-| Week No. 14. We made it! |-

-| Critique |-

This week in my design, I am working on the LUXE feature. I'm kind of struggling. I guess I'm glad it's only three pages, but four would have been nice, too. I asked the photo department for photos that I can cut out, if at all possible. I thought that would have been really cool. So far, I've got a pice of jewelry that I might be able to cut out, but I don't think I want to because it'll get lost on the newsprint (It's white gold and diamond on a blue velvet background.). Anyways, I'm glad I have photos at all.

Also, you all know this saying: cut once, measure twice. I've changed it. It doesn't matter how many times you measure if you're calculations are wrong, so use a calculator. (I sliced through some color pages of my mini portfolio today at Kinko’s. 11/2=5.5, just for the record.)

-| React |-

OK, I'm rescinding all negative things I said about Meredith. I said earlier in the year that I'd work for them if I had to, but it's not my first choice. I guess that's still true, but not as much. Just hearing from some of their art people there who said that they have survived the beast and are still designing with passion, it was enlightening. It would be a great place to work, I'm sure. Some of us were talking amongst ourselves, and after visiting Des Moines and seeing how they work and how much they seem to like it, not to mention the fact that they made such a great effort to visit us and give us their time, all those things put together kind of made me change my mind. (RUN-ON SENTENCE! YAY! Watch me NOT edit it!)

I think the Fresh Life product was great. I could have been more a part of it if I had chosen to do so. I didn't, and I kind of regret it, but I know that at the time I was just feeling busy. I really should have jumped in but oh well. This whole experience really has been fun. I felt like a suck up when one of the art ladies asked me which project I liked the best. I think I really did like the Meredith project. It was a fun trip, it was fun to see how their big-time operation really works and it was great to get their final feedback.

-| You Can't Miss. . . |-

It's time for one last installment of newspaper design enthusiasm! I went through my collections and even searched the net for new, exciting and inspiring pieces of design! Just remember that some newspapers will offer really cool gigs designing tab covers if you can find them and have the skillz.

This is from a man named Jason Benavides at the Charlotte Observer. Brilliant.

Again, Mr. Benavides out of Charlotte. Apparently they let insane people design for newspapers! There's hope for some of us! ;-) Seriously a cool piece. I wish I had anything like it in my portfolio.

Same guy.

I hope I haven't posted this already. . . I don't think I have. Anyways, another product of the Boston Globe.

White bread = boring. Genius.

Dark. Cool. Intriguing.

-| Week No. 13 |-

-| Review |-

Design work this past week has included department work and website work. My departments were kind of crazy. The designs are not crazy. Working with graphics has been. That's mostly becuase I didn't check in enough on the process to make sure things were going OK. My website has frustrated me. I'm glad I have extra time to work on it. I think once I get some time to sit down and tinker on it for fun that it will turn out to be great. I'm not going to use PhotoShop to do it. I was convinced to just make little squares of my work that will then display the larger work.

-| React |-

Other sites are looking really good. I wish I wasn't so scared of Flash, but I am. Melissa's site was so cool but I would have no idea (or patience?) to work through it all. Maybe it's easier than I'm making it seem. Anyways, Melissa, your page rocked. I also really liked Larue's gallery, which is why I wanted to gank it. I also really liked last week's issue of Vox. It was pretty good.

-| You Can't Miss |-

Another newspaper redesign. It's a Canadian newspaper! The Globe and Mail.

Also, there's a picture of us on the blog. I think I'm in the very very back of it and Libby is in the not-so-distant back of it. newsdesigner.com


Old and new. I like it. It's not a HUGE change, but it's definitely a big one. As you will see, in both versions they sold the bottom portion to advertisers. A more and more common trend these days.

Also, some interesting design choices for newspapers. Nothing radical, mind you. (Well, the video think is kind of radical. But not the most radical.)

-| Week No. 11 |-

-| Critique |-

My work continues on my mushroom piece. The consensus was that my first draft was too plain and that the pulled quote was too pschadelic. I didn't even think of that until Jen said something, and I guess it does make sense. I thought that with the pulled quote it would work visually. I love it when words and images play off each other and create a stronger meaning. So I'm messing around with hues of browns for my page to give it an earthy feel. I'm also tweaking the main shitake art so that it's more mushroomy.

