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This week on the UnBeige blog, I found an article about design ethics in product spokescharacers. David Segal of Slate put together a slideshow of the history of ethnic spokescharacters. In light of the talks about race following the Virginia Tech shootings, I just thought it was interesting to see stereotypes of different ethnic groups that have been designed and sold. The two I am most familiar with are Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. It is important for designers to be aware that what they create and the way their work can be interpreted. Below are a few of the images.

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It was really interesting hearing what the people from the Meredith Corporation had to say about the work that not only the designers had done, but also the work that the publishing students had produced solely based on concepts they had given to them months ago. Going into the critiques, I expected the people from Meredith to be a little taken aback by what the design students had done but I found that they were very supportive and even though they said they would probably not be able to publish some of the covers they liked, I was pleased that they were still open to other ways of thinking. Although it is a little sad that money trumps all.

critique - May 1

This week, I continued working on the 5/3 cover for VOX. I found out that the focus of the article was in fact not the domestic violence but the hype that surrounded the publishing of the book, including the author's appearance on Oprah. So I started rethinking my concept for the cover. One of the concepts I thought of was a sort of spoof of the whole situation with "ATTENTION" in large letters and the beginning of a sort of press release stating the fact that this book was being released and was predicted to be a success. In the end that didn't quite work as it didn't really show what the story was about but it was fun to play around.

My second concept had more to do with the accolades that the author was receiving because she wrote this book. I wanted a textured background with an illutration of the author and flowers coming from different directions kind of being thrown at her. In my first draft, the flowers on the cover didn't quite work and the typography needed some work. The second version of the idea, I liked but it was brought to my attention that the image looked like a man so I decided it would be just easier to treat the photograph and use it. I didn't like the way the final product looked with the image in color so I desaturated the photograph and upped the cyan. The final product I really like because I think it speaks to the grittiness of the topic she's writing about. I like the way the texture of the background turned out. I really liked the "green" cover but I was told it looked to similar to one that ran last year so I changed the background. I think the new color still preserves the tone I was going for.




FINAL DRAFT:



PROGRESSION:

you can't miss

After having just taken a typeface quiz, I was excited to see this week on the UnBeige blog that a new book by Michael Beirut featuers 79 stories about design all in diffferent typefaces. Obviously the book will be nice to read but it will also be cool to count how many of the typefaces you recognized by the end of the book. Talk about nerdy, designer thrills.

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Putting together my website has really made me think about type and in particular, type on the web. Through a little research in online typography, I found out that Georgia and Verdana are the best typefaces for the web because they were specifically created for online work. The Font Bureau design foundry in Boston, www.fontbureau.com, has also created typefaces specifically for online. The typefaces include, Agenda Medium, Interstate Bold and Proforma Medium.







I've also been thinking about the presentation for my mini portfolio because I somehow want everything I have, from the business card to my resume and website to match. I don't know if that's the best idea but I do want there to be some cohesion in what I hand out to potential employers.

critique - 5/3 vox

This week, I've been working on the 5.3 cover for VOX this week. I had originally thought domestic violence was the main subject of the story so my concept for the cover was to show a somewhat somber scene with an obscured outline of a woman. Gray and red were the colors I thought would best show the gravity of the subject. The typeface is fittingly called "head injuries" but I think it looks more "blood and gore" than grave.




After many revisions, below is the final (at least for now) design for my website splash page. I'm concerned about my name and the way it looks. I can't decide if it would look better to have them separated or together plus I'm having typeface issues.

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The Roger Black site continues to have no new content but according to the Unbeige blog, he is busy redesigning "Working Woman". Looking through the swissmiss blog this week, there was an interesting typographic map of London, created by NB: Studio that is really great. I've added it to my long list of cool things you can do with type.

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The trends assignment was very interesting. It's always cool to hear what professional designers have to say about design and their influences. I talked to the creative director at RELEVANT magazine and one of the things I found very interesting was the fact that even though he was technically at the top of the design totem pole, he still had to get approval from the publisher for his designs. Of course, this is a different scenario from bigger consumer magazines where the editorial side really doesn't interact much with the publisher.

