Critique: Home Canvas iPad app

The iPad is a world of headaches, but designing the app for Home Canvas wasn't THAT bad (after complete redesign number three I began to calm down a bit). Since many of you have yet to see my designs, and they have been completely revamped since the last time I posted screen shots, tonight I bring you the finished product. Overall, I'm very happy with the way that it turned out. The screen shots don't quite do it justice, though, because much of it is scrollable and interactive. But check it out and let me know your thoughts!

     

 

Critique: Modify

 After the not-so-wonderful first rounds of critiques, we basically did a complete revamp of Modify, but after all of the struggles, I'm pretty happy with how everything is shaping up. Some of (okay, most of) my stories were cut, so I've been assigned new stories, but a few have remained the same. I'm still trying to push myself to think outside of the box, so let me know your thoughts! But be gentle, many of these are DEFINITELY still in the works, I just wanted you to get an idea of where I'm heading here:

Criqitue: Vox feature, Home Canvas iPad

So, this week has been quite the design week for me. I've been balancing both prototype projects (one for print and the other for iPad), the 20/10 assignment and the feature that will be coming out tomorrow. Since you've already seen most of my print prototype designs and my 20/10 assignments, I'm proud to show you my feature and a couple screen shots of my iPad prototype so far (which may be completely changing come tomorrow):

First of all, the ladder isn't on fire in print :(. Sad day, I know. But BIG thanks to Katie for helping me set it on fire! And thanks to her computer for not hating her!

 

I've still got a few pages to design, and lots of things to add. They look way better on the iPad because they are interactive! Let me know your thoughts about these, please!

Critique: Modify

Here are the designs that I have finished so far for Modify. I'm pleased with how they've turned out so far, and I think that it's definitely been a stretch for me to design under someone else's design scheme. Keeping in mind the way that Katie designs was difficult, but was also kind of fun. Since we had to go through things pretty quickly in class yesterday, let me know your thoughts!

Critique: secret INVASION!!!

Tomorrow, I'll be presenting my final cover for the Secret Invasion/Invasive Species story that will be published next month. I'm very happy with how my cover turned out. Along the way, I taught myself some new effects in Photoshop and learned a little more about some of the tools, so I'm glad about that. But here ya go!

It's a little lighter in print, but I ended up with a dirt background, a large fishing net cast over the whole thing that intertwines with the Vox logo, some bright green font, and an edited photo of each of the species that are mentioned in the piece. I think that I really challenged myself with this piece, so I'm excited to see what y'all have to say!

Critique: Online feature splash page & Mandated Reporting

For Magazines Across Platforms this week, I designed the feature splash page for the online version. I chose to take Andrea P's cover and remove the sell lines and the graphics that were added, so that it just had the background image, the hands, the title and the dek. Next, I made seven individual boxes to hold the seven individual stories. I alternated between a medium blue and a light blue to go with the background that Andrea had chosen for the cover, and I alternated the placement of images for variety.

This week, I was assigned to design the feature for Mandated Reporting. It's a tough story to cover, and I only had a full spread to include a 1,500 word story, two side bars, two info boxes and graphics. I chose to nix a side bar and one info box because the page was much too cluttered. For the theme, I'm mimicking a style that Vox did in the May 12, 2011 piece on Murder. If you haven't seen the piece, it takes newspaper clippings about the topic and kind of modge podges them onto the page. I like the ideas that I have going, but I'm not sure that I'm in love with the flow of the story. It's difficult when I don't have photos to go off of and when the story has such a serious tone. We have our feature meeting this Friday, so I'm hoping to get a lot out of it. Check back for updates!

Critique: Vignettes

After the Vox staff meeting on Monday, we met for another 25-30 minutes to brainstorm titles for the vignettes feature that will be printed next week. It was, and still is, difficult to come up with something that encompasses all seven stories without highlighting one story over another for a title, so it's even more difficult to come up with a cover that will present the package as a whole instead of individual stories. I liked the covers that I presented last week, especially the Polaroid one, but Timmy wasn't too fond of it, which I completely understand from a photographers standpoint. So then, I was stuck trying to come up with something that everyone would be happy with.

I decided to stick with the head "The ties that bond." And I chose to play up cutouts of the photos (I don't mean to steal your cut-outs thunder Krista!) with a outline of the state of Missouri in the background.

I haven't put in the key pieces yet, but you'll all get to see that tomorrow in class. I'm also still working with the background; it won't be white, but I can't decide what exactly I want to do with it. This is something a little out of the box for me, but I'm happy that I did it and I'm pleased with the way that it's coming along so far. I guess here's a leap of faith!

