WEEK 9

CRITIQUE
Let me just begin by saying: 4 WEEKS LEFT! + a finals week (but that doesn't really count).

Phew, Ok..now I feel better. By the way, for the entirety of this blog post I am listening to "The Format." Don't ask why - it is just on my itunes and I am going to be throughly enjoying it for the next hour. Feel free to listen along with me: http://www.myspace.com/theformat

Last week I presented my ideas for the April 16th cover of VOX. As of last week, the story had not been chosen yet. Therefore, I designed two covers based on School Safety and one based on Earth Day. The final decision fell on School Safety, which is what I am redesigning to present tomorrow. Here were my initial ideas:

Look! The trees want to be hugged....some things in life actually ARE free....The execution needs work, but I do like the concept of this design. I created the tree in illustrator and then came up with the head and dek.

I really enjoyed playing with the "VOX" logo on two of these. I have never been entirely positive if this is allowed, but I figure it is better to try it out, think outside of the box, and have some fun.



The concept that I have been working on for tomorrow is the one with the scribbles on paper. What I am working on doing, however, is making it look more "high school" and less "small child first learning to write and color." I initially designed this without having acess to the story. After reading the text, it is actually a pretty serious story and topic (dealing with issues of violence and touching on the 10 year "anniversary" of the Columbine shootings). I feel weird using the word "anniversary" for such a horrific event, but other words are slipping my mind momentarily.
Stay tuned for my redesign! I'll give you a hint: I am drawing the entire cover with pen.

Oh yeah, one more thing - I also designed a little logo for a Cinco De Mayo pub crawl that some students on campus are organizing to raise money for a mission trip. I like to think of it as a good clean mix of a party font and sunburst color, which always equal a good time. You can now see it on Facebook (woop woop!)

RESPONSE
This week and next week in lab are dedicated to presenting our Trends assignment. Basically, the assignment consists of speaking with an art director or graphic designer (or wonderful art teacher) and gain insight into the industry. I spoke with Karla King, a freelance graphic designer from Kansas City, MO. She said that when she began designing she drew everything out with markers! It is hard for me to imagine doing the type of work I have been doing without my computer. She also had some great insight into what it is like working with editors and some pros and cons to working at home as opposed to the office. Here is an excerpt from my transcript:

"One reason I like magazine design is because there is the editorial design part of it and the ad design part of it, so you do have that difference. And I have discovered that I really like working with editors as well. And with the printing company where I was just doing design, specifically design, it was extremely fast-paced and demanding. To me it was overwhelming, but that was just with my personality – it was overwhelming. It was fine in that I was able to do well – it is just that it was really demanding, because of the market."

Do you have a specific process that you go through whenever you get an assignment?

"Everything I do is on the computer now. I don’t sketch ahead. I gather all of the elements and place them on the page, and then arrange them from there. I usually look at advertisers websites, or whoever I am designing for to see if they use a dominant color. If the elements just aren’t working, or something like that, I’ll put it aside and come back to it. I’ll go work on something else for a bit and them come back to it. Many times too you have to listen to an editor or the company and listen to what they would like to see and try to fit it in as much as you can, while obviously also giving several suggestions. Sometimes there is a lot of going back and forth, and sometimes there isn’t – they will say, “I love it, change that one word and we are good to go.'"

What are some of the pros and cons to doing freelance work and being in an office setting everyday?

"Pros of being in an office is the camaraderie and the interaction of learning. That is one thing I really miss – I don’t have somebody who gets the new InDesign program to say, Hey, they changed this, look how you work this part of it now.
Another benefit would be a constant paycheck, hopefully. And insurance, things like that."

Do you have any tips for college graduates trying to find jobs?

"I would say to put together a great portfolio that shows varied examples and a lot of versatility. A little goes a long way. You want to show that you are really versatile. I have never had the opportunity to learn anything with web design, I would love to learn it, but I would say to definitely include web design examples. Many times designers now are designing not only for print, but for the web as well."

It was wonderful to be able to speak with someone who has been in the design field for years and could give me a glimpse into what here experiences have been. Some of my classmates who presented on Tuesday spoke with people who had some truly inspiring and uplifting things to say. Abbey spoke with an art teacher from her high school that said (and yes, I am copying this from your blog), "...more than anything, believe people are good and only want the best for everyone so that if or when something happens that makes you question motives, you can forgive, learn and move on."
I am thinking about plastering that on my wall later tonight.

