Photo inspiration: the Bahamas

My sister went to the Bahamas last week, and she posted this photo on facebook. I am pretty sure this is a view from a restaurant she went to, and it is absolutely stunning. 

I am going to have to picture this during the final weeks of school. 

Beautiful Nassau

Response: Faith Cover Design Contest

So this week is round 2 of the Faith covers, and I am sure everyone will bring something unique and interesting to the mix. I have to say, it was overwhelming seeing all of the options up there, but it was also pretty cool to see how many people chose the same photos or styles. I think there must be something good about your photo choice if several other people chose the same photo (and sometimes the same crop).

As for my own Faith designs, I think I am probably going to elaborate on one of the photos. The last I heard of the feature was that only four or so of the stories are running in print, so using one of the profile shots of the subjects would be a logical way to go.

Critique: Websites

Today we looked over everyone's websites in their complete forms. I enjoyed seeing everyone's designs arranged so professionally, and it gave me some ideas on how to improve my own site. 

Between last Tuesday and today, I made a lot of changes, including adding a logo, an extra category, and generally changing little details.

Here is the before and after:

Here is my previous version of my site. It wasn't quite finished yet. 

Here is the present version of my site. It looks a lot more
professional and ready for people to see it, in my opinion.

You Can't Miss: the Pick Me Up Festival

Eye Magazine's blog posted about the Pick Me Up Festival in London's Somerset House. According to the article, the festival is "a mixture of international illustrators, graphic novelists, cartoonists and graphic designers.

Check it out.

Rob Flowers' art will be featured at the festival. 
Here is one of his Illustrations, courtesy of Eye Magazine's blog.

Earth Day Photo Inspiration

In late tribute to Earth Day, here is a photo of the Bullitt Center in Seattle. The building, which opened two days ago, will have to "pass a year of auditing to prove compliance with a set of rigorous sustainability standards, including self-sufficiency in energy and water" in order to pass the Living Building Challenge.

Photo and information found on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/04/pictures/130419-extreme-green-building/#/earth-day-green-buildings-bullitt_66483_600x450.jpg

Response: Websites

We looked at each others' sites for the first time on Tuesday, along with our first drafts of portfolios. 

There was a lot of variation in style and tone on the sites, and it definitely helped inspire me to make some changes on my own site, http://cargocollective.com/feliciagreiff. I recently upgraded my site, and I intend on learning some CSS to get me to a more finished, polished look. Since yesterday, I have added my logo (a work in progress). 

I began thinking about what employers are looking for when they peruse designers' sites. I'm sure the most important part is that the work is easy to get to and see, but there are other concerns like branding and style. As this is my first site draft, it is low on style for now. But in the next few months, I'm going to develop it and hopefully get it to a place that makes me really stand out.

Critique: Portfolios

On Tuesday we looked at each other's outlines for print portfolios. The examples I saw looked like they were definitely on the path to being professional, sleek books. My mockup was very rough, but I received some helpful tips as well.

Being in a class of twenty-some designers is incredibly helpful when you are planning your first print portfolio, as I am. Who better to critique and look at your designs and layouts of your work than your classmates, who are all in the same boat?

Here are some things that struck me as important:

1) Put your designs in context of the project they came from, and explain why you included it.

2) Let everything breath by including a few white pages and splash pages.

3) Tease to your website or contact info somewhere in the book.

And, of course, use high-res!

You Can't Miss: La Boca

Eye Magazine recently did a profile on "La Boca," a London-based design company that is celebrating its tenth anniversary in Nantes, France. The exhibition celebrating the colorful designs of the company is called ‘Graphisme Utopique, Architecture Radicale.' 

Here are a couple of samples from La Boca, including its famous takes on "Black Swan." These images are from La Boca's website, http://site.laboca.co.uk/. It is definitely worth a look!

Response: Presentations

Our class presentations have made me wonder about magazines that have recently redesigned. It's a part of the magazine industry that occasionally gets vilified, but it's necessary.

Other than the New Yorker's rebranding, I wasn't really informed about other magazines that have recently undergone changes. Good Housekeeping and Bloomberg Businessweek have redone their mastheads, but what else?

It seems Ebony, The Atlantic, Self, and The New Republic have all undergone style changes as well, and on a more significant level than just a masthead change. These publications are more and more concerned with creating a cohesive style across platforms.

Here is an excerpt from an article about The Atlantic's redesign from author Robert Newman of Foliomag.com:

"The Atlantic’s new look is bright, engaging, modern, and very accessible. There are lots of graphic points of entry, elegant use of typography, rules, and white space, and smart illustrations. Most importantly, it’s all highly readable; there’s no doubt, even with the heightened design, that the text and imagery are given primacy.

Crooks says, “We wanted to do something that was energetic and had more visual impact, that was more reader-friendly, with added entry points and color. At the same time, I wanted to do something that was on brand. I didn’t want the design to be a distraction or too trendy.”

Critique: Three Martini Covers

This week, cover group 2 presented covers for the Three Martini Lunch feature.

These were our only drafts, as the first drafts were just ideas for a shoot, so we were supposed to make them look as finished as possible. I spent more time than usual deciding on fonts, and I'm overall pleased with my choices.

Inspiration: My recent bookmarks

To mix up my usual inspiration content this week, I thought I would share some recent blogs that I have bookmarked. Whether it's for beautiful photography, fashion, or design, I love to discover sites that make me think about visuals.

Here are a few from this week:

http://www.parkandcube.com/
- This is a fashion one I like with some how-tos.

