The Homestretch!

CRITIQUE:
I can hardly believe that tomorrow is my last day of going to class....(ever). I am actually going to try and not think about it, and just write this post as if it is any other week. And man, have those weeks been busy! At least this time around I have gotten some sleep, so my sentences should be more comprehensible than last week. What song has been stuck in my head recently? This one.
Oh, AND to celebrate the last day of school at Mizzou...how about some black and gold.
And finally, there is a movie (Postgrad) coming out that could be me in 2 months. yikes. Check it out!

What have I been working on the past week? STORAGE STORAGE STORAGE! We had our Meredith presentations yesterday (which, I will talk about later). But, all of my design power has been going into the Storage website. I was in charge of designing all the content for the Digital, Living, and Working sections of the site. My biggest challenge was the technology barrier and just flat out having to learn as I went along. I am very pleased with how everything turned out though and it is such a weight off to have it completed! Check out the site!
Here are some of my final designs for www.bhgstor.com







Last week I also laid out the art and lyrics for my brother's album, "I Am a Fool." Interested? click here! (album cover art by Dan Solberg). Yeah, keeping it in the fam....
Click here for a review of the album



RESPONSE (Meredith Presentations)
Can I just say, "Phew!" I feel like the entire semester has been building up to Tuesday's presentations and it is such a huge item to check off of my list! The whole day was a pretty incredible experience. My group, Storage, was able to start the day off at 9am as the first to present. Getting to this day has been at times pretty rough. But, I always knew we would be able to pull it off. I think that everyone did a wonderful job presenting our material in an organized and entertaining fashion. We got some great feedback from the Meredith reps as well! I wouldn't be surprised if I see the words, "Fix my mess" on their site in the future (they loved our community page). It was nerve-racking in the beginning because we had so many technical difficulties and had to switch rooms, projectors, etc. But, THANKFULLY, the alumni center pulled through for us. By the way, I also thought it was really cool to be able to present in the alumni center and have lunch there. It was such a professional atmosphere and a very nice place to house the presentations!
I was able to sit in on the presentations for "Spoon" and "Country Home" as well. I thought that all of the groups presented slightly differently, but all effectively. To the groups the brought food or drinks - props to you. That was a great idea and a great addition to your presentations. Especially for the food-oriented projects; what better way to interact with the audience!

YOU CAN'T MISS! BLOG.EYEMAGAZINE.COM
If you had a T-Shirt with your name on it, what type of design would be used to represent your work? Professor Paul Nini used the site, "Skreened," to sell 24 of his designs which represent different artists. The artists that he chose are supposed to represent the top graphic designers of the 20th Century. Not all of these designers are necessarily famous, but all are influential.
For example....

What a cool idea! I wish our design class would have come up with something like this for t-shirts. I think we all have unique styles that could be fun to try and encapsulate into one shirt.


Well, that's that. :)
Tomorrow is going to be a packed "senior" day that I am very excited about. I still have around 30 emails that I need to answer to....which is a step up from what I had at the beginning of the day --------> (oh, yeah that says 66 messages...wonderful)



Here's two last pieces of "End Art."
The first is just funny and slightly embarrassing, but it is my wristband from the pub crawl (which, the money raised went to support a charitable function through LCMS)


and finally,

"Journeys end. Friends depart. Every phase of life comes to an end. But every end is also a new beginning. It is a new chapter waiting to open. It's up to you what you want to think about! The end or the new beginning"


Not going to lie.....I am probably going to dwell on the end of this chapter, seeing as though I will be living in Columbia and applying for jobs, but I suppose I will only be looking for the new beginning as well (while lying by the pool, of course) ;)

Have a great day!
~Christy

Week "rounding the bases"

(my font is messed up this week, I apologize)
CRITIQUE:
This past week my life has been consumed with one thing and one thing only: STORAGE. Alot of designing has been taking place in the various computer labs around campus, all with one goal in mind, which is to finish up Storage.com in full stride. Thankfully, after one more long night, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are sending the site to Meredith Corp. in about 3 hours and are just tweaking a few last minute things. Overall, I couldn't be more proud of our team. It has been an exhausting road, full of trial-and-error, but at the end of the day I think we have a top-notch product to present to Meredith on Tuesday (9am, by the way). Please check out the site at : web.missouri.edu/~mmst2d Here is a screen shot of the new and improved home page for the digital section, but stay tuned for more OR just check out the site!
I have also been working on my own website, although it is not yet complete due to my necessary work on Storage.com to meet the deadlines. BUT, I decided to completely redesign my website, so you can check out at least my new logo and opening animation at web.missouri.edu/~casfg4/solbergdesigns Here is my new logo:

And here is a screen shot of what my opening page and slide show look like:
Now that Storage is complete I will be able to focus on getting my website in shape!

RESPONSE:
Eh, let's go non-conventional here...I am going to talk about sleep. Why? Well, it is the main thing on my mind. I'll start with some quotes:
-Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

-No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap. ~Carrie Snow
-Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep. ~Fran Lebowitz

-A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. ~Irish Proverb
-There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast. ~Author Unknown (HUH??)

-AND my personal favorite.....Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds. ~JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom

And there it is. I am officially walking around as a tall two-year-old this week.

