"You can't miss"

The Editors

Observed LXXXIII

http://www.designobserver.com/

This week there is a pretty interesting post from the editors on a bunch of random design news and notes, such as: apparently the dutch have designed a stamp with motion, there is a graphic design class in New York doing an exhibit about guns and they created different items out of guns like baby carriages, and toys, etc. and a bunch of other stuff. My favorite, though, is this graphic they have a link to which they say is used to train fighter pilots. It is a fun little test you should check out.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html

Response

I enjoyed our discussion today in class about creative people, and about stuff being practical. I think it is an important discussion with our jobs as designers always seems to be motivated by pushing the envelope. We've talked about toning down someone is easier than bringing them up, but this is hard to get a hold on for practical people like myself. I always strive for my work to be something people enjoy and I go into a lot of assignments thinking about how my editorial audience will perceive the work as opposed to what the people want. I think this might be a flaw in my thinking that I need to work on. It seems to often to me that when you bring work to people they have in mind a certain solution they want to see. It is almost as if there is a right answer all the time with things we do like the contests. But we are taught that there are no wrong answers in design; there are only ones that are not content driven enough. But the thing that gets me is there are always better solutions apparently out there, because these seem pretty clear during judging I've watched, and discussions I've heard. This is a constant battle to fit inbetween this line of creating something that is content driven to me, and creating something that is what everyone (especially the editors) will really like.
It is a relevant discussion. I think the 20/10 assignment is a good model to help with this. I think if I came up with tons of solutions everytime, I might find ones that go both ways on the spectrum.

Critique Feb. 28

This week I got to do lots of designing. It was pretty enjoyable overall. I really liked the graffiti and logo assignments. I also designed Short talk in Vox and a poster and have been trying to finalize Global Journalist, so it has been pretty busy.
Short Talk was a bit of a learning experience for me this week. On one of the pages I had to work with an infobox/graphic and I had not really done many of these in the past. There was a quarter page ad on the page and not very much text, so I struggled with trying to create a graphic to fill the space and make it interesting. I worked with Liz on solving the space problem with another ad and she also was great in helping me make the infobox better.
I will get another chance this weekend in the quest to make short talk awesome.

I was pleased with how my graffiti turned out. As I said in class I didn't want all of my letters to look the same, I just went with letters I liked. The contrast and individuality of the letters worked in my opinion to express something about me.
As for the Vox logos, none of mine were selected, but I was happy to hear from Liz that she liked them artisticly, it just wasn't practical enough. I didn't design all of my logos to be practical , however they would have worked in my opinion. It was a good learning experience in Illustrator. I had not worked too much with this software, and now I have a better grasp of how it works.
Global Journalist has been a little bit of a nuisance. It has been hard to communicate with the editors because they are not there as much as the Vox staff. They meet on Wednesday and I always have to work. My design is pretty workable right now and they have lots of comments and things they want me to change. The grid is way different than what I've worked on in the past and there is lots of text to worry about. I like the opportunity it presents as a clip, and to work with a different group of people, but it has not been as much fun as anticipated. But I guss everything isn't always fun to design.

So we are in the process of wrapping GJ up now and I do short talk this weekend and that is all that is going on this week besides website, and protfilio and resume work- which always can be worked on.

gaza

gaza
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

This is a glimpse at the images and text I am working with. The text is about a paragraph too long with this solution. It needs some tweaking, but I am still messing with it.

whitehouse_237

whitehouse_237
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

This is a photo of the Oval office and the rug Bush apparently had to design.

"You can't miss" designobserver.com

This week there is a pretty funny speech by George Bush posted. He comments on how when he first became president one of the first decisions he had to make was how he wanted the Oval Office rug to be designed. It was a good read. Check it out...

There is also a posting about designing history and what all is out there and this is fitting since we just did historical presentations on design. Some of you might be interested at looking at thus, too.

http://www.designobserver.com/

You can't miss

I would think Jordan's cover would be a "you can't miss" because it is really well done. So everyone go check that out before Thursday if you can. I also liked the cover of the AJR this past week. It had a good concept, and I haven't seen many of this magazine's covers really catch my eye before, but this one did.