-| React |-

I'm still trying to finalize my interview with anyone at Hispanic magazine. It turns out that they run three publications out of their office and all three were on final deadline as of last week. I think I was told that the final deadline would be today, so hopefully someone can talk to me soon. What I've read so far is interesting. I hope to get an angle that's unique from all the others. I think that Page 1 Media runs three different magazines by some of the same people. I'd like to know how that works and if some of their people have to double up on publications.

-| You Can't Miss

There's nothing really big on the blog this week, but the big news this week is that the SSND competition is here this week and so is my blogger! Mark Friesen runs my blog and he's one of the guest judges. There will be plenty of opportunities to mingle and I would suggest doing so. It's a fun time, really. First off, there's a dinner Wednesday night at 6:30 in LHH over pizza discussing the future of newspapers. Then on Thursday, anyone can sit in and watch them judge the categories. The first half of the morning will be dedicated to non-daily papers and the second half of the day will be for daily papers. This will be interesting. I helped sift through all the entries and some of them are REALLY good. Some of them REALLY suck. (Seriously, it's amazing that they think it's their "best" work. . . but then not everyone can have a Jan Colbert and a Joy Mayer around to help them out. But then, actually, ANYONE should be able to tell that when you go crosseyed looking at a page, THAT'S BAD!) OK, whoa, just got a little mean and bitchy, but you might see what I mean if you go! TUCKER FORUM THIS THURSDAY

-| Week No. 10 — It's almost the home stretch! |-

-| Critique |-

I did nothing design wise over the break except think about my upcoming two-page feature a few times. I've decided that I'm not going to use photos because we just did a huge food issue. Instead I'm going to use some sort of mushroom illo and a fancy hed as the main art for the page. Jazz it up with some carefully placed white space and hopefully I'll have a nice feature. I was kind of upset that the story took only the food angle of mushrooms. The lead started something along the lines of. . . Mushrooms are sprouting up this time of year. . . here's how locals cook with them. BUT, you don't cook with mushrooms that pop up in your yard. They didn't address poisinous mushrooms at all. I would have said something, but I didn't really feel like it was my place to.

-| React |-

(I know this isn't the "react to the food items you might have prepared" section, but hot damn, I just made some of the spiciest salsa of my entire life! If anyone likes super-spicy items, let me know. I CANNOT eat this entire batch on my own.)

I'm worried about my project. I really want to talk to the folks at Hispanic, and I have great contact info, but I haven't actually seen their magazine. How can I actually call someone and inquire about what they do without having seen their product? I think it'll take some very creative tact to work around that. I don't know if I should just move on to another mag.

The four presentations we saw in class today were very good. I was so confused with the Glamour hair products thing. It seemed like too far of a stretch in mine eye. At least it's cool to know, though, that it is in fact possible to be in a great position in just a couple of years.

In the scrapbooking magazine, I found it hard to tell the difference between ads and editorial. Just an interesting observation. It was all so cute and pastel filled.

-| You Can't Miss. . . |-

The new EyeTrack study has been released. It came up with some interesting findings. Mostly the same stuff that we already knew. People tend to see colorful and newsy photos first (meaning they don't notice posed or black and white photos as fast). Also, people pay more attention to ASFs (Alternative Story Forms!) and their comprehension rates are higher with ASFs! This totally can apply to magazines. Just pulling out some info into a dandy little graphic can up interest and comprehension by a lot!

Also, Mark Friesen is going to be one of the SSND judges. He's the guy who runs my blog, newsdesigner.com. I'll fill you in on more as we'll probably have opportunities to meet with Mark when he's on campus.

From an e-mail from Joy Mayer about the contest: "Mark Friesen is the author of the newsdesigner.com blog and designs at the Oregonian, though he has a new Web-based job that I don't know the details of."

-| Week No. 9 |-

-| Critique |-

Website design is complicated. There's a fine line between good clean design and crap. I think I have a great splash page but I haven't discovered how to translate that into the rest of my site. What good is a good splash page if the site behind it doesn't look anything like it? I need to brainstorm some more creative and genius ideas. What I've got right now is not cutting it.

-| React |-

The sites that we saw today in class were great. I really liked Christine's peeping girl. I thought it was cute and sophisticated. Not amateur. I also really liked how on Melissa's site she had thumbnails pop up when you scrolled over the numbers and then when you clicked you got a big image. Very cool. There are so many things that I saw today that I wouldn't know how to do in the programs we use. I think the book is helpful but only to a certain degree. It seems that you just have to kind of tinker with the programs, kind of like the programs I'm already used to.