Critique: vignette covers

First of all, this isn't quite a critique; it's more of an update.

This week, I'm in the cover group that is designing for the Vignette feature story that will be coming out on the 15th. I had QUITE the difficult time getting started on the project. How many times have I used the word "vignette"? Not often at all, so I didn't have very many ideas associated with the word. (Also, there is not any text on the server, SO I'm basically flying blind.) However, after doing some Googleing and image-searching, I came up with a few workable ideas.

Here's a screen shot of the cover that I'm currently working on:

If you don't already know, I'm a huge book nerd and one of my major life goals is to have a library just like the one in Beauty and the Beast, rolling staircase and all (except probably smaller...sadly). Anyways, being the book-lover that I am, for Christmas I got these beautiful leather bound books such as Arabian Nights and Alice in Wonderland that have gold leafed pages and gold wax printing. That was my inspiration for this cover. However, since I only got started today, I'm struggling with the typography. I want to trace a beautiful font from the books that Theresa showed us in lab last week, but I have yet to have time to. Hopefully they enjoy this cover so that I can rework it into something beautiful.

Critique: Magazine Prototypes

I just finished revamping my magazine prototypes for tonight's presentation. I am much happier with the overall package of my magazine so far, but I'm still struggling with my department page.

While redesigning my cover, I was looking at a couple of magazines that just happened to be next to my computer on my desk. Then, I remembered what we learned last semester in Mag Editing - that there are words and numbers that trigger people to look at a magazine cover. I included lines such as "DIY," "15" and "Help!" to catch people's attention.  I played with my color palette and decided on a handful of fonts that were more modern and less playful.  I changed my logo a bit - I made the "M' totally inside the blue box with no outer bleed towards the "o" so that, as one of you so gracious suggested, it could be used as a smaller, stand-alone logo. I also changed the color of the "i" and I dropped the navy from my color palette all together. I changed my font for "Reclaim your space" from Orator STD to Arial Bold, because Theresa mentioned that it looked to computer-y (okay, that wasn't her exact word) for a modern magazine.

I'm still not totally sold on my department page, but I think that it's more where I want it to be than my original, and I think that it serves the reader a greater purpose, while still allowing for use of white space. I added a paint splatter on the bottom (that fell into my color scheme) and added text inside. I also added a list underneath the two products so that the information could be easily spotted and pulled from for the reader. I deleted the bold line across the span of the top of the page, and added a small, colored box so that the reader could easily distinguish between department sections while flipping the page.

For my feature, I mainly kept the left page the same, but played with my typography a bit. I took Jan's suggestion and found a vibrant photo of bamboo and nixed the color overlay.  I deleted the white text box and made it more of a glow box that is somewhat opaque throughout.

I'm overall satisfied with the aesthetic appeal of my package, and I hope that my group feels the same way! Let me know your comments on the changes that I've made, and feel free to continue to add comments and suggestions to my improved designs.

 

Critique: Vox iPad issue (vs. my sleeping schedule)

I'm sure that by now you're aware of my constant ranting, and I suppose a little raving too, abut the work that went into putting together the first week of the Vox iPad edition.  Since the app has yet to hit the iTunes store (sad day), you will be the first eyes outside of last week's iPad circle to view my pages. Lucky you!

Designing for the iPad was quite different than designing a cover or a feature story. However, I kind of liked the limitations. Since I find myself to be typography challenged, it was nice to focus on the pictures and the graphic elements, since I was only limited to using a handful of preselected fonts.

My favorite departments that I designed are:

The landscape view of the books department (here's the splash page)

The landscape view of the music department (here's the last page of the story and the secondary)

The landscape view of the art department (here's the splash page)

Are you noticing a trend here? If not...let me clear it up for you: landscape, landscape, landscape. That being said, it was much easier for me to design in the landscape orientation, which I was rather surprised by. I liked my use of large pictures, which I think will look great on the iPad. One thing that I wish I would have pushed a little more is my other visual elements. I was scared to try new things, since the templates for the designs were pretty much already set in stone (minus the weird changes that Jordin and I had to make).

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with my designs overall. Next time I work on the iPad, I will push myself outside of what has been already designed so that the viewer experience can be further improved.

Critique: L Boogie

This week, cover group two, which I am part of, was assigned to design the covers for the feature that will run in Vox on 2/16. The story is about "L Boogie", more commonly known as Lonnie Barker, also known as Hope Hop. (Yes, he has many identities.) Whatever you want to call him, the story is about a man, hailing from Oklahoma who escaped a life that many thought he was destined for. He now has a family and is a Gospel rapper, straying from many topics that other rappers speak about such as women, money, drugs and violence.

