Finalizing Shindig

Critique: Shindig 
Well, Shindig designing is officially almost complete. We’ve come a long way from our first draft, and it has turned out great. I’m so excited to see the finished product. It will be rewarding to see our work in print. Here are my pretty-much-final designs. Some online teases and high-res photos need to be placed, but other than that everything is complete. I was in charge of four departments and two features.

Also, here is my music department design for the 4/21 issue.

Response: Mini Portfolio

I worked on my portfolio this past weekend, and I realized it’s harder to come up with a layout than I expected. I’m having trouble deciding if I want to put designs strictly on the right pages or if I should include designs on the left pages as well. As of right now I have single-page designs on the right pages, and if there is a multiple-page design, I put it on both sides. This strategy might be too inconsistent, but I will decide after I figure out where I’m going to place the section labels. 

You Can’t Miss This:

Designverb hasn't posted much these past two weeks, but there was a post about puppeteers Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones. Their latest creation is of a life-like horse who trots and gallops. Check out the video. It's pretty amazing what they can build.

I came across this neat website of Mathieu Badimon, a French web designer. Check out one of his pages.

Home Stretch

One moth left until graduation! It's scary that I'll be off to the real world soon and exciting as well. For my capstone, I only have two more projects, a few designs for Vox and Shindig finishing touches to do. Four weeks will go by super fast.

Critique: 30 Under 30

Last Thursday I turned in my design for the 30 Under 30 feature. I didn’t spend as much time on it as I would have liked because I was so busy and caught up with Shindig designing. Looking at it now, I wish I would’ve given more typographic treatment to the title. I had a neat idea for it, but I didn’t execute it well. I like the set up of the words, but I could’ve chosen a different font. I also like the dotted lines that connect each photo to the text. I think it has good potential, and with some redesigning it will be a great piece to include in my portfolio. Here is the opening spread.

Response: Mini Portfolio

I’m excited to make my mini portfolio for potential employers. I decided to go with EBM’s printing. I want to use glossy paper and the 7 x 81/2 size. For my front cover, I’m going to have a solid color for the background with my name. For the back cover, I’m going to list my contact information. Finding a great font for my name will be a key part because it will most likely be all that the front includes. I might create a design element to put with my name, but we’ll see how it looks without one first. I’m leaning toward having my designs only on the right-hand side of the pages, and then placing labels in the middle of the left pages. In terms of organization, I think it will be best to have my designs in this order: Shindig, Vox, magazine design class, Cerner and outside design work.

You Can’t Miss This:

Designverb hasn't posted anything on its blog all week, but I will include one as soon as they do.

I found a neat site called creattica. It has a collection of designs for inspiration, such as business cards, logos and HTML/CSS. I thought it’d be a good idea to share some of the website designs I came across. Hopefully they’ll provide everyone with ideas as we start designing our websites. Here is one of my favorites.

Let April Begin

Critique: Shindig Department Pages

This week I’ve been working on second drafts of the Chris Nease feature, and designing the remaining three department pages and feature that I was assigned. Tova did a great job designing the templates. I think everything is looking even more cohesive, and our brand/personality really shines through. I can’t believe that it’s already getting down to the last few weeks before the magazine goes to the printer! We have a lot to do until then, but it's all coming 

together nicely. I’m excited to finish our second drafts later this week. Here is one department and a rough draft of my other feature I’ve designed so far.

Response: Letter Art & Inspiration

I really enjoyed creating the letter art for the spring break project. I’ve always wanted a professional one from Hallmark, and now I can just frame my own work. I decided that I’m going to create more and give as gifts. I’m starting to photograph letters so I can have a variety to pick from. I think this will be a fun hobby and craft for me to have. Taking a photo a day was fun too. I'd love to do it for an entire year, but I know it would be tough to keep up with. Doing it for a week was a good amount of time, especially because I had extra time on my hands. Here is the letter art I designed for class and my four favorite photos I took.

Week Before Break

Critique: Magazine Draft

This week I’ve been working on drafts for Shindig. It really hit me last week that there is less than two months of the semester left. We have a lot to do in a short amount of time to complete our final prototype. We're on a great start though, and I know our magazine will turn out great. I am designing the feature about Chris Nease, an event designer who specializes in throwing smaller celebrations. She has a blog that is a great resource for entertaining, which I could spend hours on. She has amazing ideas and is a wonderful designer. It’s been fun learning about her and checking out her work. Here is my first draft of the feature! 