-| You Can't Miss. . . |-

Newsdesigner.com finally updated! The Arizona Republic (Phoenix, Ariz.) has launched a Monday redesign. So I guess that means that this is a redesign only for the Monday papers. Hmm. I've never heard of that, but maybe I'm just dense. They are marketing it as a new Monday product that's going to be chok full of newsy things unlike most Monday papers which are really the lightest papers as far as news content goes. It's the newspaper "for busy people," says editor Ward Bushee.

Luke Knox of the Republic says the Monday edition will feature:

... shorter stories, more short-form information and content to help readers kick-start their week. It's basically the antithesis of the usual Monday product you may find from a number of papers, filled with retread stories and no real news to sink your teeth into. ... Section fronts have one, (mostly) non-jumping story and a series of lists, refers and other devices to get the reader into the section.

NB: There is display type on all the dominant images. Is there a new rule with the Monday paper that all dominant images must also have display type on them? Not always a bad thing, but maybe a bit too much too fast.


I used to live in Phoneix. The paper didn't look quite this trendy when I lived there.


Text on a photo, again. I like it. It's done well. And whoa, there's nothing quite like west-coast smog. It's almost worse than LA because Phoenix is a valley where the smog just settles on the city. At least there are coastal portions of LA so the smog can kind of disperse.


It's almost like a magazine, isn't it?

-| Week No. 8 |-

-| Critique |-

Oh design, how I love thee. This week has great for my redesigns. I really like what I turned out for the group. I think I got some positive feedback, although I still am kind of confused as to what really is going to happen next.

The logos were actually a fun assignment. I think that working mostly with text might have been the boring way to go, although I like a lot of the things I came up with. Text is so literal, but then is that such a bad thing? I love abstract things, but in this case, I think my art heds work for the most parts. The talk about the black and gold colors was interesting, since all my logos had black and gold. I had no problem using these colors. It’s a logo for a branch of the University of Missouri. It makes sense to me. I actually like those colors, too, and when they’re paired they look so sharp.

-| React |-

All of the logos (160 total?) were really great to look at. We all had such different ideas of what these things might look like. I especially liked what I saw in Melissa’s logos (with the cursor, eye and signal). Very creative! Each week, we just get to see each other reinforced in our own designs.

I would have like to have gone to see the publishing class react to our final versions of our prototypes. I think I like John’s idea of presenting all the designs to the Meredith eds but I’m not sure that the eds would understand what was happening. If we had a separate meeting for only the designers I think that would be fine (that was my first impression of what would happen, but I’m not sure if that has changed. . .).

-| You Can’t Miss. . . |-

Newsdesigner.com isn't doing anything right now.

So, in lieu of news from newsdesigner.com, some cool newspaper pages!

Blogger is being difficult. I'll upload some news pages and some of my Fresh Life (or is it now Freshlife?) stuff.

-| Week No. 7 |-

-| Critique |-

I did a few of my preliminary sketches for the convergence logo while we were speaking with Steve. I've got some cheesy ideas which have to be in the mix of course. More sketching must come to develop stronger pieces that will actually work. (One of them included a camera lens as the "O" in "convergence."

I'm a little overwhelmed that our final versions of the prototype are due next Monday. Two huge projects in one weekend. I never thought it would come to this. I really would like to do a lot more on the Meredith stuff, but at this point, it's going to have to be minor revisions.

Of my rough designs, this is my preferred cover design. I'm going to tame the logo somehow (probably less color). I will find a better picture. I will use only two colors other than black and white in my sell lines. It's just too much right now.

TOC

Deptartment

Feature/Department

*****

The rest of these are my variations on a theme. The above items are the preferred rough drafts. Below are the others.



Lefty sans seriff!

The other TOC. I think it's too standard and formatted.

Another text treatement on the feature.

-| React |-

On visiting Molly: It was a fun experience, I say. I liked the party setup. She could be a great party designer if that's what she wants to do! After seeing the zine in class today, I can understand why she would stick with it. When she was talking on Thursday about how she works for nothing and has all her work changed on her, I thought it was absolutely crazy. I mainly thought that because I pictured it as a tiny, twine-bound zine that gets handed out on the corner that all of 200 people will read. It's actually a glossy that looked pretty cool. Maybe I should have asked her about the magazine before she told us about her work experience. She is getting clips, and if that's the genre of magazine she wants to work for, then it can't be too long before someone is willing to pay her to do it. Best of luck to her.