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
- This site lets you enter RGB values and gives you a list of complements. So handy!

http://www.arestlesstransplant.com/
- This is the blog of a dude who quit his job to take his van around the U.S. Beautiful stories and photos.

http://postgradchic.blogspot.com/
- This is a style blog for anyone wondering how to transition from college clothes to real-world clothes. I haven't gotten a chance to peruse much yet.

http://geometrydaily.tumblr.com/
- Your daily dose of geometry.

I hope you enjoy & are inspired.

You Can't Miss: Eye Magazine's latest

Eye Magazine's blog has yet another gem in store for its readers: a preview of a conference held by Alliance Graphique Internationale, or AGI. 

According to the post, 

"AGI was founded in 1951 as an elite club for designers and illustrators who saw the organisation as a way of sharing common interests and forging friendships across national and cultural borders."

There are many high-profile graphic artists and designers from all over the world who attend the AGI Open, and they are the best of the best. Here is a taste of some of their work, as seen on Eye Magazine:

"Marian Bantjes Christmas ‘Puzzle Series’ cover for theGuardian’s G2 section," courtesy of Eye Magazine's blog 

Inspiration: Design with Food

Someone decided to rework classic art using bacon/sauce/seeds/eggs/other.

Check it out.

Credit: http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/31-days-of-creativity-with-food/

Critique: Cover Stuff

This is going to be more of a nontraditional critique because I didn't present covers on Thursday (not all of the materials were in yet).

The class has gotten some feedback about not having enough variation of ideas. It's important to have distinctively different ideas that way we can get as many options to choose from as possible. So here is some brainstorming inspiration:

Here's one person's take on brainstorming for a magazine cover.

Here are a bunch of cool/weird/different conceptual magazine covers.

Here are the nominees for SPD's magazine of the year award, all of which had conceptual covers.

And finally, here are Ellen DeGeneres' ideas for her "O Magazine" cover.

You Can't Miss: Teaching Designers to Write

At the University of Missouri J School, magazine designers have to go through rigorous writing classes in addition to design classes. Eye Magazine's blog featured a post about incorporating more writing into design education.

"Blunt: Explicit and Graphic Design Criticism Now" is a design conference held in Norfolk, Va., beginning April 12. Here is an excerpt from the Eye Magazine blog post:

‘We feel that criticism and writing have played vital roles throughout education, and design is past due’, says FitzGerald. His aim for the conference is to ‘gauge the state of writing and criticism, and to put it in the foreground of the design discipline. We hope attendees will be gratified at what is being accomplished and be hungry for more either by actively promoting critical writing or performing it.’

If you are interested in writing and design, be sure to check out the work of John Jennings and Eric Benson called "DeZombies and the Coming Design Apocalypse."

"DeZombies" cover. Courtesy of http://www.academia.edu/3063216/DeZombies_and_the_Coming_Design_Apocalypse

Response: Trends Assignment

When I did my interview with Inside Columbia for the trends assignment, I gained some insights into the city magazine industry. One of the most telling moments was when I asked Carolyn Preul, creative director of Inside Columbia, if she spends a lot of her off-hours brainstorming for work. She quickly replied that she absolutely does spend a lot of her free time working and thinking of solutions to problems, design and otherwise.

It's a fair assumption that most people in the magazine industry – city magazines, nonprofit magazines, hyperlocal magazines, and national consumer magazines – all devote a good chunk of free time to work-related stuff. At my last internship, I worked at a nonprofit, where it wasn't uncommon to see one person completing tasks that were completed by several employees in easier times. I guess the takeaway here is to work at a publication that you really love and enjoy because it's likely you'll need to devote more than just the day hours to it.

Inspiration: The Designer's Color Guide

If you still struggle with complements and such, check out this site.

In addition to showing the wheel, the site gives fun facts about colors (ex: George Washington's favorite color was green).

Facts about blue. Credit: http://visual.ly/color-guide-designers 

Response: Jack. Presentations

Yesterday the Jack. group presented to the publishers. I think the publishers were really excited about the outcome, and that is due in large part to the formatted, unified look that Will came up with. Everyone in the group has put in great effort to decide the style and personality of Jack., and I think we are off to a great start. Because we have such a nice product to start off, I think our finished product will  be that much better.

Jack. was designed in an iPad edition, a website, and a cookbook supplement. I don't have pdf's or links right now, but I will be adding them later so you can check out our progress so far.

Critique: Martini Covers round 1

The first round of the "Three Martini Lunch" covers were due on Monday. I haven't gotten feedback on them yet, but I thought I would talk about the process and show two of the ones I submitted.

I didn't really mess with the typography very much, so that would obviously need some work. We were told to focus on photography ideas so we can do a shoot, so both of these ideas would be for the studio.

The first would be at a restaurant booth, just seeing the back of some people as they enjoy a Three Martini Lunch. We don't usually use studio shots of people on the cover (I can't think of any except for T/F and one winter issue with a girl modeling a scarf) so this would be out of the ordinary. The second one is a combination of several photos. The idea there would be that there are several more martinis on the table/sort of a decadent, indulgent vibe.

Here they are:

You Can't Miss: Typography from Melbourne

Stephen Banham, an Australian typographer and writer, recently released a book called "Characters:
Cultural stories revealed through typography." The book is photo-rich with details about Melbourne's typographical past and heritage.

Here is a highlight from Eye Magazine's post about the book:

"Though many of the pleasures the book delivers are specifically Melburnian, it will not be hard for city dwellers in other parts of the world to come up with their own counterparts to the decayed subterranean arcades pictured here, to the buildings with carved Edwardian lettering peeking from behind modern plastic details, to the factories whose industrial iconography has been co-opted by property developers as post-industrial retro-chic."

As someone interested in visiting Australia, it seems there's one more reason to make the trip: beautiful typography and design.

Here is a photo from Eye Magazine's post. This sign was made in 1950.