The variances in the different art directors' experiences was also interesting. It was troubling to me that at a big magazine like Glamour, the art director had no say in the stories or art chosen for the website. You also had magazines like St. Louis magazine where the art director is in charge of the whole thing to magazines like Blueprint where there is some division of labor. I guess my design experiences will vary according to where I end up. But I'm beginning to realize that some of the preconceived notions I had about certain types of magazines may not be true.

critique - April 17

This week, I worked on the background for my website. I thought just having a colored background was too plain, I decided to add some texture by adding some really tight spirals to the background. I changed the background color from black to green because I thought green would be a little more modern and sophisticated. I plan on using that same concept for my splash page.

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This week on Roger Black, Time magazine unveiled redesigns for both the online and the print edition of the magazine. And for the best news for designers, Adobe CS3 in now out. Adobe announced last week that it had unveiled the new edition of the design programs. As promised, flash and dreamweaver have been added to the list of programs except they are only available in the premium edition not the standard. I don't know when the suite is available in stores but it's exciting to know that it's finally here.

response-college news design contest

It's funny how a contest forces you to look seriously at the work you've been doing. When looking through my design clips to find stuff that would be suitable for the College News Design Contest, I realized that I had few magazine spreads I really liked. I ended up entering my "In Good Company" photo story and a I graphic I created did for a skin cancer story last summer.
This week, I also continued my quest for the perfect splash page for my website. I sketched out something that I thought I would be able to create in flash. After doing it in flash, I now don't know if I have too many things fading in, if the movie is too fast or even if the colors are right. I wanted the splash page to be utilitarian and not just decorative, so I've put access to the "portfolio", "contact" etc. so you can get to different parts of the site from the homepage.

Below is the first splash page I created. I like the colors here but they might be too bold. The second splash page I think might have too many bells and whistles. What do you think of the colors?

critique-Vox 4/5

This week, I designed the postscript and created the illustration that accompanied it. The piece was a personal essay about a man who had believed in New Age stuff for many years. The story involved aliens, Bigfoot, UFO's and other extraterrestrials. Coming up with one image that showed what the story was about was a little difficult so I decided to incorporated the different weird things the author wrote about into my illustration. I have aliens, numerology, UFO's represented. I decided not to show Bigfoot since no one really knows what he(she) looks like anyway.

Below is the illustration along with the page.

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Since Roger Black had no new content this week, I went to mediabistro's unbeige blog for design news and commentary where I found a very interesting article challenging the egoistical tendencies of designers. Apparently, we suck. Bruce Nussbaum, a design writer for businessweek online, said in a speech at Parson's School of Design. The speech starts out like this;

"In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck."

Nussbaum goes on to talk about the continuing arrogance of designers in the face of a new wave of design democracy where anyone with a computer can be a designer. Star designers, he says, are becoming a thing of the past. Nussbaum talks about all kinds of designers from iPod makers to museum builders.

The gist of the speech: Designers need to learn some humility.

In response to his remarks, designer David Armano illustrated Nussbaum's speech. It's pretty funny.

response-websites

Website design continues to dominate my life. Looking at other designers' websites today and browsing through other professional websites, I'm leaning more towards using white as my background instead of black. I think it would make my website look a little less heavy and maybe a tad more sophisticated. As in all things design, there are different opinions for what a good website should look like but Josiah Cole, a professional webmaster, there are a 19 things website designers should not do. Check them out at http://www.josiahcole.com/2007/02/14/a-webmasters-19-commandments/

One of the not-to-dos pertinent to print designers was this;

"This one is going to get me in trouble. If you are a print designer, and “do websites on the side”, STOP DOING websites and providing “advice” to your print clients about web design. Print design to web design is like designing an ad for a race car, and actually building and racing that race car. Don’t get me wrong, print is great and all, you make pretty pictures and wonderful messages crafted with great copy, but when it comes down to it, it’s still just a picture. People cannot buy the product with a print ad (yet), they can’t communicate with your business through a print ad. I can already here the grumbling coming from the print world, and look, it’s not that I don’t see a purpose for print advertising, just stick to print and don’t nose you’re way into a medium which you do not know and wouldn’t understand (same goes for general “geeks” who do websites ‘on the side’)"

I always thought it would be relatively easy, once you learned how to do it, to do both print and online design. I may be wrong.

critique - vox 3/22

For this week's issue of VOX, I designed the moonlighting feature. My original concept for the piece was to show the juxtaposition of each subject's day and night job. I had originally used gray for the box on the first spread, but after seeing the cover on Sunday, I decided to change the color to blue so both pieces would match. I really liked the photos on the third page and I would have liked to start with them, but Jen said the first story was stronger so I kept it that way. My final version is much improved from the one I showed on Thursday. There is more white space and each story has it's own defined section.

