted to vary the styles of some of the articles; to experience what would work best for each, and to explore different ways of writing some of the articles that I have not attempted before. The idea with this was to learn myself, what would work best for each type of content, and how to develop my styles for each.

Being descriptive was something that is set to each of the articles that I did. I wanted to paint a picture and be in depth about each place, rather than just on overview on the main features. The articles labelled ‘British Beauties’ were intended to be short and almost advertising the places, yet I still wanted to include some elements of depth and imagination to the writing. Other articles such as St Lucia and The Streetwalker, were intended to be based upon the places, and my experiences, either portrayed in 1st person or as an outsiders perspective.

Another reason for varying the styles was to ensure that the reader didn’t become bored with the writing, as usually, publications will have more than one writer. If I could create a section of articles, using different styles and give the reader that sense of different authors, then that would be something I was hoping to achieve with varying the styles.

Language and vocabulary were some of the obstacles that I came across. I found that certain places had the same elements, either within the same article, or similarities to other articles. Examples of this are St Lucia, and Cape Verde. They both had similar attributes and qualities in the places, so I tried to write them in a slightly different way to each other, to ensure it wasn’t just a copycat piece on a different destination.

The main feature with Tourist was to have a style that appealed to various readers and audiences. I didn’t have a specific target audience in mind, only that whoever would be interested in reading would be interested in travelling, different experiences and places, or learning about different countries. This was my main focus when writing the content. I didn’t want it to be a commercial advertising for countries, or places that are well documented. I want the magazine to have quirkiness because of the places that are written about. The only elements that I wanted to include were typical travel publication elements such as a photography competition, and lots of images. I took the essential basics of a travel publication, and included these within Tourist, but I tried to create content that had a sense of feeling and connection with the places and the experiences within them.

 

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