Photo Inspiration: SI edition

I mentioned that I'm on this whole retro-kick right now. Inspired by Swiss-Miss blog and mainly the Internet Explorer commercial that appeared on it. It was furthered when I saw the SI cover featuring Stan Musial (I'm a HUGE baseball fan, but not a Cards fan), there were four, yes, FOUR cover choices. I have seen this before, but I like the different designs they did with it. The different cutout styles, dek positions, and teaser layouts. I was impressed and then, on top of that, to choose which one you are going to feature, it's nice. I have seen it before, but seeing as SI is one of my favorite choices in magazines, it was even more pleasing. I'm not always impressed with SI designs, they are always cluttered and the jumps, can be a little confusing (especially when they put one story on a page in the middle of a bigger story). But I was really impressed with the style and professionalism of this designer being able to layout four different covers.
We have a design assignment that we have to do, similar to this, where we create more than one and have to choose. I'm ready for it a little more, especially after seeing this.

You Can't Miss, Swiss-Miss

Swiss-Miss, sounds like a great cup of hot chocolate (which would be really awesome tonight). I saw a video within this past week and it's a commercial from Internet Explorer, it was an inspiring video, which might be cheesy. But it was a video about the 90's and growing up. Below is the post from YouTube and from Swiss-Miss. I have some photos from the commercial and like I said this commercial was inspiring to me. I'm excited about the bright colors, and the emotions it made me feel, it was very easy to remember a time when I did these things, when I had fun staying up late, outside, playing games. It could be that with me getting closer to graduation, I have this want to go back in time, but I think it could be a good way for designs to go with a reminiscent idea, and that's what I'm going with for my Vox Spring Preview and probably several designs in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkM6RJf15cg YouTube

http://www.swiss-miss.com/ Swiss-Miss

It is cheesy. I understand that, but I can't get over the fact that this simple commercial can bring up so many emotions. I want Internet Explorer for the simple fact that it had a sentimental value. 

Response: iPad Design Lab Reading and class

First, let me just say, I am very pleased with yesterday's critiques. It was awesome hearing your critiques of not only my design, but of others as well because now I know what others like and want to see.
Now on to the iPad reading. Since I'm designing my iPad this weekend, it was good to have that reading, it was really interesting seeing how people interact with the iPad and perceive it. When discussing the 'lean-forward' and 'lean-backward' styles of media, it was intriguing because I had never actually considered that idea. However, when I was reading the iPad Design Lab, and was laying down, I immediately sat up smiling.
Maybe it's just me, but when trying out the Vox iPad designs of the magazine, I kept getting drawn to the places with pop-ups. It's really just intriguing that I can point my finger on the screen and pop-up more information in a magazine. Yeah, you can do this on games, but the fact that we as journalists are adapting and making it an interesting was of absorbing the news, it makes me happy and wanting to be apart of this field even more. I have uploaded the first page of chapter 5, dealing with pop-ups. 'The Takeaway,' says it all.

It's important for us, as journalists to adapt, let's see if I can fully adapt this weekend designing the Vox iPad.

Critique: Heartbreak to Hope

This story to me was something really challenging, seeing as I really wanted to do something amazing for my first design of the year. However, I wasn't thoroughly impressed when I turned it in. 

As the first critique of my design, I'm going to start with my cover. As we discussed in class, I realized that I forgot the dek and in this photo it looks like just any normal family. The dek really would have explained this story and let readers know right off the bat, this isn't a normal family. Also, I had been leaning towards a script font and I just don't feel that the typography I chose really enhances and fits the story. It was really interesting to see the 18 different styles and it really sparked some thoughts. For example, seeing all of the script fonts on the covers and on the main spreads, really looked professional and perfect for this story.

My feature could have definitely been better in telling the story. I like what I did on the opening spread, in the sense of how it was designed, with the white space, but the rest of my feature I think is just really crowded. I want to revise the feature and cover, for my portfolio, and I think I'm going to start by choosing new photos and toning them differently. I was overall pleased; however, with my first design because I think it does look professional, just not as good as it could look. 

I have started my Spring Preview design and I'm really excited to see how it will come out. I have already done a lot of revisions on it, but I'm hoping I can pull off a really fun look. 

Coming up this weekend for me is my iPad and department page design, wish me luck!

-AMA

Completely Honest...

I have to be completely honest here, blogging isn't something I have typically enjoyed in the past. However, I'm turning over a new leaf. I don't know if it has anything to do with being excited about this class and working with talented people, or what? We shall see. This is my first post on my totally different blog and if you stick with me, you shall see me Finding Myself in Design.
-AMA