Response,

I saw Jordan's cover for Vox this week and it looks like it is going to be awesome Thursday when it comes out. I like how she was able to execute her original thought process from last Thursday. She was able to churn out exactly what she explained to us as her concept. It is really cool. Usually a lot changes in the process, but she must have had a really good planning process. Kudos to her. I have been impressed with our covers thus far. The rest of us have a lot of work to keep up the high level of designing that's being done.
Also, I would like to thank everyone for their feedback on my clips from class today. I looked over them and there was lots of good feedback. I will put it to good use for my portfolio.
I wish we could have more discussion, however about good designing principles that we could appy to our work. I feel like I am always learning with each design, but I also feel like a beginner in a lot of ways, too. I guess designing is an art and their aren't that many rules, but I know there is more knowledge that could be put in my head about designing. Hopefully we will get to talk more about design in class in the future.

Critique Feb. 21

Well I didn't have any designs over the weekend for Vox, just the four page feature from last Thursday. I was pretty pleased with how it printed and the response I got from everyone. I am excited I got a good clip to use for my portfolio. I am in the process tonight of finishing my Global Journalist feature spread. I am having trouble making it look good due to having a really long article. I wasn't given any art and so I had to find my own pictures to use with the spread. It is about the Gaza Strip conflict and reporter access to that area. There are not too many good photos within the last two weeks that go directly with the story, but I am still trying to work with it. It is kind of frustrating to get to work with full color and there is so much black text I have to compete with. But I guess that is why they pay us the big bucks! I will have more to add to this in a later blog, and I will post my work through the process.
We have on the slate the grafitti assignment and the Vox logos I am beginning to work on for next week. I am also doing two shorttalk pages this week. Hopefully it will all go well.

Response

I wanted to respond to last weeks' Vox cover. I like the concept with the brain on love idea. The brain certainly gets your attention. The illustration and words work really well together. I also liked the blurbs taking the image to another level. I think without these the illustration of the brain would lose some merit and place on the cover. I know we were going for the lines to show exactly where in the brain this takes place, but I don't think as a I reader I get that. The lines really make the cover look like an infographic you might find in a newspaper. So the entertainment value I think is loosened with these. But this is just food for thought. I thought it was a unique way to do a Valentines day-like cover without just hearts and things. So way to get outside the box.

You Can't Miss

http://photoshoptechniques.com

I know we have to bring in a photoshop trick for Thursday, this site might help. It is a blog of sorts where people post their own tricks. It has some cool stuff on it you can look through if you're into learning new things.

Design observer you can miss

http://www.designobserver.com/archives/011080.html#more


Designobserver only put two new things for this week and they weren't very interesting to me. Maybe one of you will find it facsinating. It is about architectural design and ethical dilemmas surrounding the status of the United Nations building. Check it out.

Busy, busy

For this next week I get to start on Global journalist. I am exciting about looking at my story and digging in. I also will start revising my Casino story feature spread for my portfolio and work on the Vox logo and grafitti assignment. It will be awesome.

Critique 4- Feb. 14

Below is my feature pages for Vox this week. I am pretty proud of my work over the past week on this. There was a lot of decisions I made, some with help rom Debbie and Liz, but most of the final concept was mine and there were no major changes that were made. I was very happy about this. My original edit was from five pictures and I talked about this in lab last week. I was unsure about how the photos would work together, but I am happy with my solution. I actually got Kristin to give me another picture to work with, and it turned out to be the dominant on the opening spread. They were going to use this one for the Table of Contents! I wasn't going to stand for that and stole it.
I like how her head is cut off, and I thought this helped illustrate how this girl is finding her true self, as she has a diverse background. So I thought it worked as a mystery theme. So I made sure to have her face in the second spread. I wasn't going to initially have the secondary image above the headline, but after the text was actually finalized it worked as a great scene setter since it is the opening scene in the lead of the text. As for the headline being untraditionally placed underneath the story and deck: this is me going outside the box and pushing convention. It is actually content driven because after reading the story I wanted to create a layout that was unconventional to match the story about an unconventional girl. She is unique in her heritage and so I thought it was fitting to have a unique opening.
I did come across some noteworthy technological problems. I began work in the second floor lab and then moved into the Vox room. I found the perfect font I wanted in Medici Script. It was on the shorttalk computer when I designed it and turned it in Saturday night. When I came in Sunday things were cool, but on Monday they opened my work on a different computer and the font was missing. So they wanted to me to find a new font for the whole spread. This was no fun. But Liz amazingly enough found a way to upload the font and so I got to change it back. The spreads on this blog have the ones I changed it to, not the Medici which will hopefully be in print on Thursday, so check it out. And make sure you check different computers when you do your design so you don't have this panick attack that I did.

feature 1 February 16.indd

feature 1 February 16.indd
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

feature 1 February 16.indd

feature 1 February 16.indd
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

This is my four page feature for Vox this week. Check it out...comment...

