-| 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