This week on the Daily Heller

     I thought this was the perfect thing to come across after what we talked about in class this week. As with the Bringhurst book, I think this type collection is a bit poetic! Only those who really appreciate typography as an art would appreciate a collection lime this one. I love it!! I think it's beautiful! Head over to the Daily Heller to read up on it...the guy is looking for a buyer!! Any takers?!

Missourian Cover Stories

     I know I blogged about the Missourian redesign a couple weeks ago, but I'd really like to know what everyone thinks (specifically about the cover stories) after seeing it for a couple weeks. We've been talking about it in our newspaper design critiques and I'd like to know what everyone else thinks. 

     The goal of the cover story on the daily Missourian is to get the story a few days ahead of time and really take time to come up with a conceptual design to tell the story...to have more than just a lead photo and some text. The goal is to be able to sit down and really brainstorm on what the best way is to tell the story...is it with photos...illustrations...typography...etc. All of us work with this every day. Content driven design!!

     How well do you all think the Missourian, and we the designers, are handling this?

My work this week

     Another week off at the Missourian...and another week to play catch up and to prepare for spring break. My design work this week consists of my covers I'm presenting tomorrow, and the redesigns of the Show Me Dharma Logos (which I'll post Friday). 

     Here are my covers for the April second issue of Vox. This was a tough cover to do.With the concept for the cover uncertain for a while, and the lack of options for a photo for the cover...it really came down to telling the story with the words....what they say and how they say it.

     The play being covered in the story and on the cover  is about a woman in the '20s, I believe, who works in an experimental greenhouse laboratory and who challenges conventional norms of femininity and sexuality. Long story short...I know. 

     With the first one, I wanted to show the

dominance of the woman, and a sort of role reversal by using the words..."breaking all the rules" . She looks in control...she's comforting him. 

     With the second one, I wanted to show a funnier tone. Although a lot of the things we talked about in the staff meeting were really good and fun, I didn't feel like that same tone comes across in the play.

 So, I tried to subtly bring that humor into it. I used a serious photo, but I brought the humor to the cover through the words. 

     The third one came after I read some criticisms of the play from when it first came out. I got a lot of trouble for the challenges it made and the topics it covered. I used a lot of those words over and over in a typographic cover. I also tried to make the

words overlap and run into each other so they'd be covered up by "The Verge," almost as if showing how it really didn't matter what those criticisms said...the play obviously still has an impact. 

     The last one came out of what I read about the opening scene of play. It opens on the greenhouse and plants everywhere bent in all sorts of crazy directions. There also seemed to be a lot of symbolism in the parallels between the plants and women. "Splitting away into new life," "Shocked out of something they were into something they were not," "Experimentation," "Explosion of plant life into new life forms," etc. 

Fun with Logos and my response to sharing our process

This assignment had a lot of work and a fast turn-around, but I had a lot of fun creating the logos. Maybe there's just something about this week and FAST deadlines. I didn't procrastinate as much with this assignment as I thought I would. I don't usually procrastinate when it comes to design...I look forward to it...I just have to prioritize around a million other things...as I'm sure most of you do!!!
As I mentioned in class, my design process was pretty typical for this assignment as it is with most of my design work. I get the assignment, let it soak for a few days, start researching, start sketching, and my final execution is started a couple days before the deadline. This semester, sometimes it's done the night before (or the hour before in the case of my VOX cover this week)!
I also enjoyed sharing my design process, and hearing about everyone else's design process. It was interesting to hear how our different personalities work into our process, and to hear how different and sometimes the same everyone was. I think it was also a good opportunity to get some tips on where/how to get inspiration, processes that might work better, etc.
Designing these logos was something different and a good change of pace from what I've been doing all semester. I enjoyed looking into the Show Me Dharma organization and everything about it. There was some really interesting stuff, and many compelling images to work with.
I know I'll get all of your critiques next Tuesday, but let me know what you think!!

Missourian night shift

WOW! What a week.No matter how much I think I am caught up, it still seems like there is too much to do.
This week has been mostly a Missourian design week. I was scheduled to design the cover story and three jump pages for today's paper , and my shift was last night. With the Missourian redesign and all the other reworkings, the daily cover story has been given more play. It has been decided in order to give more focus on the visual elements of the cover story, the designers would get it a few days before their night shift to read it and start forming a concept. I got my story Monday (the front page story about about Rockbridge boys basketball), and I started working on the page 1 centerpiece and the jump pages. I was lucky enough to get a double truck (two page spread) for the photo essay that went with the story. It was a lot of hard work narrowing down my photo choices (from about 13 photos to 6), but I really enjoyed it. It made things a lot easier talking through things with the photo editors and also the assigning editor. I'm the type of designers who likes to talk to people a lot about my work as I'm going through the process. I think the feedback I get really helps me perfect my concepts.
Once I had the cover story and the photo essay done, it was time to move over to the nightside. That was a whole new experience itself!!! It was a crash course with plan system, deadline, dispatching, etc., etc., etc., ......... It probably would have been a good idea to get a crash course with someone else on shift earlier in the week. I DON'T KNOW WHEN I WOULD HAVE FOUND THE TIME TO DO THAT, but I learn best by just doing. I think I would have asked just as many questions even if I had watched someone else do it. Everything was fine...the pages went to print...and I'm not dead!! I'M DEAD TIRED, and a little dead to the world...but not dead!!
I hope you all have a chance to look at the paper today. For the rest of you, I'll post the jpegs as soon as I get to the Missourian and can see the PDFs!!

This week from the Daily Heller -The end of a postwar era

Last week, the designer Franciszek Starowieyski passed away at 79. He was one of the masters of the great postwar Polish poster "school." I have to admit, I never really knew a lot about the history of graphic design until studying it this year. I was interesting to learn about him and his impact on the world of graphic design, and to view his work. Head over there and take a look at the Polish poster gallery. 

The Missourian Redesign

Unfortunately, I don't have any jpegs of the front page of the Columbia Missourian, but take a look at it the next chance you get. What do you all think of the redesign - the new flag and the new teasers at the bottom? At first I wasn't so sure about the new flag. It is really plain, but after looking at a few covers, I think it works. It brings more attention to the cover story and allows for more design freedom. I also think the teasers work really well - they're also simple, the red draws attention to itself, etc. Check it out tomorrow!

Time for a breather!!

This week has been wonderful because I had the week off of designing at the Missourian and I didn't have anything to for VOX. This has been my week to do a little catching up, and to have a little bit of a break!! I purchased Dreamweaver for my computer this week, and I've had a bit of time to explore. 

I've posted my idea for a logo and color palette for my website, and I've also posted what I was working on last week for the Missourian - a media kit for the Missourian's Neighborhood Newsletter. This includes a logo, a collage page of the different neighborhood logos, a screenshot page of the online newsletter and an example of an ad. Let me know what you think!