-| You Can't Miss. . . |-

On newsdesigner.com it's just more SND stuff. They have a list of their top winners from the design contest! It's pretty interesting stuff. I'm not surprised to see a few of my favs (The Merc, The Virginian-Pilot, B Globe).

****

• Los Angeles Times and its magazine, 107

• The New York Times and its magazine, 99

• Excelsior of Mexico City, 72

• Hartford Courant, 57

• San Jose Mercury News, 55

• The Boston Globe and its magazine, 52

• South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 47

• La Presse in Quebec, Canada, 43

• The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, 40

• El Mundo of Madrid, Spain, and its magazines, 40

• National Post in Toronto, 38

• The Guardian in London, 35

• The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, 35

• San Francisco Chronicle, 28

• Gazette in Montreal, 23

• Clarin in Buenos Aires, 22

• The Dallas Morning News, 22

• Politiken in Copenhagen, 22

-| Week No. 6 |-

-| Critique |-

This week, as I finalized my prototype designs and had them critiqued, I realize just how much revision is really required of me as I prepare to make it a final product. I think I like the direction I'm taking with my designs. I know see how there is a disconnect between the cover and the inside pages. They don't quite work together as a unit. I got the general impression today that my logo has to change. I will definitely try some other alternatives, but I want to be careful not to lose that quirkiness/uniqeness that I want.

-| React |-

I saw a lot of really cool stuff today. I loved seeing the graffiti. It was fun to recognize all the different letters from around town.

And the magazines were looking really good. It's so cool to see how each person had their own ideas for how the topic should be presented. (Yay tubers!, :-D ) Now that I'm into the process a bit, I'm glad I'm with the Fresh Life team. It really is a good topic and it seems like it's very visually geared. I guess that means that at least in the prototype stages, I don't think coming up with content is going to be a huge issue.

-| You can't miss. . . |-

This week on newsdesigner.com they cover POY and some SND awards.

Of course you should ALL know about POY becuause it's taking place right under your noses! This is a big deal for any photographer and it's so cool that it's happening right here. Go in anytime to sit in on their judging process. You'll be amazed at how fast they go. It's all so subjective and fast. But I guess once you see THE picture you know you're looking at it. Or you at least know not to vote it out.

Here's some of the stuff that got the SND gold awards. Of course, El Mundo graphics won a few. They are AMAZING. They take up entire pages and can be pieced together to form a single, huge graphic. So cool!


This graphic is on fashion (in Spanish: Moda). Those are all seperate pages pieced together! Spectacular work!


Dejá Vu? It's all over the place. Gold, gold, gold.


More fabulous work from the NYT Magazine. This is their idea issue. Golden!

-| Week No. 5 |-

-| Critique |-

So my cover will run this Thursday. I like the way it turned out. It’s not too literal, but I think it still speaks to the point of the story. I was at first surprised when I read in the design edits that work was still needed on the hands. I thought they were good. But when I went in and had another look, I really saw what they were talking about. It just wasn’t spot on. I stayed and worked a few more hours on it and I think I got to where they needed to be.

Fresh Life is a strange thing for me. I don’t feel like I can take it to crazy levels with crazy design because the content doesn’t seem to allow it. I guess if I think about it in different terms that could help. Right now I’m picturing the audience as mostly women, some men, some with families. Maybe if I design for a different audience that will change how I design. This all makes sense in my head. I’m not sure how it’s translating “on paper.”


My cover as it stands right now. The sell lines are a work in progress. The logo is colorized, obviously. I think I like it, but I'm not sure I'm in love with it. I like the colors, but I'm still trying to decide if it works for me.


My TOC. I'm going to add more pages to it instead of having just one. I need to fix my personal problem. (Hehe. Thanks, Jan!) I guess these will be my "safe" designs. I can't promise that I'll have the "not safe" designs by the time we're to present our work, but here's hoping.

