Critique April 11

This week I will just be doing a critique. I used this week to edit some past entries and update my blog with some of the work examples I have been promising I would post. Hopefully Jan will like my blog better now that it has more images and updated links.

This week I was responsible for the cover. I am really excited for Thursday because I am so happy with the way the cover turned out. It was a collaborative effort with the photo editors, Vox editors, a photographer and myself. We all did a great job communicating and I think it shows. We came up with a concept and everyone worked to get a photoshoot together and make it happen. The photographer captured great images of everyone and the photo editors did a great job piecing everyone together and taking the musicians best looks. I made sure we were designing to fit the page and we worked out all the kinks pretty easily.
For the text on the cover, I wanted the headline to be incorporated into the environment and not take away from the great photo of the musicians lined up. So I went for a sidewalk chalk look. I drew the letter individually in Illustrator and I liked the effect I got. I think it works great and I worked with the editors to get "special 12-page issue" on there to really capture the significance of the issue. There is a dynamite music package inside and I wanted to make sure people pick this issue up. I hope the cover will be enticing enough. But be sure to check it out because wraparound covers don't happen very often and this is a special issue.
Hopefully one of the best ever as a whole.

Vox science feature3-16; p14-15

Vox science feature3-16; p14-15
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

This is the opening spread to the six page feature I did with Katie. Katie ultimately designed this spread, but we had collaborative conceptual ideas and I helped with lots of the edits.

Vox Science feature published 3-16, p16

Vox Science feature published 3-16, p16
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

The following my specifically my two pages of the feature well.

Vox Science feature published 3-16, page 17

Vox Science feature published 3-16, page 17
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

website coverpage

website coverpage
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

Here is the simple redesign of my spash page. There is no longer an MU logo; just school of journalism. What do you think of this?

Goatsbeard solutions

Goatsbeard solutions
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

Here are a couple of my Goatsbeard Farm logos I created. I went for earthy colors and even tried a see-through whole on the second one.

Response

I wanted to take this week to respond to the spring break release of Vox- "under the virtual knife" executed by Heather. I thought this was a great solution once again by our design team. What I like the most is the attention to detail placed on her face and with the cursor/tabs. The cover also has great depth to it with the three dimensional boxes. It has a very virtual feel to it and I understand what is going on right away. If I had to come up with some sort of criticism it would just be editorially with the subject matter. I don't think this topic really appeals to our readership we've discussed. I know our editors were still trying to come up with what was going on the cover this issue up until break. Heather was in the dark and she did a real good job with what they gave her. So editors dropped the ball it seams, and the designer was there for the rescue. What else is new? Haha.


You Can't Miss

www.designobserver.com

There is a really relevant notion discussed on this website this week. It is about website design, which we are all trying to become good at. It actually discussed that ugly design sells on websites. It is a cute, but serious look at why this is,
Check it out.

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Website-Development/The-Surprising-Truth-About-Ugly-Websites.html

Critique April 4

Well spring break was fun; short, but fun. I designed a short talk page over break and did my calendar shift as well. Short talk was pretty uneventful. I had a scene and heard about skating with a picture. I tried to vary the headlines on the page by running the headline below the photo. Calendar wasn't as bad as I've heard, but it did get tedious at times. There was a lot of formatting to be done.
For this week I am working on executing our plans for the music issue cover. We've come up with the grand scheme to do a photo cover reminiscent of the indulgence issue circa 2000. We want to get some of these musicians together and shoot a studio-like shot outside the blue note. We wouldn't be shooting the marquee, but I envision the musicians waiting wrapped around the corner to get in like so many fans of the past. The cover is set to be a wrap around, so this has potential to be pretty awesome. I am excited. We have photo shoots set up for Wednesday and Friday.
So with this excitement, creating my mini portfolio and trying to figure out my website things are crazy as usual.

More 3/21

Response
I thought I would respond this week to the logos we did. It is always fun to look at everyone's creativity in class. I am always amazed at some of the stuff people do. From today's class I was really impressed by Jordan's and Kristin's work. I really liked Kristin's typography and color use. Her logos really got at what I was trying to do, but didn't feel like I accomplished. They looked " "sheek" and country at the same time. She used fall red colors which I had trouble pinning down as a good color, but it works perfectly for the farm look. Jordan, like always, had some of the most innovative ideas that were practical. I like her stuff because she always seems to have fresh ideas, but they also work and aren't hard to picture as being used.
But everyone did good. I was worried from everyone saying their's were not good that we wouldn't have great stuff to look at. But we pulled it off and I think the Goatsbeard people have lots of working options and good ideas to choose from for a new logo.

