you can't miss

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.

you can't miss

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.

response

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.

response

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.

you can't miss

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.

critique - wk 7 (the lowdown)

For this week, I worked mostly on the lowdown my fusion covers. The lowdown was a challenge to design and I have a few samples of what I did from Thursday's design through what will run this Thursday. The photos below show the progression from Thursday through my final design on Tuesday. I liked designing it and I really appreciated having a guide to, well, guide me. I also enjoyed taking my own photos, since I could do whatever I wanted with them. It's funny 'cos I went from having too little text, to having a too much.
One of the things that troubles me about the pages is the fact that the first and second pages have some white space, and the text doesn't look so cramped, but the last spread looks very cramped. The text practically bump against each other.
Another thing I'm not so sure is the abundance of colors on both pages. The fourth page especially has a multitude of color and I don't know if that helps the reader in their comprehension of the different parts of the story or just confuses them.

Let me know what you think.


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