YOU CAN'T MISS! www.blog.eyemagazine.com
Jan - you stole my blog! (just kidding).
Jan did send us an awesome link to eye magazine's blog that talks about the typefaces of the moment.
Here is the link: http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=181
Good news for VOX: One of the art directors on the panel nominated Frutiger!

My favorite font nominated, SOLELY because of it's name however, was "Sweepy." Hilarious.

Eye Magazine wants to hear more suggestions. If you are like me, you probably have an attachment to certain typefaces and would like to see them on the list. I may just have to send them an email about adding Comic Sans to the list.... (thats a joke, it's ok to laugh).
I was also struck my the massive amount of "tweets" that have been made about this post. Am I the only person who is not signed up for Twitter? I kind of want to tweet.

Finally, how cool is this?:
I would highly encourage you to go to http://endosymbiotic.tumblr.com/
Click on "Archive" and you can see a different picture, quote, drawing, etc for alomost every day of the year. Many of them actually have multiple entries for each day. I'm a "quote mixed with picture" lover...so this site has the potential to keep me occupied for days. I am going to keep this one in mind until graduation:
Have a great day!
~Christy

WEEK 8.5

Disclaimer: Before I begin, let me just say that this post will be very "London-y" and photo-heavy. Over spring break last week I had the opportunity to travel to one of my favorite cities with one of my best friends and I just don't think it is possible to get it out of my head, or my blog. So, with that being said, I would like you to read this entire blog with a British accent. Cheers!

CRITIQUE
This past week I worked on.......(not much). I sketched a few things while on one of my plane rides for Storage.com, but nothing too wonderful. I spent the week in glorious Londontown, took roughly 300 pictures (something to look forward to later in the blog), and enjoyed my week away from having a class schedule and assignments.
While I was on break however, my cover for the Nicotine issue was published! I am very happy to share that with you! Overall I am extremely happy with how it turned out. I love that it ended up being a full bleed as well instead of having a border. I also love the typography (thank you Meredith for your help with this!) I really wanted this cover to be all about the power of the image. It is dramatic, bold and gives a different view of the smoking ban. Here it is!


The only other thing I have been working immensely on since I have been back from my trip is my website. It still needs very very much work, but I am happy to at least feel like I am learning the programs. Stay tuned!
This week I will be designing covers for the 4/16 issue of VOX (either an Earth Day issue or a School Safety issue). Again, stay tuned!

RESPONSE (are you still reading this in a British accent? If not, please resume using one).
London is....
A) Alluring
B) Inspiring
C) Full of life and surprises
D) Utterly Amazingly Wonderfultabulous (I had to make up a word just to describe it)
E) All of the above

I hope you chose E! Here are some of my favorite pictures from my spring break trip:

The London Eye (with London birdies)

Big Ben


Tower Bridge through a window in the Tower of London (click on to look...they are much better without being placed on a black background)

Left: Tower of London playtime. Right: Nelson's Column

I hope to be these people one day


The Tate Modern museum. 1st two images are of an exhibit taking up half of the first level of the museum and the last is a giant timeline of artists and designers according to era.

The Prime Meridian (being in 2 hemispheres at once!)





Looking through windows again (can you tell I like doing this?) Here's China Town!

Abbey Road (Left: Katie signing the wall. Middle: my contribution. Right: self-explanatory)

Rose gardens in Hyde Park (not quite blossomed unfortunately)

Can I go back? Pretty please?
Even though I was not actually designing last week, the wheels in my head were still turning design-wise (I don't think that function can ever be turned off). It was the perfect refresher before I finish up my last semester. (rhyme?)

YOU CAN'T MISS! BLOG.EYEMAGAZINE.COM
There was a design auction in London....and I missed it!!
I thought this was a pretty clever piece:


Also, Jan Van Toorn spoke about making a design declaration.
Who is Jan Van Toorn?