Here's my final version of "Moonlighters". Because of production issues, I made the text on the first spread two separate text boxes. Following a suggestion from Kristin, I changed the placement of the opening text as it was lost on the second page.


























Below is the version of "Moonlighters" I turned it in on Sunday.

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On Roger Black's blog this week, The New Yorker has just redesigned their website and according to Black, though the design is fine, the website, eschewing one of magazine websites' most important ideals, is not interactive. The only thing that changes daily is the calendar. Conde Nast, which owns the magazine is starting to move away from putting up a consolidated website for different magazines e.g. style.com for Vogue and W magazines. The magazines are now free to run their own websites that reflect the content and style of the individual magazine.

Here's a screen grab of the home page. It actually looks very much like the New Yorker and I like it.

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Creating logos was actually much easier than I thought it would be when we first got the assignment. I had been thinking of logo ideas and looking at different logos online so when the time came to sketch, I had a pretty good idea what kind of elements I wanted to incorporated into the logos. I followed my sketches pretty closely once I started working on them on the computer. Some of the logos were inspired by the other logos, as I would take elements I liked from one logo and use (and expand them) on another logo. I had no reasoning for the colors I chose, other than I liked them. I thought about using the school's colors but decided they wouldn't work with some of the logos I was making.

Here are the best (I think) of my logos.

critique

This week, I designed postcript and books for Thursday's Vox. I also made an illustration for an online story. The postscript was relatively easy to design. The art for the piece came from the author of the article. The paintings I had to choose from were all beautiful but I ended up using the black and white painting because I wanted it to stand out against the color I would be using as accents in the rest of the piece. Books was also pretty easy to design. The TAs had decided to do a sidebar highlighting the different covers of Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, "little big house" (or some similar title). I created a table to showcase the different book covers.

Below are the designs from the weekend.

Meredith redesigns

I redesigned some of my pieces for fusion. I decided I wanted to use brighter colors, so the spreads didn't look so dreary and I also changed some of my typefaces. The redesigned covers are the same from last week.

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This week, I'm responding to the POYI judging that's been going on for the past two weeks. I got to watch the judging of the "General News Reporting" in the first week and "Magazine Photographer of the Year" last week. Pictures of conflicts were especially popular in the general news reporting category, with pictures of Iraq leading as the most popular. I know photographers are supposed to cover the news of the day, but seeing picture after picture of Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and the tons of other world conflicts, is wearying and I think the judges felt the same way as many of those portfolios were not selected.

Overall it was great to see some of the best photography from all over the world and to watch the way "seasoned professionals" reacted to the pictures. In many ways, photography is like design in that its beauty rests in the eyes of the beholder. I think that like design, there are basic elements that make up a good photograph and everything else is up to the person looking at it.

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There are quite a few design movies coming out. From "Idiocracy" last week to "Helvetica" this week. "Helvetica" is a movie that documents the use of the typeface in the past 50 years. The independent movie, produced and directed by Gary Hustwit, shows the way "type affects our lives." Some of the most "innovative" designers in the world, are interviewed like Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli and Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf. The movie was shot all around the world and will be available soon. There'll be a screening of the movie May 1-2 in Kansas City, courtesy of the KC AIGA, complete with a Q&A session with the filmmaker. So if you're interested in seeing "Helvetica" go to http://www.helveticafilm.com/ for more information.

Below are a few shots from the movie.

critique cont.- new fusion covers

I decided to revamp my covers because I wasn't happy with the two from last week. I looked for photos that related to the stories in the magazine for that particular month and I was able to find a few things I liked. I kept the logo the same because I liked the fact that it looked strong but not too intimidating. There are not very many sell lines on them right now mainly because I'm having difficulty coming up with colors that complement the photograph plus if they end up going the Meredith way, I expect there wouldn't be many sell lines on them. Overall, I think it looks a little more believable as a consumer magazine.

Let me know what you think.