-| 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."