Above is my first cover. I was drawn to this photograph initially because it seemed as though Barker was looking towards the sky for guidance and inspiration. I wanted to play on the idea of good vs. evil, except holy vs. hip-hop, because many people today think that things in the world of hip hop cannot be "good."  Please excuse the white box! I'm going to fix this, but I figured it was important to include since this is how my document printed out. Lesson learned, don't cut things out on Illustrator because even though they look cut out on your screen, they won't print or export as a cut out.

Cover number two: I wanted to play off of the typical hip-hop idea and I thought that graffiti and a brick wall would convey this message well. Creating the graffiti was a bit of a challenge for me. I found an awesome online graffiti creating website, but of course I couldn't use it for the publication. Therefore, I attempted to create my own version of graffiti in photoshop. This method took me more than two hours. You can't really see it, but there is a lot of color layering and blending techniques going on.  Again, note the white boxes (yes, they're on the last one too...). I'm not sure what Illustrator's reason for this one is, because it printed off perfectly fine. However, I'm starting to think that I should shy away from Illustrator cut outs...

Cover number three: this was more abstract and less to-the-point, which, looking back, isn't the best idea for a magazine cover. A cover should draw the reader in and give an accurate message about what stories they will be reading on the inside of the magazine.  Nonetheless, I liked this idea even though it wouldn't work for the Lonnie Barker story.  I made the background green to mimic a chalkboard, and I wanted to insert Barker's actual lyrics on the board in a chalkboard-ish font.  The headphones are plugged into the apple (which, again, looks much cooler without those lame white boxes...) to imply that Barker is inspired by today's youth (which is mentioned on the cover in words as well).

Based on the feedback that I got on Thursday, I plan on doing a combination of the first two. I have some ideas that I'm playing around with, so just sit tight and see what I come up with!

Critique: Spring Preview

To be honest, the thought of Spring Preview really terrified me until I got into the project. The idea of designing something without having images to go off of or being able to pull illegal Google images like we were able to do in Intermediate Design (obviously, only because they had no chance of being published) scared the heck out of me. Coming up with a theme was an entirely different area of fear, but I quickly got over both of these fears. First, I decided that I wanted to put a rainboot splashing in a puddle on the cover. This is as far as I got with that idea:

SO realistic, right? (Sarcasm intended.) When I realized that my design skills in Photoshop/Illustrator wouldn't allow me to create a rainboot, I quickly moved on. I decided just to keep the theme of rain going, and went to just a simple puddle created in Photoshop. Which brings me to my final cover:

I'm pretty happy overall with my project. I think that something I definitely need to work on both in this project and in our first project is my typography presentation. I'm having trouble finding the right font to go with the feel that I want for my stories, so I'm settling. I don't know if there is a good method for finding the perfect font, but I'm hoping that reading the typography books throughout the semester will help and I'm also HOPING that some of you have some great and insightful input for typography selections *insert comments here.*

Critique: Roll On

We meet again! Safe to say I survived week one of magazine design, not without a few pitfalls though.  Week one was to design six pages total for the feature, Roll On, or whatever they have decided to change the name to since then.  To be quite honest, it was tough for me to get back in the swing of the design world since I haven't taken any design classes for a few semesters. But yadda yadda yadda, here's the finished project:

 *Sidenote: The "Roll On" was a different font in both of them - it was an italicized script as a finished project.

Now to walk you through my design process.  I wanted to give the feel of community and comfort, so the first thing I decided on was an off-white background for the feature.  To me, the white felt too stark and the off-white seemed to reflect more of the paper that cigarettes are rolled with.  I pulled the wine and gray color scheme from the rest of the photos.  Also, when I spoke to the writer about his story he said, "He (the owner) talks about the fresh tobacco blends as if they are wines - different hints of this or that." This further supported my initial reaction to use the wine-ish color.  I was challenged with the placement of the photos throughout the story.  I didn't want to crop any of the pictures, due to the fact that it was indeed a photo essay.  I also wanted the pictures to be large enough to be able to see the texture and movement within the photos.  Looking back, I definitely think that I could have used more pictures with a larger variety of sizes.  My design process was a little too safe, like Jan was talking about, and I should have tried to step outside of the box a little bit more.  Today, it definitely hit me that working at VOX this semester is the perfect opportunity to take all of the risks that I may not be able to take if (hopefully when) I work at a professional publication.  (I'm not saying that VOX isn't professional... you know what I mean!)

Next up on the design list, I'll be tackling the books/bob department pages this weekend.  Also, I'm about to start design project two, so I'll let you all in on my master-mind plans once I get a little more in depth.  I know, I know, you're all on the edge of your seats out of anticipation...