(The photos are placeholders. The one of Chris is from blog.catchmyparty.com and the others are from Chris's blog, http://www.celebrationsathomeblog.com/)

Response: Classmates’ Drafts

We previewed each magazine group’s draft today in class. Nosh is clean cut and well organized. The logo and the sell lines on the cover look really nice. Theresa did a great job. The departments and features look great so far too. The photo shoot for Christina’s feature turned out good. It looks very professional, along with the rest of the magazine. The Plaid Dad magazine is on a great start. The logo turned out good. I like the final decision. I bet it’s been challenging finding photos that fit the target audience, but it sounds like you all have specific ideas of what you’ll need. Everything is well organized, and the silver plate on the department pages fits well. I really like Cupboard’s logo that Aaron designed. Everything looks good. The “Can It” feature that Chen made really caught my eye. Modern Midwest is on a great start as well. Michelle’s illustration for the seafood feature is great. The spread has nice design elements. Erica’s “Date Night” is also appealing. I like the use of colors and the boxy layout. Great job everyone!

You Can’t Miss This:

Looking through Chris Nease’s blog this week, I came across a lot of awesome designs. Here is one of my favorite themed luncheons that I saw. You have to check out her blog if you haven’t already!

Hectic

Critique: Travel Issue

This has been a pretty hectic week. Most of my time has gone toward designing for Vox's Travel Issue. It’s been quite the project. I knew from the beginning it would be a lot of work, but once we got started I realized it was even more time consuming than expected. We created templates for the department pages with our elements and type choices, and designed the TOC, calendar, film fare and two features. Tanya and I designed the six-page Day Trippers feature. It provides accounts of four Missouri trips for those interested in history, art, outdoors and food. The two of us served as art directors on Sunday as well, which was a neat experience. I think everything came together well, and I’m excited to finally see it in print on Thursday! Here is one of the most recent drafts of the opening feature spread.

Response: Portfolio

We’ve been doing portfolio critiques in class, and my work was critiqued yesterday. I brought recent designs from Vox, last semester’s magazine class and my summer internship at Cerner. It will be interesting to read everyone’s comments and suggestions. I know I’ll receive great advice, and it will help me decide what pieces I should keep as is, revise or get rid of when putting together my portfolio.

You Can’t Miss This:

On designverb this week, there is a "Help Japan" poster that James White made. All profits will be donated to help relief efforts in Japan. The poster is already sold old, which is awesome. This is a great way to take design and use it to help those in need. I think it has an impact with the cracks through the circle that represents the tsunami and only two words below it.

A lot of you have probably heard of Etsy. If not, it’s a site where you can buy and sell all sorts of things that are handmade, vintage, etc. There are categories such as accessories, art, clothing, furniture, jewelry and much more. I love looking through the paper goods because I plan to design invitations and cards for weddings and kids' birthday parties one day soon. This week I found neat bridal shower invitations and save the dates from a seller called Tints and Prints. Check out more of her designs!

 

Another Week

Critique: I’ve been working on designing logos for the Sports Journalism Institute. For the project, we created 20 different ideas. Yesterday we got feedback from everyone in class and narrowed our logos to the top five we each want to improve on. It was interesting to see the ones everybody chose. One of my favorites got the least amount of votes, but there were a few that received between seven and nine votes. For my second drafts/improvements that I'll work on this week, I'm going to focus on the typography. I need to spice them up overall. Here are some of the top picks and my personal favorites.

Response: This week Mizzou held an iPad conference that had presenters from National Geographic, ESPN, Wired, Popular Science, Better Homes & Gardens and Men’s Health. It was a great opportunity to hear from amazing people in the industry. I learned about each magazine’s experience with the iPad and the future they see with it. It’s so interesting to see how much the industry is evolving. ESPN already had a magazine, website, TV program and radio broadcast, and now 28 apps. It will be interesting to see how the apps advance. Rob King, Gary Hoenig and Wright Thompson from ESPN made me realize that I’m capable of surviving in this new world of journalism and that it will all work out.

You Can’t Miss This

This week, the blog I’m following has a post about a floating house. National Geographic Channel, scientists, engineers and balloon pilots successfully launched a house with weather balloons. It reached 10,000 feet and flew about an hour. How awesome! Read more and check out other pictures at designverb!

Helloo, March

Critique: Department #2, History Project

I designed my second spread for the music department last weekend. I assumed it would take me the same amount of time as the first, but it took about two hours longer. I’m glad I went in early, or I wouldn’t have finished in time. You never know what type of issues might come up with organizing the content. There was double the amount of text for one of the sidebars, so it was quite the task trying to arrange it nicely and fit in on the page. I think it turned out pretty well though. Check it out in this week’s issue! I've also been working on a historical perspectives project. I chose to study and critique Sports Illustrated from its first issue on August, 16 1954 to 1959. It's neat to see how much the content and design has changed throughout the years. This is one of my favorite spreads. I noticed how there is more of a focus on players and fans instead of the action of sports.