Critical Review

Not Working


I didn't design anything this past week except for my cover draft so let's take a closer look at what's not working about this cover.

Starting with the obvious, the illustration is terrible. Confused on how to represent the topic and unsure of photo opportunities I took another stab at an illustration. It's not too bad, considering my limited skills, however I knew going into this that there would have to be considerable redesigns. Secondly, the colors, though on the screen seemed representative of denim, printed almost black and made the image even more difficult to distinguish. Thirdly, the concept itself doesn't really work. The story is all about glitz and glamour, and as Jan and Jen said, jeans and a T-shirt aren't the first things that come to mind when you think luxurious.

I tried. I don't think it's total crap, it was a starting point. As Michael Grinfield would say, "Everyone has shitty first drafts."

Meredith Take Two

Response to design presentation

Today's presentation of our prototype designs to the Meredith group went really well. After not touching my Poised designs for almost a month, it was refreshing to give them another look over and get feedback from industry people about possible improvements and overall thoughts.

I was honestly surprised at how pleased they were with the designs. They might have just been overly pleasant, but I expected there to more criticism of our concepts and final products. I got some great suggestions about things that could have worked better and a considerable amount of recognition for the designs I produced.

As a designer, I feel like I don't get too much positive reinforcement. Maybe it's because of my generation and all those theories that our parents boosted our confidence too much so now we all need to be told we're doing well in order to feel good about ourselves. Either way, it was nice to get some recognition and a bit of encouragement as the semester brings itself to an end and I continue to debate running into oncoming traffic.

Check it Out

Beowulf and beauty?


Just seeing this cover brings back nightmares of having to read Beowulf in high school. I've heard great things about it. My mother is a history professor and could talk your ear off for hours about it. I still have no desire to ever pick it up.

However, the critics had some great things to say about the embossed graphic and the success of the fwis covers blog. So if you've ever wondered how the business side of blogs work or if you just want to read commentary about the Beowulf cover design you should check it out.

Designs in the Making

Luxe List


This is my first draft of the design for the May 10th Vox cover. The story is about ways to live luxuriously with and without riches in Columbia. I feel like this is a really difficult concept to represent. I was hoping to go for an illustration, but the overall consensus was that a photo would be better. The problem is how do you get one picture to incorporate all of the items or the concept without it just being a photo of a huge ring.....maybe that's a better idea.
When I think about luxury and lavishness I think of diamonds. If we just got a great studio shot of a blingin' diamond ring and paired it with the title and a great coverline that talked about all that glitters and gleams or something with blingin' in it, then it might work.

Critical Review

Belly Art


I designed the Fine Arts department for the reproductive health issue of Vox. This was a fun department page to design. The story is about ways that pregnant mother can get creative with their enlarged stomachs, creating casts, applying temporary tatoos and painting scenes.
I love this photo and wish that I could have run it larger, but with the sidebar, there was already a massive amount of overflow text.
I struggled with photo placement. This was the first department design that I've done that included a sidebar, so figuring that out was a challenge in itself. It's a very service journalistic design. There are lots of things that draw the reader's attention to the page. The page turned out good.

Patience

Response to Website

I consider myself to be a pretty patient person, however, when it comes to websites I want to pull my hair out. I don't know how many times I redesigned my website. The colors and fonts have stayed pretty similar, but the navigation and the layout of the design pages have changed probably 10 times. In true designer fashion, I'm still not satisfied with it.

I couldn't get my font to open in flash, so I had to change the font of my logo, something I was determined not to do. The logo was the one thing that I really liked and got good reviews of from the class. I tried to find something similar, but every time I look at the page all I can think about is the logo font.

I plan to take some time after graduation to get all of my stuff together before I start searching for a job. During this time I'll go back and work out the kinks of the website, so that I can include additional designs and spend more time focusing on all of the details.