(Jan van Toorn has been a graphic and exhibition designer since 1957. The emotional charge of van Toorn's designs stems from his interest in investigating visual meaning and the social role of the profession as opposed to purely practical requirements. His radical teaching and practice were highly influential on the younger generation of Dutch designers. He taught graphic design and visual communication for many years at various academies and universities in The Netherlands and abroad. From 1991 until 1998 he was director of the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, transforming it into an international postgraduate center for fine art, design and theory. Since 1989 he has taught in the MA program of Rhode Island School of Design, Providence USA.) -http://design.concordia.ca/declaration/participants.htm#Toorn

Some of his statements referred to designers needing to make sure there is content behind their designs; that their designs go beyond just "looking good" (DUH). He calls this a very "journalistic way of thinking." He also thinks that design should "contribute to a better world."

"For Van Toorn the way a project communicates is critical: ‘How democratic is it? The more commercial the world . . . the more designers accommodated it and design became stereotyped and abstract. In Holland today the form is wonderful . . . but when we come to the content and meaning then we have a lot of questions."

Did I mention that this took place in London's Mermaid Theatre? Ironic, yes?

END LETTER:


Cheers!
Have a great day
~Christy

WEEK 8

CRITIQUE:
This past week I finalized my cover design for the Nicotine feature, as well as designed an Arts department page. My cover originally was going to run tomorrow, but has been changed to next week. I have decided to not post the design until after it is published in order to keep you all in suspense :) But it will be up on my next post! Overall I am very very happy with how it turned out. It took a bit of playing with fonts, sizes and colors but in the end I think turned out just how I had hoped.
What I can show you, however, is my Arts department page. I got to play with the pen tool and do some fun cuts. Pay no attention to the wonderful ads at the bottom.























In other work, I have been cleaning up my logo designs for a group called Eat For Life. Here are two of the three I am working with (and just for kicks I played with them both in color and black and white)




Upcoming work:
I have a website! It is not fully functioning yet with buttons....but you can check out my beginnings of it at http://web.missouri.edu/~casfg4/solbergdesigns/
I am excited to keep working on it and get my designs posted as soon as I can.
Otherwise, next week is SPRING BREAK (finally)!! So I will be taking a bit of a hiatus from ACTUALLY designing....I will, however, be thinking up ideas for the Criminal Justice feature that I will be designing with Abbey and Jena when we return from break!

RESPONSE:
This week in lab we continued to talk about our logo designs for either "Eat For Life" or "Show Me Dharma". We had our class rate each person's top 3 logos and will turn in final designs for those 3 on Friday. It is really cool to see how many ideas all of us are capable of coming up with for one group. Design is interesting because none of the ideas are wrong; some just work better than others. As the semester continues I have been getting a sense of everyone's own style and am able to point out certain people's work according to that style.
In other news, I completed and sent in my application for the art internship through National Graphic Magazine (dream job, anyone?) and have been researching other potential summer employers. For those interested, Esquire has a position open for a graphic arts intern! I found out about it here: http://www.spd.org/job-board/2009/02/esquire-magazine--graphic-desi.php
I apologize for the short post, but basically I can not stop thinking about London since I will be there within a matter of days! Talk about an inspiring city.....I will make a giant promise to you all that plenty of pictures will be taken and posted upon my return :)

YOU CAN'T MISS! BLOG.EYEMAGAZINE.COM
Are Music Covers Graphic Design? Not according to Peter Saville.
Saville is most known for his punk graphics, such as this one:
Peter Saville's guitar cut-out giveaway for the UK PSP launch; detail of guitar from Arena magazine August 2005

He also created this poster for a 1978 music festival called The Factory:
The Factory eventually transformed into a record label, in which Saville became the art director. He became the main designer for album covers; one of which he even convinced the band to leave off their name and any sort of title. This was for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album, which can be seen below:
The most shocking thing that Saville said in reference to album covers was, "‘No one should be designing record covers after the age of 30’, and ‘Music covers are not graphic design, they do not communicate anything, they have no purpose in that respect." And, mind you, he said this to a room full of designers.
For more information/graphics of Saville check out http://www.designmuseum.org/design/peter-saville

END ART:

Have a great day!
~Christy

Learning FINAL CUT PRO....in 12 hours....instead of having a weekend....

Here is my final result from the class I took this weekend on learning Final Cut Pro. It is not as great of quality after posting it here...but just IMAGINE how great the original is. Oh, and of course it is a compilation of London videos and photos set to some great tunes.

