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.