Check It Out

3D Designs

Fwis is always a great place to look for inspiration. They have everything from CD album covers to 3D designs. This ad for the IPhone is pretty cool. I will never be able to afford the IPhone, but a cardboard cut-out I could definitely manage. I think it would be really interesting to do a 3D mini portfolio, but it would be too small to showcase all of my work. I'm trying to do something unique but practical, too things that I'm finding aren't easy to accomplish on a limited budget. I don't know how many designers fwis has, but they produce a wide variety of products that you should definitely check out, if not just for fun.

Designs in the Making

Luxe List

I'm designing the cover for the May 10th Vox. I haven't gotten too much information about it, so I'm not sure if it's just an article or a theme, but the cover will be about the Luxe List, which highlights all that glitters and gleams in Columbia and gives those financially conservative a second option. I should be getting a draft of the text soon so I'll have a better idea of what the story is.

Critical Review

On The Map

This is the On The Map that I designed for last weeks issue of Vox. OTMs are pretty basic - a large photo, a map of the location, title and a large caption. For some reason, OTMs have been more complicated than I think they are supposed to be. There is always confusion about which OTM we're using, which photo goes with which story, where the location is.

I feel like this design is good for what it is. I like the extra space to design with, thanks to the new department tags. I think I've finally mastered the clipping mask, so at least I learned something.

Letting Go

Response to Logos

After today's overview of the covergence logos, I realized that this semester, this class has enabled me to get over failed designs. Don't get me wrong. I will always think about ways that I could have improved my designs. I'll always tell myself that "If I'd had more time I could have done this or that," but with some of the designs we've completed this semester I've learned to spend less time worrying over the small things like logos that didn't get picked and more time focusing on the designs that mean more to me. I will constantly think of ways that I could have changed my prototype designs so that they would have been better, but it's more important that I concentrate on what's next and what I can do so that I don't kick myself for making the same mistakes twice.

Check It Out

Interviews

After completing the trends assignment I've been attracted to the interviews on fwis. They do a really good job of making the interviews interesting and mix the serious design questions with more lighthearted banter about foosball that cracks me up.
You should definitely check out the interview with John Gall. His cover designs are brilliant and he goes into good detail about his design process. His comments about designing a cover for Remainder where particularly intriguing and his description of how much time he spends designing a cover seemed oddly familiar.

Designs in the Making

Mini & Mighty

I've been thinking a lot about my mini-portfolio and trying to figure out how to put it together so that it is inexpensive, yet professional at the same time. I still like the idea that I found on fwis, but I'm not sure how well that will showcase my designs.

Questions I'm raking my brain to figure out:
How many pieces should be in the mini-portfolio?
Should they be separated into type of design?
Is it better to go with glossy paper or will good card stock suffice?
What's the best way to bind it all?
How many should I make?

And....
How in the world am I going to have time to figure all of this out?

Critical Review

Classic Cruisers


I designed the Art department page for the April 12 issue of Vox. The story was a preview for a classic car show the 63 Diner will be hosting soon.

I was very pleased with the photos I had to choose from. The photographer only gave me two options, it would have been great to have had more, but in some ways it makes the selection process easier. For this department design, I focused on placing art elements, including display type and an info box, at key places so that the reader's eye would be first drawn to the photo, then to the headline, down to the pull quote and into the text. I went with a yellow for the info box and the department tag, pulling it from the break lights of the old-fashioned cars.

This was a fun design that allowed me some freedom and time to focus on the On The Map, which proved to bit more complicated than necessary, but all in all it was a productive design week.

Lost in Translation

Response

I was really interested in Kristin's overview of her interviews in New York. I took an online journalism course last year and since then have been interested in knowing more about online publishing and the ways that magazines are using their websites. As a designer, websites scare me. All of the technical lingo is way beyond my basic understanding of dreamweaver and flash. When I spoke with the art director for my trends assignment I asked about the magazine's website and their involvement with the design. Similar to what Kristin mentioned, they use a format that was created for them and just insert the information in to the same spots month after month. The website itself is easy to navigate and feature stories are expanded online to give the reader more information about the places and things mentioned in print. However, the design could use more improvement.

I think it will be interesting to see magazine websites change as technology and the industry advance in the years to come. I just hope I can keep up.