-| React |-

Judging all those portfolios was hard! I saw a lot of good stuff, but it all makes me think real hard about mine and it kind of makes me nervous. I'll be happy for the feedback, though. I probably shouldn't pick favorites, but I really liked all of the posters Hannah presented. That would be a fun vein of design to tap into. It seems like it would lend itself to great, creative and brilliant design. Screw editorial work! :-D

-| You Can't Miss |-

This week on newsdesigner.com, more redesigns were announced. This time, the New York Observer. It switched to a tabloid format. Not actually that surprising, since tabs are easier to approach as a reader and every newspaper and their brother want to appeal to anyone they can get!

SND's tentative top ten newspaper designs were announced. A lot of them aren't really surprising, but in case you're curious:

1. The New York Times (and its magazines)
2. Los Angeles Times (and its magazine)
3. Excelsior [Mexico]
4. Hartford Courant
5. San Jose Mercury News (Yeah!)
6. The Boston Globe (and its magazine)
7. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
8. La Presse [Montreal]
9. The (Cleveland) Plain-Dealer
10. El Mundo (and its magazines) [Spain]

-| Week No. 4 |-

-| Critique |-

Still working on my cover for the interracial dating. I've made some progress on it and I think I'm liking it thus far.

This is what it started as:



I think I'm going to get rid of the football per Kristin's recommendation. Jen suggested wondered about my color usage and thought that the blots looked rather reminiscent of blood. I hadn't even thought of that, but I can see how someone might see that. She also felt a disconnect between the top half of the cover and the bottom half. I was going for a more of a design method for my cover; controlled chaos. I think I felt that kind of leaving the bottom a little less crazy than the top was just one way for me to control the chaos, but now that I think about it, I'm going to try switching the chaos; that is, put the less busy stuff on top so it doesn't interfere too much with the flag and try the chaos on the bottom.

This is the state it's in now. But after tonight, it should be drastically different, or I'll at least have a couple working versions of it.


The hands were meant to be jagged and rough but some are concerned that If I leave it like that it will just look like I don't know how to draw hands. Hmm. . . please opine. Can you tell that it's artistically motivated or does it look amateur?

And color. . . oy. I like the red. I really do. It's powerful, and paired with the black, lends itself to a very serious subject matter. I'm going to try some different colors, but I don't know if I'll like any quite as much as I do the red. Any thoughts? Does anyone else get a bloody feel from it? I definitely do not want that on this interracial cover.

-| React |-

The Pantone Guide to Communicating With Color is a great book. So great, in fact, that I bought it five years ago when I was designing stuff in high school! I use that book all the time when I just don't know what color I should use. That book is the reason I chose the red for my interracial dating cover. Red is an exciting and dynamic color, according to the book. It's such a great resource to just be able to flip through the pages and read up on each color; it's not like we don't know what the book says, we just need to be reminded! Love it.

-| You Can't Miss. . . Stephanie Grace Lim! |-

Stephanie Grace Lim is a great designer. Newsdesigner.com reported that Lim has announced she is leaving the San Jose Mercury News to take a position with Pay Pal. The Merc must be heartbroken. I had the opportunity to hear her speak at the Society of News Design conference in Orlando this past fall. She's great. Here's some of her best work:











I'm curious to see what will come out of her working with Pay Pal. Their website has to be changing or something. For them to have attracted such a creative genius, there must be something spectacular their for her to work on. Keep an eye on her work here.


CLICK TO SEE LARGER VIEW! This front page blew my mind. It's very dramatic, very cutting edge. I don't know if I've ever seen a newspaper throw an actual documentary image behind the flag. I think it's entirely appropriate. It IS Kansas City. When an image like that is run so large, the impact just gains so much for the reader. How bad was the smoke from the fire? Oh, well if you saw the paper you'd know exactly how bad it was! I LOVE it. (Sorry it had to happen, but way to work it, KC Star!)

-| Week No. 3 |-

-| Critique |-

This week I've been working on coming up with an idea for the interracial dating cover. When I first heard the description of the feature, it was described solely as "interracial dating." OK, what does that mean? I can't really know how to illustrate that until I actually got to see the story to see what was actually going on. It turns out it's about athletes dating outside their race. It's an interesting take on the idea. So I've come up with some ideas. Keep it simple. Kind of inspired by the abortion cover in my last post. Also, some of the covers I LOVE the most are so simple and clean and perfect. That's what I'm going to try for. I picture sillhouettes reversed on a black or white background. The athlete will be holding a football, looking huge, wearing all the gear. The female will be. . . smaller and not a huge football player. Maybe play with some people looming in the background (the family that often has an opinion on the matter.) I've also played with the chalkboard Xs and Os. Not quite simple, but maybe effective. There is still some refining to do before I present on Thursday.