WEEK 7 (can you believe it already?)

CRITIQUE
This past week my main design focus has been on the VOX cover for March 19th. The cover story is basically a revisit on the smoking ban that was implemented in Columbia a little over two years ago. Trying to stray away from a stereotypical cover, here are the three ideas I came up with and presented to the class last Thursday:




Supposed to say, "Can Cigarettes Survive in a Town Where They aren't Wanted?" I am not sure why I could not get the "Can" to convert.




The design that I have been working with to present on Thursday is the top one. My idea for the main headline, "Want to take this outside?" is supposed to be a take on whenever people get into a quarrel at a place such as a bar and say, "Hey, you wanna take this outside?!"I just liked the concept of it because it is a double pun of sorts; people have to go outside to smoke in Columbia and there has been a lot of controversy between those who are for the smoking ban and those who are against it. As soon as I get the redesign prepared I will post it! Even though I will not be presenting a redesign for the second design, I still very much like it, mostly because I think it is funny. The photo and the headline work well together as well. For the third spread I played on the fact that cigarettes are indefinitely missing from Columbia's bars and restaurants, leaving the poor ashtrays empty...I like this concept, but not as much as I like the first one. Thoughts/Comments? Stay tuned for the redesign!

RESPONSE
In class this week we have been discussing each person's own creative thinking style. Obviously in a class of 17 people we are bound so have 17 different styles, so it is interesting and inspiring to hear how everyone else works. The majority of people who spoke yesterday defined their first stage of designing as a sketching stage. My style is a bit different from this; the first thing I like to do is mindmap. I make a list of words stemming from the original thought or idea that I have to work with. I can usually do a fairly good job of coming up with a list that holds both the stereotypical answers as well as plenty of non-stereotypical answers. After I have this list I can better picture some of my options. My next step, usually, is to do an image search for some of these words on the internet (stock xchge, corbis, istock, and getty are typical sites I use). This again, helps me to possibly get some different ideas and images in my head that I can incorporate in my design. Sometimes the next stage is sketching, and sometimes it is not. Usually if I have an idea and a plan for execution clear in my head I will just begin to work on the screen. If my ideas are still very scattered than I will sketch out some options. Often I find myself sketching after I have begun designing on the screen. For example, I will piece a few elements together on the computer and then to tweak my design, I will sketch out rough options for other ways to execute the same general idea. Ideally, I would begin this process at least a week in advance from the due date, but this semester that seems to be impossible. If designing were the only thing I had on my plate this semester I know I would be able to do many things differently, and more ideally. But such is life.
My classmates also shared what the environment has to be like or what they would prefer it to be like when they design. Some said it did not matter, some said it has to be silent, and some said they need noise in order to design. While I would prefer to not have much going on around me, that is usually not the case. I am almost always listening to music when I design, however, and attempting to block out other noise or activity.
I found it difficult to explain how my brain works when it comes to my design process, but I think it helped me to realize elements of that thought process that work and elements that don't work.

YOU CAN'T MISS! BLOG.EYEMAGAZINE.COM


Just like last week, I did not find anything too interesting on eye magazine's blog within the past few days. I have decided to update you all on a site that eye magazine notes, however. It is called Lovely As A TREE and it basically tells us how to be environmentally-frieldly designers. The site says, "We list the steps you can take to reduce your design footprint, we take you through the process of choosing a recycled or more sustainably sourced paper, and we show you what to look for when choosing a greener printer."
The site also clears up common rumors such as, "Recycled paper is usually poor quality," or, "By replanting trees the paper industry is helping ensure sustainability of natural forests." The first sentence is a myth. It is now almost impossible to tell the difference between recycled paper and virgin paper. The second sentence is true to an extent. The site says that there is a huge difference between a "commercially managed monoculture that is treated with pesticides, weeded, and barren of wildlife, and a natural forest with its biodiversity intact." However, natural woodlands are supposedly respected and biodiversity is encouraged.
Lovely As A Tree also informs users of the impacts of paper-making, gives tips for choosing paper and printers, offers case studies, gives tips on how to have a more environmentally-friendly office, and more. I think the design of the site is cute as well:

END QUOTE
(something to keep in mind?)

Have a great day!
~Christy