You can't miss

Me! You can't ( and probably won't) miss me next class we have after break on Tuesday. I will most likely be flying to Green Bay, Wisc. that evening to interview with the Packers (the NFL football team there) that Wednesday for a job. So pray for me so that one more of us can say we are doing something with ourselves after we graduate. I've heard from Andrea that she has a job offer and I've heard rumors of Yolanda doing some things. I knoe we are all hitting a crossroads where we are stressing about jobs. So let's keep everyone posted. I am a big fan of everyone in our class and I hope everyone gets to do something they love with their experiences.


You cant miss DESIGN OBSERVER

www.designobserver.com

An interesting news article about how students are learning italic handwriting now as opposed to cursive. Apparently there is an legibility concern with adults.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/family/article/0,2792,DRMN_107
_4536159,00.html


This is really cool. This is a link to an article showing 25 free fonts available for free online. They are new fonts that you don't see anywhere. There are some cool ones.

http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/20-best-license-free-official-fonts

Critique March 21

Well this past week was a fun one design-wise. My six page feature with Kate came out looking cool on Thursday. This past weekend I got to design my first illustration. I used clip art and my newly refined Illustrator skills to come up with a pretty fun illustration for a space food story. I will have to post it soon. I have received a lot of positive feedback from it so far.
Also this week was our logo assignments. I spent a lot of this past week trying to finalize ten solutions for the Goatsbeard Farm logo. It was a good assignment as far as making us stretch our desiging muscles and get more creative with our solutions. I went for clean and sophisticated logos that incorporated the Goatsbeard flower. I liked my photo ones as well that had pictures of praries in the background.
I will post some of them as soon as I have pdf's ready.
For this week I am slaving away trying to get something up for my website. I have a working first page, but I still need to get some work samples up.I am sure once we go over them in class I'll have to make changes. But I am exciting about having a published website. This is a very cool assignment on lots of levels.
This weekend is spring break! so no features or short talk. But I will be back in action the second half of spring break to do short talk. I also have the Vox cover coming up 4/16. It is the music issue and we are in talks about possible solutions already. Preliminary thoughts think this cover might go photo or photoillustration. It realy depends on what the photographers bring back. But more on this experience to come.

I will post pictures of our six page feature and some of my logos soon...

Response

I liked our discussion today in class about all the design magazines out there. I was unaware of a lot of these. So I found something new I want to get. They seem really helpful in monitoring trends in the business. The magazine I looked at was Print. I thought it had a querky feel to it and had some real interesting stories to read. I think it would be very challenging to design a designing publication. There has to be lots of scrutiny since the readership is made up of people who do the same thing you do. That would be pretty scary. But now I have something new to look for at Barnes and Noble.
I also wanted to respond to the growing force that thinks the NBA logo is outdated. I think it would be very bold of them to change such a well recognized logo. It would be similar to Coke changing it's logo. It may not be representative of today's players, but it now can represent the past and where it all came from. And changin to something newer that represents the players could be not a good image to put off. Tattoos and rap are big player influences in the league. How do you come up with a logo to represent that. This logo has to go on all of the official merchandise, arenas, and player jerseys. I think they need to stick with what is working for them.

"You can't miss"

http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/81/PersonalityofFonts.htm

This is a cool thing posted on designobserver.com. Apparently there was a psychological study done on emotional connections to typography. Since we've been reading about typographic style I thought this was neat to look at. It compares all the popular fonts and sees what emotions they each put off.

I also love designobserver because they always through in something with sports and designing. This week there is discussion on the NBA logo and whether it shoud change. Since we're working on logos this was neat to read.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/5328860

