https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kWHMH2kxXs

Here at GLC, the Design Department recently played its own round of Wheel of Impressions. Except the choices weren’t random and, instead of impersonating celebrities, we did our best impressions of other magazine designs. Here’s how it worked: each designer was given a newsstand magazine and one month to design a page from any existing client project in the style of that magazine’s design.

Why bother? For however much we devour popular media, we’re very rarely put in the position of looking at is as critically as we do our own work. We’re a close-knit group in the Design Department; some of us have worked together for ten years or more. And after all that time, we’ve gotten to know each other’s tricks and habits as well as we know our own. We still teach one another things every day, but how much easier would it be to learn something by putting ourselves in the shoes of a designer we’ve never met and asking ourselves how that person would solve a problem?

Here are our results, alphabetically by designer. We were only allowed to use content from an existing project:

1. Art Director Elissa Chamberlain

The original page from Evangelical Hospital’s Every Day Magazine and that same page in the style of Chicago Magazine:

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2. Senior Art Director Rick Cruz

The original feature article from The National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Momentum Magazine and here’s that same article in the style of Health Magazine::

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3. Designer Eric Kreienbrink

The original page from the Air Force Sergeants Association’s AFSA Magazine and an analogous page in the style of Oprah Magazine:

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4. Creative Director Scott Oldham

Here’s a page from Bethesda Health’s Bethesda Life Magazine and that page rendered in the style of Entertainment Weekly:

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5. Art Director Gretchen Rund

Gretchen went a little nuts with this exercise. These next three impressions are all hers, and all are in the style of Popular Mechanics and her impression:

A) A page from the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s Trajectory Magazine:

B) A page from Baptist Easley Hospital’s publication, Caring as Popular Mechanics:

C) A page from the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Quest Magazine

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6. Senior Art Director Kathleen Wilson

Here’s a page from DeKalb Medical’s Pushing Beyond Magazine in the style of Bloomberg Businessweek:

We’ll be doing more creative exercises like this soon, hopefully about one a month. I’ll continue to share the results in this space. Please let us know what you think!