Designobserver.com "You can't miss"

WHAT DESIGN REALLY NEEDS IS A GOOD SCANDAL

This is a pretty good look at I.D. Forty's look at the top 40 designers. Last year apparently they went with easy picks and this year they wanted to stir the pot a bit and they did so.

http://www.designobserver.com/archives/010610.html#more

The article isn't that informative, except saying that this award isn't very prestigious because no one really hears about it. But I thought the cool part was the I.D. Forty link on the page and here you can look at a few of the stories they did on the designers and this was informative. The interviews and backgorund on the designers is neat to read about because these are real people who are successful at what we want to do. What is cooler than that?

In fact I will attach the seperate link to this in case you want to just look at this and skip designobserver.

http://www.idonline.com/features/feature.asp?id=1532

I suck apparently at life

Alright, after struggling mightily with Flicker and my computer I am going to apparently need a session on saving pdf's as jpegs or tiffs. I am at a loss and pretty upset with my innability to handle technology that everybody else seems to know. Maybe it's because I am a male and don't like asking for help. Well here I am in all my glory and I need help. There, I said it. Now somebody please reach out to me...

"You Can't miss"

Alright, I know this is reserved more for magazines and websites, but I saw that Andrea did it so I want to talk about newspapers, too. In fact I want to discuss our very own newspaper- that's right the renouned Missourian. I want to discuss what exactly happened with the headline fonts and the feature heds. I guess they wanted a new jazzy look, but I have to question the new feature heds, especially. I worked with sports last semester and it is the section I read the most, and we used feature heds to categorize our topics, whether it be Missouri basketball, or NFL, etc. I do not remember the old font, but it was a seriff font in which we used big and small capps. I liked the contrast it provided with the sans serif franklin gothic headlines. Now they are also sans seriff and they look like they take away from the headlines and I know that is not what they want. I guess this is the modernism coming out in me, but I like things the way they were and I don't think the change was for the better. Check them out soon, and I'll try and post a page from last semester so you can see what I am talking about. I am still trying to figure this posting pictures thing out so work with me here....

1/31 Response

I read Theresa's blog and she had her feature spread up for this week's Vox. I thought it was creatively done. I really liked her play on the headline with the bottles. The color photo was really cool looking as well. The pullquotes were used nicely I thought on pages 3 and four and I liked how she used the two column grid and fit the sidebar overlapping the column and leaving white space to the outside of the page. It sounds like her photo edit was well thought threw and she came up with a solid solution. My only suggestion would maybe to have tried bringin the pages together more with something consistent. Both pull quotes were on the second spread, and with the art in the headline on the first page the pages looked different. I think a lot of it was the color on the first spread and black/white on the second page, but maybe an art element around the infobox would have given a more consistent look. But hey, Theresa is a great designer and she did very well. I read her part on her being concerned about competing against graphic designers and artists and she should stop being so crazy. She is smarter than them for going through are esteemed program! She will be lighting up eyes this week with her design.

Critique 2

This past week of designing went pretty smoothly. I was introduced to the wonderful world of Vox designing. Designing the department Short talk with other designers made it pretty simple. Yolanda, Heather and I tackled the three pages of the department by splitting it up since we cannot all work on it at once. I had the page with a nice big ad, so I only had a short story on hot teas and a sidebar. It didn't take very long and I took the opportunity to learn Vox style. It seems as though there are set headline fonts and then we have a lot of freedom for the rest. I can't wait for this weekend to do a page with more room. My page got bumped to an upcoming week, however, because the editors apparently received a letter that has to run, so I won't see it in print this week.
This weekend Theresa and I are doing Short talk becasue the four of us have a detailed schedule worked out for the rest of the semester where we take turns in shifts of two. On the slate for this week will be a fondue story and an illustration that I get to work out, so it should be pretty exciting. I like the flexibility of having all Friday evening, all Saturday and much of Sunday to come in and finish it. There is plenty of room to take your time and get it looking nice. I have to give a shout out to Debbie and Liz for their kindness in helping me learn the process last weekend. They do a great job and it will be great working closer with them in the future on my feature pages and cover.
Speaking of feature pages, my four pager is coming up for the 2: 16 issue, so I will be gearing up for that within the next week. Also I am going to be working with Andrea on Adelante next week. I want to also find time to improve my Casino design for my portfilio. I had too many pictures and so I need to tweak it some.
Lots to do, so little time it seems. It should be overwhelmingly fun!

