you can't miss

In conjunction with my look at the present design era, the author of the blog I'm following has written a "10-year design review" looking at the trends that have influenced magazines. An interesting thing Black finds in his study, is that there "has been no trend [in magazines]." Black writes about the influence of David Carson and the use of distressed type in magazines like Entertainment weekly and GQ. Black calls 1998 "The Year of Design" as consumers began to favor stores like Target and Ikea. Below is an example of the David Carson influenced GQ.



Visit www.rogerblack.com for more information.

response

I am responding to the reading in the Graphic Styles book. In the "Digital" era, the book refers to period called "New Simplicity" that occurs in the mid-nineties. The style, also known as Neo-Modern, was a response to the chaos of the Post-Modern era. Magazines like "Real Simple," "Details," "Instyle" and even "ESPN" were hailed when they were first publised for adhering to simplicity in their design. Below is a cover of Ray-Gun from the mid-nineties, a magazine that favored the more chaotic look of the Post-Modern era and a cover of Details. The difference is clear. I know I'm a big fan of minimalist design but now I'm not sure if my taste is just a product of the present era in design or if I personally just prefer simplicity.

working title

Below are two versions of my fake headlines for the ballerina piece. The final title is "In Good Company" but I've been enjoying playing around with this.

ballerina (2nd draft)

Since my first draft didn't introduce the subject of the story, which was the most important part of the story, I changed the pictures around, opening the feature with pictures of Karen, the subject, practicing along with her dancers, followed by the performance and then the celebration. This spread follows the timeline of the story. The headline of the piece is a working title. Let me know what you think of the changes.

critique, wk 2

This week I've been working on the ballerina feature for Feb. 8th and an illustration. For my first draft, I chose pictures that I though represented the story I wanted to tell. Basically, I wanted to say this through the images; Karen comes to Columbia from a big city to start a ballet company. Her company puts on a show that is very popular. I went with a black background because I loved the three, kind of moody pictures with Karen and the dancers during their performance. On screen, the black background looks great, but it does not look good on print. So black background is out. My first drafts usually tend to be very safe and predictable and as I keep working on this feature, I hope I end up with a very nice photo story that's well put together yet slightly different.

you can't miss

I'll be following roger black's blog for the semester. Roger Black is a print and web designer who has helped redesign Reader's Digest and Newsweek. It is divided into different sections - industry commentary, point & counter, question & answer and visual commentary. For this week, under "visual commentary", roger talked about the redesigns at LA Times. Roger, who was involved with the redesign process years ago said the new section "Outdoors" looked "dashing". The old font, Ionic No.5 was replaced by Matthew Carter's ('m guessing designer") Victoria font. While newspaper design is not my forte, I am a big fan of the layout of the page. Vertical photos are always a plus to any design.


See his website if you want to learn more. http://www.rogerblack.com/works/los_angeles_times
Another interesting can't miss. The website is in Spanish and is the online version of a Mexican magazine that looks and feels unlike anything you've ever seen. Check it out.
http://www.reporteindigo.com/

response

As preliminary judges for CRMA, it's alway interesting to see the different design tastes of your fellow designers. It's strange that good design, most of the time, is in the eyes of the beholder. I know some of my students from last semester were a little annoyed with how, supposedly arbitrary, the grades they got were. But is design really subjective or are there basic tenets and principles we crazy designers subscribe to? I looked up "what makes good design" in google.com and I found this on www.paulgraham.com/taste.html. Granted he is talking about all kinds of design, from industrial and web to print design, I still thought his points were valid. Some of his points included,

"Good design is simple. Good design solves the right problem. Good design is often slightly funny. Good design is hard. Good design looks easy. Good design is redesign. Good design can copy. Good design is often daring."

Go to his website for more.

http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

critique

For the opening assignment about breast cancer, I knew I wanted to do an illustration on the cover because I felt the content lent itself well to illustration. The side profile illustration of a woman I drew in Illustrator didn't work so well because it didn't reflect the content of the story. The woman in the illustration also had breasts, which I was concerned about since the lady had lost both breasts. Though I liked the simplicity of the design, I decided to go come up with something else that said something about what I thought were the three main angles to the story-breast cancer, humor and the play.
Here's what the first design looked like.


I went back to illustrator and thought about visual signs and symbols that would represent the story-a performance by a lady who had had breast cancer but had used humor to keep her spirits up. I thought the illustration I arrived at served that purpose. Looking at it now, there are several things I would have changed. The woman on the cover looked pretty young and age was something I wasn't thinking about when I was designing. If you didn't know this, when working in Illustrator, a good way to come up with "illustraty" looking things is by tracing or drawing using the pen tool, click on the lines and then go to the Brushes palette to change the look of the lines. I don't know if this tool is available in Indesign or Photoshop but let me know if you do.






The spread I knew would be text-heavy, so I focused on making it not seem so intimidating. The "admit ones" in the corner are just to add some visual interest to the page. It works especially on the last page where there is no art.