Check It Out

Covering Career Paths

With my trends assignment still fresh in my mind, I stumbled upon an interview Fwis did with designer Jon Gray. In the interview Gray talks about the path that led him to becoming a designer, her thought process and opinions on typography. The interview gives a good insight into the industry.

Designs in the Making

Let's Talk About Sex Baby

I am the designer for the April 26, reproductive health issue of Vox. The Arts story will be about ways that pregnant woman are getting creative with their enlarging bellies. A local store sells belly tattoos and belly cast kits that give pregnant mothers the opportunity to have fun and be artistic without harming their baby in any way. The editor and I aren't sure what type of access we'll have to photos, past or present, but photos will be the main art element on the department page. Just by luck of the draw, I've designed only a handful of department pages, so now that I'm doing so on a more regular basis, I'm really enjoying the process and have been pretty pleased with the designs for the past few weeks.

Critical Review

Cut and Cuffed






I was pretty discouraged when I picked up last Thursday's issue of Vox only to find that the On The Map that I had spent a good 2-3 hours working on, had been scratched. I wallowed in self pity for a minute and then began working on the Prison Break feature.

I am so pleased with the way this turned out. I'm usually never completely satisfied with my designs, I always wish I had changed this or used a different font for that, but at the end of a very long Sunday of designing, I was able to leave the Vox office beaming with pride.

The design came a long way from my original ideas. The finished product, from its fonts to its photo placement, all worked together with the text to create a very clean, simple yet fitting 4-page spread. I can't take credit for the color choice, I just used the new red swatch, but it is similar to what I used on my original draft. What I thought would be the greatest challenge, adding photo captions to the exiting handwritten captions, turned out to be quite simple and added to the overall concept. This one is definitely making it into the portfolio.

Regional Magazine Trends

Response to the Trends Assignment

I was first introduced to 417 Magazine when I was reporting on the 2006 Magazine Publishing Summit. At that time, I was focused on their use of their website to attract readers and revenue, but I soon realized that 417 was a publication that I would love to work for some day.
This assignment taught me a great deal about the industry side of regional magazines. I enjoy reading Kansas City Home and Gardens, The Pitch, St. Louis magazine and other Missouri publications, but until now I hadn't realized that the success of these publications is largely based on their ability to remain up to date with trends and issues in their community and provide 417-land residents with a publication unluck any other that is tailored to their region.

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Paper Possibilities

After receiving all of those paper samples in class the other day, I've been busy thinking about interesting ways to print and put together my mini portfolio. I found this idea on the fwis website and thought it was pretty cool. It's a poster so I'm not sure how well it would work for what I need, but maybe it can inspire me to think of a similar way to make my portfolio interesting. It would keep me from spending hours at Kinko's cutting paper into perfectly straight squares, which they never end up being. I'd have to check, but I would think that it would be more cost efficient to just print one large piece instead of multiple smaller ones. Pretty cool.

Designs In The Making

Classic Cars

Finally I get to take another stab at an Arts department page. The story, scheduled for the April 12th issue of Vox, is a preview for a classic car show that the 63 Diner will be hosting for the first time this year. The photos have been shot, but aren't on the Vox server yet. I've been told they turned out good, so I'm excited to see them. I hope that the cars are in various colors. The Arts page can look a little blah at times, so a colorful picture will help bring out the fun tone of the story.

Critical Review

On The Map

I designed the On The Map for the March 29th issue of Vox. It was a pretty simple design. The map took a little more time than I had anticipated, but the photo was easy to work with and the text all fit. This was my first time working with the new department tags and color swatches. Though they're small changes, they gave me more freedom and a little more space to work with. I'm scheduled to design at least one more On The Map before the end of the semester and I'm actually looking forward to it.

Wild About the Web

Response to Digital Portfolio

I was surprised out how well put together some of the websites were. I was proud of my simple use of flash, but some of the other websites were unbelievably professional. I'm looking forward to seeing every one's finished portfolio's. This is something that I think is important to provide possible employers. Erica had the right idea by buying a web address. The current web address for my portfolio is too long and hard to remember, but it is free, so I can't complain.