Star Trek font pack

trekkietype.546
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

Apparently this is a font pack from a dollar store. I will have to start going to more dollar stores if they are going to have awesome font packs!

"You Can't Miss" Design Observer

Design observer didn't really bring it this week with interesting posts, however, there is one ranting about typography that could be relevent to our ongoing discussion of TYPOLOGY.


http://www.designobserver.com/archives/010874.html#more

Cheers to Jan

Even though I was referred to as "edie" (E.D.) throughout class today, I think we all owe a cheers to our wonderful instructor for easing our load this week. That was huge for me and I know others agreed.
Thank you!

"You can't miss"

For everybody who loved looking at the old Vogue covers- this one goes out to you. I found a webiste with lots of examples of old Ladies' Home Journals. Check it out... It is neat to see how this very old magazine (circa 1883) has developed over time. I will talk more about this on Tuesday in my historical perspective presentation which you can't miss either!

http://www.gono.com/adart/ladieshomejournal/ladieshomejournal.htm

2/7 Response

Two things I wanted to respond to. First I thought everybody who presented their historical perspectives today in class did a great job. It seems like everyone really got into this assignment and did lots of good research and learned a lot. So applause goes round to everybody, even the ones (like me) who will go next week because I know they will all be good, too.
Secondly, I wanted to respond to the new Rolling Stone cover with Kanye West being represented as Jesus. I found the covver to be a really good example of content driven pop culture design. This is what people want when they design, isn't it. For people to talk about it and be interested in it. Lots of people, including us, or saying, "Hey, did you see the new Rolling Stone cover." It has to be selling off the racks, and isn't this what the business is all about. Rolling Stone has always pushed the boundaries with covers. This shouldn't come as a surprise. I liked it a lot. Kanye makes music all the time with relegious undertones. His song "Jesus Walks" was all over the radio last year and I even think he performed the song at the Grammies, if not some other awards show. Many of his songs are marked by controversial lyrics, and a lot of what comes out of his mouth is controversial too (see Katrina and George Bush statements). What better cover to have than one like this for this man. I wouldn't even be surprised if the cover was his idea.

Critique 3

Well, I had the short talk department at Vox this past weekend. Teresa was my partner in crime, except we really didn't work together at all. She took page four and I did page three. Her story was on fondue and she had sidebars and a cool graphic, and her page turned out awesome. So big ups to Teresa for carrying the section this week. I had a story on an elephant trainer in a circus. We had a photo for this and so this was my dominant element. It turned out to look really simple and plain, but it actually took a while to do. The picture was too big using the Vox four column grid. If I made it go three columns the story wouldn't fit, and there was too much to cut. If I made it two columns it was too small and there was lots of space to fill, more than a pull quote, which would have competed with the photo. So, I had to go beyond the grid and make my own columns up and go between the two options. But nonetheless it is a clean page and the story is pretty good so hopefully people will be drawn to a story about elephants. I also took the initiative to do page 3, which runs with a half page ad. It had a flashback, which is a submitted photo and so it was old. It had a weird border around it and was hard to line up straight with the page. But I managed and everything got done pretty early. I know the editors appreciated our puncuality.
Now for my future plans this week. It is a very busy one, indeed. I am in the process now of sketching the four page feature for this week on Chinese dancers , so I am pretty excited about this opportunity. I am also supposed to help Andrea in the next couple of days complete Adelante designing. Our Vox logos, and the grafitti assignment are due in a couple weeks, so I will need to begin planning this out. My website portfolio is going to take shape Wednesday night. Also, Global Journalist stories are going to come to us anytime in the next week, and so I am will be gearing up for that. So there is lots to do. So little time to do it. Such is life...