Week 10

This Week

After my Spring Break in Vegas, it was time to come back to reality Sunday and design the department page for the 4/2 issue of Vox. Over break, I began work on my website, which I presented today. It's a great feeling knowing I can make a website now. This week I will be presenting my first draft of the Earth Day feature, which will be in the 4/16 issue of Vox, so I will post that as it comes along. We presented our first designs for the website project with the publishing group, Jan and John yesterday morning and everything went well. We received a lot of great feedback that will lead us in the right direction for our next designs. Overall, I think everyone was really pleased with what we had and the redesign of the logo. Also below is my department page for the 3/16 issue I never posted.

Response

I've started speaking with Zachary Trover, who is the art director for The Pitch in Kansas City. I am interviewing him for the trends project and I am gaining a lot of helpful information. He is very cooperative and easy to work with. I'm hoping he can be a good contact for me in the future as well. Hopefully I will have a lot of good advice from Taylor to pass on to my classmates next week.

MagCulture

This week and last week on MagCulture there was a lot of content about Colophon 2009, including a video of one of the exhibitions. 

I learned news of Blender closing on the 28th after a decrease in ad sales of 31%. This is the final issue published. 

Dear Kristin Noe: white space is dying out for the time being. MagCulture talks about the latest re-design of Good Housekeeping. Editor Lindsay Nicholson said: "We are looking at a really dense magazine packed full of information. It is also more ecological with more information for your page." The new art director is using the space to include up to 25% more copy. If you want to read the full story in the Guardian click here.

Leslie comments this week on the American Society of Magazine Editors' choices for Best Design, which include: Bon Appetit, Good, GQ, New York and Wired. Full list of shortlisted magazines.

You Can't Miss

The colorful, fun photos I took while I was in Vegas last week! My 4-day trip turned out to be more than the nightlife experience I expected. There are a lot of beautiful things to see in Vegas! All of the hotels have interesting design elements within and everywhere I turned, I saw things that caught my eye. Here are a few I took:

This is the side of Coke World, which houses tons of different Coke products. It's located right next to M&M World, which has the same idea. 

This is a part of the ceiling at the Bellagio Hotel. It was completely covered in these glass sculptures. Below is another part of the hotel, but these are umbrellas hanging upside down from the ceiling. 

Above is the light show at Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas. Every hour all of the bright lights shut off except the roof that covers the street, and a light show comes on put to music. We watched the American Pie and Queen shows. Here is a video of the American Pie show. 

Week 8...OMG

This Week

I designed the screen department for VOX. Like I said last week, it was a little difficult but I think it worked out pretty well (except for the creepy close up of the guy)

I also designed a St. Patrick's Day card for the bf. This is something I do all the time, no matter the occasion and sometimes for no occasion at all. Although this semester I've been slacking in the homemade card department since my schedule is so hectic. For some reason, Clint decided he would go all out this year and hardcore celebrate the holiday. I don't get it, because he's not Irish. So my card has the definition of an Irishman on it. This is the back page of the card. 

I'm also working on some designs to show the publishing group tomorrow. They are department pages for the website. This is becoming a really fun project because of the group I'm working with. We all work really well together (the designers always have and the publishers are beginning to get the hang of it) and Maggie is a super-organized art director, so I'm glad we have her as our leader. Everything is spelled out for us and she is doing a great job of communicating with the publishers. 

Response

I talked about my design process yesterday in lecture and after my classmates critiqued my logos, I chose 3 to redesign for Friday. The 3 chosen were my favorite ones too, so I'm happy I get to work with them. 

MagCulture

This week on MagCulture, there is a lot of discussion about the final preparation for Colophon 2009 which took place this weekend. Some things featured were a 100-page magazine about the event and a Colo-shoe. Leslie also shows viewers some strange postings from Kasino A4's Grayscale Bar (who only serves black and white drinks), which have been made out of white paper and just a few words. He also mentions that Scott Didach, Creative Director of Wired, is scheduled to speak at the Editorial Design Organization in April.

You Can't Miss

The video I made this weekend in my digital imaging class. I learned how to use Final Cut Pro. It was better than I thought it would be because designers Christy Solberg and Jena Anderson were in the class as well. If they hadn't been, I don't think I would have survived the boredom to be honest. We watched 12 hours of tutorials online, courtesy of "Brian", and learned how to make a short video. The video we cut from consisted of short interviews of everyone in the class and some B-roll taken by our instructor. We also had fun with the photo booth application on the luxuriously large Macs we got to use for the duration of the weekend. At times, it was hard to quit laughing at the pictures. This video is clips of Christy, Jena and I, explaining to the instructor (which you can't hear) that we have no experience with video editing tools (except Christy had some with iPhoto) Enjoy.

Week 7

This Week(end)

I designed the department page for Screen. It was difficult because the story was a little confusing. The reporter did the interview, which took 6 hours, to find out from the source at the end that he did not want to be the focus of the story. The story had to be changed so that the secondary source was the main focus, but the photo selection was slim at this point. There was a picture of the second source that was really close up and also one that looked like his high school yearbook picture. We ended up using the photo of the first source as the dominant photo because it was more appealing, and used the second source's photo as the secondary photo. The page turned out o.k. in my opinion. There is a sidebar included too, which had some spacing issues, but I think it all worked out and we'll see on Thursday. Here are my final cover designs that I created for showing today as well. I drew inspiration from "Fast Food Nation".