(I'll try to see if I can get a scanned image of my sketches in here)

-| React |-

(I'm watching the Super Bowl. . . How has Prince not aged? And whoa, he's flaunting a double-popped collar. Only Prince. And, I so wish I could be in that marching band. It looks insanely fun! AMAZING halftime show.)

Back to reality. . . LIFE Magazine circa the 1940s. . . wow. I'm not seeing much in the way of design. It's mostly huge pictures or a ton of little pictures slapped on a page and a script font as a hed. I'm definitely looking in the ads for design style and I'm seeing a lot of heroic realism, for obvious reasons. It's really amazing to see how far the magazine world has come in the way of creative efforts. It's a completely different world.

-| You Can't Miss. . . Newspaper Design! |-

This week on newsdesigner.com, Garcia Media designed a financial daily in India called Mint. (Garcia Media: see Week No. 1, KC Star, Wall Street Journal. . . )





It looks like a Garcia Media product. Very modern. Very colorful. He definitely has a branded style in his design. You can just tell he had something to do with it.


Great cover. You know exactly what it's about. Fantastic and simple.


Such a great design! Again, from the BGlobe (I went to the SND conference in Orlando and their art directors/Creative AMEs gave an awesome powerpoint presentation that they shared with everyone!). You can do this in a newspaper features department!

Nothing spectacular here, but look at their main art! A huge head and Aqua Teen Hunger Force! It's all a part of the VP's visual culture that they've created. At every paper it's different. Someone there decided that running huge mugs and un-original illustrations was A-OK.

-| Week No. 2 |-

-| Critique |-

This week my designs focused on coming up with art for my section, Short Talk. All I knew about for art was the super bowl story. I illustrated that with a field goal, a football and a television. I was designing on Saturday and didn't really like the way it all turned out. I had only managed to use the field goals and I really wanted to get the TV on so that I could tease to an online downloadable commercial rating card. So I shuffled things around and got it to work out. The colors on the bottom of my page (in the sidebars and TV) came from the two teams playing. I figured that was a given.

I'm also starting to think about my cover design on interracial dating. It focuses on some black football guys who date white girls. Some of their families don't really like it and some of the guys' black female peers seem to not like it. When I first heard "interracial dating" I had no idea what to think. Now that I know the angle of the story, hopefully I'll be able to come up with some good ideas.

-| React |-

First, Meredith. It was great to see their huge operation, but I just didn't really vibe with it. I am definitely not one of their targeted consumers, that was very apparent. I'm not sure any of us were, actually. I am very excited to work on the prototype with the publishing capstone. I just imagine us taking them these fabulous startups that are nothing like anything they have right now. In a perfect world, we would take the final product to them and they would be completely excited to startup this new magazine as more than just a SIP, but as a real consumer mag.

The last bit of the readings were interesting. I really kind of ended up liking the quiz because it was cool to see how one design might have been influenced by a couple of different design movements. I also really enjoyed a lot of the art out of the Art Deco movement. It's just such a neat style of design. I think that when I travel abroad (I'm looking into Mexico for next fall) it would be fun to keep up my design skills by mimicking styles out of those books.

-| You can't miss . . . Newspaper Design! |-

The only update on newsdesigner.com has been that the LA Times has announced a massive redesign effort to create a paper to be the "backbone" of latimes.com. Recently, the LA Times announced that the website would be their main initiative and that the paper would, in essence, be secondary. This redesign supports that train of thought. It's all so interesting as papers are trying to survive. Also, they're going to lose some space as they swith to a narrower paper. (Like.... The KC Star, The New York Times (Not yet, but announced), The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and probably a few more who will make the narrow switch.)


This page is from The Boston Globe's tab magazine. (I'm just assuming it's on newsprint. Mabye it's glossy like the NYT? If anyone knows for sure, leave a comment!) It's a great example of how so little can be used to achieve so much. Of course you see this huge black cover and go "what the heck?" You read it and then it all makes so much sense. A very effective design.


An interesting 1A from the Merc. They're covering themselves, and look how creative they were about it! This is of course when Knight Ridder sold a ton of its papers to McClatchy (including KC and maybe St. Louis? If anyone knows who holds the Post-Dispatch, comment and let me know.).