"You Can't Miss"

There is a great article and food for thought in this months editon of Columbia Journalism Review. Check out page 28-29. The story has to do with the state of the Miami Herald, but I thought the most interesting thing was the photo of Arthur Teele after he had committed suicide in a bank lobby. A photographer captured this and it maked for great discussion about te question of whether to run a photo or not. The Herald went with this photo. but I think in black and white. This CJR has ran it huge and in color. It is a pretty gruesome image and I could see where it would offend lots of people. Even journalists reading this magazine. There is blood and the images of this man shooting himself in the head that are not very pleasant. Check the photo out and read the story and maybe people would like to respond???

Designobserver.com "You can't miss"

There is some pretty good design philosophy discussion in the latest posting on this site. It is a quick read, but insightful.
Just think about it to yourself and then go read the story:
"YOU HARMONIZE, AND THEN YOU CUSTOMIZE."
-Wilson Pickett, design theorist

Response

Reading some of the other designer's blogs I would agree that today's class was very cool and a great experience. I had never really looked at any of the magazines we examined outside Texas Monthly. It was great to see what designing these magazines are doing as well as hear what everyone thought about them. I thought everybody had good ideas about the magazines and it was a good discussion. I was pretty grateful we did not get to have a quiz over the reading because it was pretty hard to get through all of it. I liked the pictures, but some of the history was redundant. I can't wait for the critique Thursday because it will be great to hear everyone's ideas on their process. There is so much to learn from everyone.

Critique one

For our first design of the Kevin Hunter casino piece, there were many obstacles I faced in coming up with a solution. First and foremost, it was a drastic change to shift from designing all last semester at the Missourian on the newspaper grid to the Vox magazine grid. There are so many constraints and rules involved with newspaper design, and it was sort of difficult to free the mind and let loose with this assignment.
Secondly, I found it difficult to come up with a solution for this story which was picure driven and about a man who worked at a casino. It was easy to get lost in the casino theme. I knew I didn't want to go overboard with cards and poker chips, but that is what comes to mind with a story about a man who works at a casino
I felt if I created an illustration it would take away from the tone of the story, so I avoided it and just went with a strong typographical lead-in with a photo. I liked my original edit, choosing five of the nine pictures, but once I got on the page and found out there was not as much text as I thought there would be I went with more pictures. My final project failed in that it had too many pictures. I really liked all the pictures, and I guess I need to learn to attach myself less to good photos. I also thought my pictures were too small. I think this occured because I failed to print out at 100% while developing my design. I originally started in the design lab, but then moved to the newsroom after being repeadetly frustrated by the speed and screen lighting in the lab. Upstairs the computers were far superior, but here we encountered problems printing. So, I need to keep adjusting to this new grid and with this project I was able to learn more about the realestate I will have this semester.
My cover design was very solid, I thought. It ended up being one of the final few the judges chose from. I felt that only a picture of Kevin Hunter would work for a story profiling him. This led me to using the great portrait we were given. It was horizontal so to run it large and have it pop out it needed to be cropped. I contacted the photographer and we had a good discussion about the decision. This was one of my most favorite parts of this assignment. It was a great experience getting feedback from a good photographer and learning how to work with them as opposed to agains him. So I know this really helped my cover design be good.

Coming up....
This Friday I will get my first crack at working with "short talk." It should be a blast. There are three other wonderful designers and people working with me, so it should be fun and pretty easy I hope. We all decided it would be good to all work on it this weekend, and then in the weeks ahead split up the assignments.
My crack at the feature spread is the Feb. 16 issue. So that is just around the corner as well. Apparently it is going to be a photo essay so I am excited to work with more great photography and really create something that is superb.

First posting

Hi guys, welcome to my blog. Apparently I will be spending a lot of my tuesday nights here. Fun... Fun...