I completed the 20/10 assignment this week. I didn't get started on it until yesterday, so I really understood what Jan was talking about when she mentioned the lesson of a quick deadline. I had about half of my 10 executed designs that I am pleased with, which I will probably go with when we narrow down the bunch Thursday. 

Response

This week in lecture, we discussed (I'll discuss Thursday) our design process and show our process through the logo designs in particular. It was interesting to see how similar many of my classmates' design process were to my own. Many said they need to have some kind of sound in the background, wherever they are, and need to do a lot of brainstorming before actually sitting down at their computers and putting elements into a document. For some reason, when I'm designing, I need to be in my room (either sitting Indian-style on the floor or on my bed) with my headphones on. I usually look for inspiration in magazines, design books and commercials. After that, I do some sketches, then once I feel like I have a good idea of what I'm going for, I start designing on the computer. I go through many drafts before I'm happy with the outcome. It was great to hear everyone's process and maybe think about trying some of those things.

MagCulture

This week, Leslie takes a look at the final days of preparation for Colophon2009.

He features an exhibit showcasing 111 independent magazines called "We Make Magazines".

Leslie also talks about a talk coming up in London about "how to design really good magazine covers". The talk is being given by IPC Media Group Creative Director Brett Lewis. Speaking of covers, I am in the process of revising my final cover for the judging on Thursday, and I really like it so far. I'll post it when it's finished. 

Also this week, Leslie introduces readers to a distribution/subscription service called Stack. According to Leslie, people who subscribe to the service receive a different independent magazine each month to hopefully gain their subscription to the specific magazine. He recently received Electric Sheep through the service. I'm going to learn more about this because I think it's interesting and maybe want to subscribe.

You Can't Miss

The Design Awards: 2009 winners have been released on Wallpaper.com. The competition judges included Kanye West, Jean Nouvel and Marc Newson. Categories included Best New Domestic Appliance, Furniture Designer of the Year, Best New Restaurant, and even Best New City. The winners and runners-up came up with some really cool stuff. I never even knew this competition existed, but I think I'll follow it each year, now that I know. The winner of the Best New Private House category built a house that looks like Jenga!

Week 6

This Week

I am designing the department page for the Screen department of VOX. I applied for a 6-month internship with Southern Progress Corporation and should be seeing my design for The Global Journalist within the next 2 weeks. I'm really happy with this clip. It's something that will add to my portfolio because it's a more serious clip, and before doing this, I felt like most of my clips were just fun and playful, which isn't so bad, but I'm glad to have something a little more serious to add. I designed this without the illustration at first, and then the editors decided they wanted an illustration to show where the Eraz Crossing is, because it's an area the story focuses on. So I went back and added the illustration and this is the final product. Now I'm just waiting for the publication to come out so I can see it in print. 

This week and last week in Advanced Design we have been perfecting our portfolios, and so I have been thinking about what my online portfolio will look like, as well as my mini-portfolio. After my meeting with Jan yesterday, I am relieved and feel as though I'm on my way to a career in design, so that's a plus. 

I'm designing covers for the 3/12 issue of VOX, and the cover story is about caffeine. Below are my preliminary designs. The first one is a little whacky, but I thought it would be fun to do something like the "got milk?" ads, and...it ended up being a little scary, but strangely, I like it!

I will be starting my 20/10 logo designs tonight and will post those as they come along within the week and weekend, as well as some website designs that are coming along later this week.

Response

The packet we got today to fill out about our design process is challenging for me. It doesn't seem like it should be that difficult, but I'm having a hard time walking through my design process. I kind of just start thinking a lot about what I want my design to look like and then after I have a concrete concept, I look through magazines and our design books, as well as looking at advertisements and commercials to try and expand on my idea. After that, I just sit down and start designing on my computer, and it usually comes together in a couple of days. I don't start a design and finish it in the same day ever, because I want to have time to think about it while I'm in the process. I think it helps me put a lot more thought into it and helps me weed out any cliches or obvious designing I tend to turn to first. Also, I never sketch my designs before I go to design them in InDesign, but I'm going to for the 20/10 project, just because there are so many different ideas we have to come up with and it will be much easier to have it all in front of me instead of clicking through on the computer. I'm hoping this assignment will help me and give me another process to use when designing.

MagCulture.com

This week MagCulture talks about his interview for BBC Radio 4 and the relaunch of Pop Magazine. He also shows a photo of Swedish magazine Tare Lungt, which means "take it easy", which published its third issue as a tattoo! And guess what... MagCulture is now on Twitter. The last topic this week was the Italian edition of Wired, which Conde Nast just launched. Another topic this week on MagCulture is that New York Times Magazine creative director Janet Froelich left the the paper to oversee Real Simple with Time, Inc.

You Can't Miss

The author of MagCulture, Jeremy Leslie, is also the author of Issues: New Magazine Design. I had trouble finding a description of the book, but it has great reviews, so it might be worth checking out since we will be (as scary as it is to think about, for me anyway) entering the "real world" of design in two short months. I figure it will be a good resource for future design projects, and it's really cheap! It's available on Amazon.