Critique March 14

This past week I had my two page feature. I had the unique opportunity to work with the four page feature since it was the theme issue. I had a good time working with Kate. I think we worked well together in creating a concept and executing it as one piece. We each were able to add a little bit of our own styles to the spreads. It went really smooth for me, and I think Kate would agree that our solution was something we are both proud of.
The hardest part was getting all the stories to fit neatly across the three spreads. They couldn't just start anywhere and we didn't want to have to cut one in half over the jumps. We ended up only doing this to one, so for the most part it turned our clean. The mug shots were interesting because they are not consistent, but I don't think it detracts too much from the design. I know the editors did the best they could to get all the shots in. The pictures are very important so the reader can put a face with a bios.
I came up with the idea to have the waves go through the story. It is supposed to be representative of an atom. I think it is a clever way to unite all the spreads together visually. I think it adds to the feel and tone of the story. We toyed with the percentage a lot. It was at ten and then we brought it down to 5. Hopefully it will print ok.
The only thing I don't like is the fonts are the same as in the departments, and I felt like the feature pages are the one chance to do something different and we couldn't do anything. We originally had a courier font that looked like a typewriter, but Debbie said it was too cliche. She wanted us to use avant garde, instead. I respect DK's opinions and knowledge so I went with it, but I would have opted for something different in the future. It isn't a big issue, but even being cliche it was still content driven. Oh well.
So now I am all done with features and only have my cover left to tackle in April.
This week I am getting my webpage up and going and toying with my portfolio. All four shorttalkers will be in action this weekend to get the two issues done.

216661_480_art_R0

216661_480_art_R0
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

Notice how the Detroit Pistons use straight lettering. They are apparently one of only two NBA teams, and a select few professional teams who still use this style.
I bet you never really noticed the intricacies of uniform typology did you?

050728_francoeur_vmed_1p.widec

050728_francoeur_vmed_1p.widec
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

See how these arched letters go together better. Notice also the detail in the first "A" and the second "A."

3tgal03.l

3tgal03.l
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

Notice the bock lettering and how the letters don't flow together...

"You can't miss"

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lukas/060223


http://www.designobserver.com


Here are the links to my design "can't miss" website, and the coolest thing to me this week.

Design observer editors have been doing this cool bulleted fast pace list of all kinds of querky design news and notes the past couple of weeks. Some are really interesting and some are really funny. This week there is a cool one from ESPN about jersey typography. I am a huge sports fan and I never really thought about jersey typography, but apparently there is a lot that goes into this. The arching of the lettering and the effects the type makes is a pretty interesting concept. I think it is a neat story for design nuts and sports nuts. So check it out....

Response

I wanted to respond to the feature spread for this week's Vox. I was really pleased with the solution Heather came up with for the hitchhiking story. I love being able to see the evolution of all of our class's designs in our discussions and meetings. We really have some creative people in our class. Heather's design is another one like Jordan's cover where she had an idea she wanted to execute and stuck with it and made it better with each step along the way. Her cut out idea was a really unique solution for the story. The boy and girl idea was good, but the final production of the characters cut out was cool and much better. Heather's style is unique, and it is neat to see all of our styles and ways we work creatively. I think this is the best part of our class. Having it small and intimate lets us all be able to work closely together and learn more from each other.

I really liked Kristen's solution for the Monk's story in last week's Vox, too. I was able to work next to her during the weekend production and help give her advice on her design. I liked being able to see how she worked and saw things visually as an amazing photography editor and designer. Sometimes I think everyone is more brilliant than me designing wise, but it's good to see that for the most part everyone's designs go through lots of changes and a proccess that makes them all work.

Critique March 7

In the past week I completed Gobal Journalist and designed short talk. I was pleased with how the Global Journalist spread turned out. The communication with the editor began very weak, but it turned out we got everything together and performed well. It should look nice here in the next few weeks when it comes out. Short Talk was pretty smooth and easy this past weekend. Since I did two pages last week, I had the half page this week. It was pretty simple to complete, and their was nothing special about it.
For this week I will be designing the feature package with Kate. We are collaborating together nicely so far, and I expect the result to be pretty awesome. We have ten profiles of researchers at MU and six pages to put them on. We have mug shots for all of them as well. I think logos will go nicely with each researcher's focus. We have come up with an atom theme that will hopefully tie the spread together and make it a cohesive unit. I am looking forward to getting on the page and working with the text more.
On the slate is this feature for this weekend. We have the 20/10 assignment coming up and so that will be something to think about. I also want to get my website going more so that I can use it with the job application process.
That is what's going on...

Voxlogo2

Voxlogo2
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

more solutions. These more edgy. I liked the artist brush effect of these.

Voxlogo1

Voxlogo1
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

One logo solution

Eddie_graffiti

Eddie_graffiti
Originally uploaded by tigerkingpin.

This is my graffiti work of art.

"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.