Haha! In honor of our trip, an excellent design from the Globe again! It's absolutely hilarious if you've seen the movie, and even if you haven't you have to wonder what the heck is going on!

-| Week No. 1 and we're still alive |-

We survived the first week of classes and it wasn't half bad! I'm really excited for this semester. I know on the fist day of class I was feeling a little overwhelmed (Actually, I was feeling really overwhelmed.) but now I'm confident that this is going to be a great semester.

-| Critique |-

My first design was a little abstract. I pushed the envelope and took the risk of having it be misunderstood. I'm okay with that, though, because on Saturday afternoon I was really struggling. I was just thinking, sketching and looking at everything for any inspiration or ideas. Nothing was coming to me. So, I took a break (let me just say that on a 29-degree day, it's still a wonderful 85 at the rec center pool.) and came back to a night of design. I finally started to conceptualize something that I could work with.

I got this idea of a bald head. But color it blue, give it a blur and it's a piece of art for my page. I complemented the blue with the orange background, a nice look, I thought. I didn't want anything too dark, because the story isn't dark. But I didn't want anything too upbeat, either, because there is a large portion of the story on Heather's history with cancer, which isn't upbeat at all. I got the idea for the dot images from a Beatles' Cirque du Soleil program my roommate brought back from Vegas.

So I get the idea that my concept wasn't quite conveyed properly. I was thinking a lot about really out there designers (David Carson) and tried to be inspired by their sometimes very abstract work.

-| React |-

Judging today in class was a great experience. I've been to a lot of judging sessions before so I was very familiar with how subjective the contests really are. Honestly, it's usually one person's opinion and if you don't win, it doesn't necessarily mean your work sucked. It just isn't the best in the eyes of the judge (Whomever that might be.). I seriously liked the sperm bank design and the St. Louis comedian design. This has also been good for me because regional mags have never held quite the same spot in my mind that other mainstream mags held. I saw a lot of great stuff come from many magazines all across the country. Now I see they are of just as high a caliber, if not higher than a lot of other mags out there.

-| You can't miss. . . Newspaper Design! |-

Hear ye, hear ye, I love newspaper design. (I actually love all design, but newspapers hold a special place in my heart.) At one point I held the belief that I was going to be a magazine designer and only a magazine designer becuase magazines are just cooler. So not true! There are so many great papers out there that do amazing features, a lot of them on 1A, the best spot in the paper to have your work. Even if you have to do a news page every now and then, I still find it very fulfilling to be the one who decides how the next day's reader will absorb their news. You decide what's most important and what kind of play each story gets. It's so cool.

I'm going to cover newsdesigner.com. You'll probably hear a lot about redesigns, designers, news coverage and convergence, a huge topic in the newspaper biz as they try to recreate their niche. This week on newsdesigner, they recognized Mario Garcia, a famous redesign consultant. Garcia was recognized as one of People Español's 100 top most influential people (not bad for a news designer). His most recent work, which was also discussed on the site, was the redesign of the Wall Street Journal. He also did a ton of work for KC in their huge redesign.

WSJ Redesign/Mario Garcia's Work



This one is a little ridiculous, but I had to include it.


The KC Star's redesign. Most people tend to hate it or love it. I tend to love it, but it does tend to seem a bit formatted on 1A day after day. The newshole is just kind of small which doesn't leave as much room for creativity. But that flag is so cool!

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Also, two redesigns were unveiled today. The Rocky Mountain News (A news TAB) and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Nothing too amazing here. The Rocky Mountain News is looking a little more like a magazine, though, with its section covers that today all touted huge photos with text on them. They had the huge photos before, but with the rails below, it still read more like a news tab. The first read is a bit different, now.





I also just read on vizeds.com that Wired magazine launched its redesign today, too. There must be something in the water. . . So far, the feedback on vizeds is that it's looking more like a high-fashion mag than where it started as an alternative techy mag. Click here to read about it straight from the horse's mouth.

Must See

The amazing work of Martin Gee, out of the San Jose Mercury News. Please be inspired by him, for he is amazing. (Click on pics for higher res)


The Virginian-Pilot does some amazing and completely innovative things with their design, especially on 1A. This is 1A from Tuesday, Jan. 23. Nothing amazing, but different. You'll see more from them, I promise.


Jessica Randklev, The Kitsap Sun. I've never heard of this paper in my life, but this is a great concept executed amazingly!