I have a lot of work to do before my website will look and do all of the things I would like for it to, but I learned a lot from the responses of the class and got great ideas of ways to improve what I have already and add to it.

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Stock vs. Photog

I've been hearing a lot about magazines, big and small, using more and more stock photography. It seems nowadays Getty Images and Corbis is showing up in more captions than staff photographers. Even though I know this is going on, I was still surprised to learn via fwis that these images are also gracing the covers of books now. I can't decide how I feel about this issue, but it was very interesting to read some of the responses from critics. You should definitely check it out.

Designs In The Making

Prison Break


This was my initial design for the Prison Break story for the April 5th issue Vox. This was before we had any photos from the Hughes brothers. I was thinking about prison and the main thing that I think of when I hear the word prison is bars. Pretty obvious.

Once the photos were in things got better.



I tried to let the photos tell the story instead of complicating things with any type of illustration. I stuck with black, gray and orange to compliment the black and white photos and further emphasize the legal aspect of the story (isn't the law supposed to be black and white?).

Critical Review

Dearly Departed


I'm unhappy with how this design turned out. When I first signed up to design for the Vox restaurant issue, I was excited do something different for a change. I've only actually designed one Fine Arts department page, but soon realized that there weren't many opportunities other than photos and text. The editors think it's important to show a photo of the show or event the article is previewing or reviewing, which I agree with. Unfortunately, this doesn't leave much for me to do. I was looking forward to taking a stab at an illustration for The Departed page.

Well, that idea fell through and the page wound up looking exactly like a Fine Arts department page. It's not the end of the world and I think the page looks good, I just wish there had been more interesting visual details to the page.

Logo Limits

Response to Logo Assignment

Almost as interesting as creating logos for the MU Convergence Journalism sequence,
today's class discussion about designing methods, opened my mind up to reflect on my own methods and how my designs reflect and are effected by my designing process.

Depending on the assignment, I tend to create thumbnails of the design, mainly to figure out how I'd like the layout of the page of spread to be. Unfortunately, I don't do much illustrating, but when I've needed to include graphic elements to the design, I'll turn to paper and pencil before opening up InDesign. Either way, the final product is usually completely different than my original idea, which is a good thing most of the time.

It was great to see how some designers sketches reflect their personalities. The sketches of designers who are incredibly detail oriented and more abstract thinking, tended to be more detailed and neat. And the sketches designers like myself who think of the big picture first and then go back and add details, tended to be very rough and simple.

For my upcoming feature design, I'm going to try to sketch more and reverse my process, at least for the first stage of critiques, and see if my execution is improved.

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Differing Opinions

I amaze myself each week, when I find ways to write about things on Fwis. The site doesn't post new designs very often and I get bored with book covers.

This week, as I was searching for things to write about, I noticed that a lot of book cover designers are using shapes, particularly circles. In my own designs I've started using rounded edges on sidebar frames and dots of various sizes and colors to make the page "pop."

The critique of Carol Devine Carson's design of Matters of Honor gives great insight to how people respond to shapes. Some of the critiquers go off on tangents about spacing and typography, but one person wrote that the geometric shapes on the cover is enough to spark his interest.

Check out the way different people respond to Carson's use of shape and take a look at how other designers use shape to reflect the book's content at Fwis.

Designs in the Making

Switching Stories
















The feature for the April 5th issue of Vox has been changed from the story about the Columbia Mall's curfew to a story about two brothers who live in Versailles, Mo., and are suing FOX,claiming that their new show Prison Break is their story.

I'm expecting the first draft of the text later today, so hopefully I'll have some better ideas about design elements, but I'd like to include dark colors and textures to represent the harshness of prison. We're waiting to put in a photo request until we figure out whether just a portrait will do the job, or if there are other elements in the text that could be brought to light with photos.

I'm excited about this design. In some ways it's less challenging than the mall curfew feature, in that it allows for photos, but trying to figure out a way to use the photos in a content driven makes it more challenging.