Here are some quick and fun facts from the National Sleep Research Foundation:
-Anything less than 5 minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day (Check)

-17 hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%. (According to this, I am drunk right now).

-After 5 nights of partial sleep deprivation, 3 drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough (must catch up on sleep before cinco de mayo).

If you want to check out the entire list, head to http://www.abc.net.au/science/sleep/facts.htm

I also found a site that explains 10 ways for to avoid designer's block. (http://www.gomediazine.com/design-tip/10-tips-avoid-designers-block/)
Notice number 9......"Get your sleep."
So, what is the general consensus here?? I think it is obvious. ---->

YOU CAN'T MISS! BLOG.EYEMAGAZINE.COM
Check out the film, "Objectified, " by the same director as "Helvetica," Gary Hutswit. In the documentary film, several designers give insight into their work. Click here to check out the trailer!

End Art: (it's the light at the end of the tunnel)

Have a great day!
~Christy

I don't know what week it is. But the sun is out!

A heat wave as finally hit Columbia! Timing couldn't have been more perfect either. I think all of us need a little sunshine right now, especially my capstone! We have all been working meticulously on final projects; hours and hours into the night. Last week was a long and stressful one, but this week is turning out to be much better. I am officially considering myself in the homestretch to graduation! Only 3 more weeks!

CRITIQUE:
I couldn't be more excited to share with you what I am about to share. Last week and beyond I have been working with Jena and Abbey on the criminal justice feature, which will be on newsstands tomorrow. This was a 9-page feature story profiling three of Columbia's "justice" workers; the chief of forensics, an entomologist (aka "bug guy"), and a police officer. It was a great collaborative effort and extremely exciting to see our initial ideas make it to the end. Our main inspiration came from Shepard Fairey's soviet posters with his sharp lines and bold colors. We incorporated representational icons with each profile in order to signify what each person is involved with. Here's the VIP view at tomorrow's feature:


Ah, I'm in love.

Next, the Storage.com team has been working extremely hard to get our web site up and going! I have not posted any of my designs for the site yet....until now. Here is a page I designed for the "digital" homepage. Basically, when getting to this page you can click on either, "Buyer's Guide," or "Move Your Tunes." The buyers guide will take you to a scrolling list of external hard drives available and tells you which one best suits your needs. In "Move Your Tunes," you will be able to click through a slideshow that shows you, step-by-step, how to move your iTunes music files onto your brand new external hard drive. It has been a lot of trial and error, and there is still much to tweak and design, but I am happy with the progress. Anyway, first I will show you my "Digital" homepage for Storage.com (by the way, if you want to check out what we have done so far as a group, the website is http://web.missouri.edu/~mmst2d/index.html):



And here is what you would see if you clicked on "Buyer's Guide" (keep in mind that this would be continuous however.....I could not figure out how to get a screen shot of the whole page continuous)
I'll post more as I update and finish more pages!

RESPONSE:
Yesterday, instead of having our usual class, we watched judging for SSND college design contest (in which all of us entered at least 1 piece). It was interesting to see how quickly the three judges were able to make a decision on who was the "clear winner," who should be tied for an honorable mention (or, as I said as a child, "Mom, they gave me a horrible mention....").
I submitted the photo essay I designed for Global Journalist, but I think it was disqualified because the date it was published was unclear. It simply says, "Spring 2009," and I was unsure of the exact date :( so that was a bummer.
It was exciting to see some of my classmate's work being judged however, as well as see Meredith's win (good job!!).
The atmosphere as a whole was a neat thing to be a part of. I was pleased to find that many of the things that the judges were critiquing, I thought many of the same things. Certain pieces had wonderful opening spreads, but then lost it in the other pages of the story - this got the judges attention at first, but then ultimately were cut from the pile. I think I was able to pick up a few tips and learn a few things about how designs are judged for when I enter contests in the future. And, of course, I will make sure to get the date right.

YOU CAN'T MISS! BLOG.EYEMAGAZINE.COM
I checked out some of the archives and found this article about the tense times in the magazine publishing industry. That's depressing. But I promise the whole article isn't a downer. Even though some say magzines are a dying industry because of the internet, pring pagazines are still a specialized product and eye magazine doesn't see them going anywhere because of that specialization. The article also does a case study of different magazines such as "New York," "The Arthitect's Journal," Make," etc. The atricle says, "At the heart of the magazine is the relationship between words and pictures and the way they are used to tell a story. That can be anything, from the New Yorker with its small headlines, long texts and cartoons to the English celebrity weekly Heat where the photographs and shouting type are the story. And it’s these kinds of editing and design choices – why something looks the way it does – that the following case studies explore."
The article continues to go in depth into each of these magazines and tell us about the art direction and other influences to that publication. With "New York Magazine," it talks about the different techniques used to tell a story - from infographics, photos, boxes, illustrations, etc. Covers are usually the result of a group of people woring together. It also "has the editorial energy of a weekly combined with the art direction standards of a monthly."
The article goes on with the case study in many other magazines, so I urge you to check out this cool article from the archives of eye magazine!

END PIC:
I was bored...so I painted this and hung it in our kitchen :)


Have a great (sunny) day!
~Christy

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