WEEK 10ish

I'm not sure what week we are in.....all I know is that after this one we have 3 more and then finals week! I think this week has actually been my busiest one yet (I say this as I am sitting in the library with 2 tumblers full of coffee to my left). The end is in sight however, so I suppose that is why everything is piling up! P.S. This is the exact shirt that I am wearing right now: isn't it awesome? and oh so true. CRITIQUE:
Last Thursday in lab I presented a redesign for my school safety cover. I decided that it would be fun and different to try and draw the cover using only ink. It was difficult to find a balance between keeping the tone serious, but also playing into the fact that it dealt with schools. This is what I came up with, and as you look at it I want you to reminisce about all of those times when you were in school and a teacher came in and yelled, "Hey! What's going on in here!" (I am not implying that this happened frequently, but it does on TV shows at least). I absolutely loved making this cover - I was able to have fun with the VOX logo and the dek. I just felt as though it would be a unique look that VOX hasn't seen yet. Although this will not get published, I still love it for my portfolio.
















In other design news.....I am designing a 10 page feature along with Abbey and Jena that is titled, "The Justice League of Columbia." Basically, the feature profiles three people in the field of criminal justice. One is a police officer, another is the chief of forensics, and the third is who we call, "the bug guy." I've been told that his job is a mix of forensics and determining evidence based on the bugs present on the scene. We had a photo shoot with all 3 of them on Tuesday, which Jena and I got to direct a bit. I have not seen any of the photos yet but I am confident that we have some good ones! Here was my initial design for a splash page (with a filler photo):






















We got our inspiration originally from Shepard Fairey, whose work can be seen at www.obeygiant.com. Fairey's is also the genius behind the new look of Saks Fifth Avenue:



Lastly, I have been working on getting my pages designed for Storage.com! We have a site that is clickable and it is very exciting to see the progress!

RESPONSE:
This week in lab we continued to have presentations for our Trends assignment. We again had some very hopeful people out there who have us great advice, and others who more or less said, "Hey, good luck kids." Maybe since this week has been so hectic, I will do a "reflection" moreso than a response on a particular subject. I got to reflect back on my childhood a bit this week because of a few things my mom sent to Columbia. It is tradition in my sorority for our parents to write us a letter when we are seniors and then this letter is read to us during one of our chapter meetings. Some parents send in old pictures, write funny stories, etc, etc, etc....MY parents sent these two posters that I had made (one from grade school and one from high school). It is pretty entertaining to read some of the things that I thought were really important, or that I thought I would be doing by the time I am nearing 23 years old (yikes...23....don't want to talk about it). Anyway, here is the "life poster" I made when I was in grade school:
And, let's zoom in on a few pieces of this poster......



What a perfect day..... In high school I had to make my "life timeline," which was to continue all the day until death. I remember hating doing this because I didn't want to write down my death...I think I said, "dies peacefully at age 100," or something like that. Anyway, here is my life timeline:
And again...a closer look at some important dates.



Man, I sure can not WAIT to make my first million and then hit up Florida all in the same year. My mom also pulled something I had written on my blog from when I lived in London last summer. To make a long story short, I had traveled to Wales to jump off of some cliffs for this excursion. Getting there was an awful experience....and then once we got there we were so late that we missed the train back to London and therefore had to spend the night in a lodge in the middle of nowhere where this "excursion" place was. The woman who ran the lodge gave us vague directions on how to get to the "beach" to see the sunset. It took a good hour or wading through thick mud to find it, but when we did it was beautiful. There was also a man dressed in a full chicken suit by the beach in Wales...it was so weird. But anyway, she had this made for me with a picture that I had taken in Wales as well:
I had no idea I was so inspirational.

YOU CAN'T MISS! BLOG.EYEMAGAZINE.COM
It's Type Week at eye magazine!
The magazine featured custom type this week with hand-drawn letters. Ryan Hughes takes a look at some creative type-artists. He says that back in the "pre-digital dark ages" custom type was the norm. Can you imagine?? That would take so many additional hours of work to complete. In order to create expressive layouts, hand-drawn types were used and especially common for headlines and advertisements. Here is the direct link to the story: http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=188 It is a short story, but here are some of the images:


END QUOTE:
maybe I should put this on my walls until graduation?
Have a great day!
~Christy

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