Critique

This feature story is interesting and unique from anything we have done before. I wanted to make this cover have a unique angle and I thought this couple would represent this and I went with the red color because in the Bible whenever the Word of God is spoken it's in red. I wanted to keep with the simplicity of the photo and not have to take anything away from the point of this photo and the message. [Well, this is the last blog for this class- peace out!]
-AMA

Photo Inspiration

So I didn't take this photo. And it's actually an old photo. So I'm kind of breaking all of the rules, but I just wanted to use this photo to show that as time changes, we need to keep in mind what is important to us. To me, it's my family, so I know that come graduation, I will be taking another photo with my parents representing me in this new phase of my life.

You Can't Miss: Quote

This is important for us as designers to remember because we sometimes we get a little to focused on perfection. This quote helps us to understand that sometimes craziness is accepted and needed in our profession. I don't know, but this is just something that I think is important for us to remember and I wanted to share with y'all. 

Reflection: Advanced Design

This class has been a crazy experience and I'm glad for every minute of it. I wish that I had taken this class sooner, but it's been great learning about all of the new techniques. Throughout this capstone I think I have advanced my knowledge and techniques drastically- it's awesome. I feel that this class will definitely be help my chances in our industry because the J-School wants its students to have the best opportunities possible in the journalism field. I wish the school would let us enter our emphasis classes sooner because I think it would help us to get a better advancement on our knowledge of how we are supposed to do correct things. You can see that my strength I think would be thinking of concepts for covers and executing them.

You Can't Miss the new card trend

More and more designers are moving in to the card industry. For example Hallmark is a big part of this new hiring industry. I'm sure everybody has seen the internships out there and possibilities designing new fun things that can brighten somebody's special day. If you haven't been to stores lately, you may not have seen the new trend of things also becoming more cartoonish and whimsical. Just the other day, I saw some thank you cards with illustrations looking similar to the ones that Libby does. Many designers think about going into the PR industry, but lately, with all this emphasis being placed on getting better Illustrator and illustration skills it helps to think of different possible roads. 

Photo Inspiration

The Kansas City River Market is my favorite place to be on Sunday mornings after church during the summer months. It's a farmer's market located down by the river, right outside Steamboat Arabia and I really like the atmosphere because of all the different food vendors and people at the market.

Critique: Portfolios

AMA! Like I said the other day, I fell in love with my initials and I know they may be boring, but I think it's fun. I love the color I chose for the website. However, I do completely agree that my opening screen needs some work because there are several heads cut off. It would work well aesthetically if everything was just completely perfect, which I will tweak this weekend before portfolio sessions. I like my projects section because I have my iPad feature separated from the print feature so that it could be in an iPad frame. I also included some of my photography, so employers could see that I'm well-rounded for any job they could want. On my last page I included a contact page and have downloadable pdfs of my resume and mini portfolio. Both go along with my color scheme to keep the similarity amongst the different platforms.

Response: J-School and Meredith

Meredith Publishing helped us all this semester. It's amazing how far we have all grown through this project. Seeing REVIVE Magazine printed the other day during class, I was really excited to see what our hard work does. Yes, it's not my magazine, but the same concept applies to my magazine. With this semester coming to an end and Des Moines being only 10 days away, my nerves are getting a little high. Plus, with the stress from all of our other homework, all of us are close to the end and these projects are the rainbow at the end of the storm.
The J-school has been one of the best and worst experiences of my life. It's a constant drive and constant headache, but it's also a constant excitement seeing the projects, stories and designs we've created printed.

Response: New design idea for ads

Cosmopolitan


Thank you Alex for getting me stuck on the Cosmopolitan website. This new ad design that she showed me today is awesome, I like the ingenuity of it and I think it's unique. The ad falls into the site and a box type thing. With all of the advertisements lately, it's important for an ad to stand out and this Aussie ad is a great representation for this idea. To the right is the main page of Cosmo and below is what the ad looks like and you can see the homepage that falls into the website for the advertisement to display. 
-AMA

Online Portfolio Critique

My logo is just the "ama" in the center, but I like it. 

I can't believe it's been three months and bam, this semester is gone it's time for our online portfolios to be completed. Below are some snapshots of my website. Obviously, I'm changing the color scheme, but I also have decided on my logo, which is pretty basic, but I like it.

The homepage will feature a smaller picture and a different color scheme. I'm going to keep the "About Me" section and the interesting little blurbs about my favorite things. This is just something fun that I think would help people get to know me better. 

This is my projects page and it's
really interesting because it has a
slider tool to go through my work.
It also brings the images up to a
bigger screen when clicked on. 

Photo Inspiration: Thanks to Ashleigh

The photos to the left are all from a photo shoot that I did with my cousin Chase. These are some of my photos that turned out perfect in my opinion since the shoot was entertaining and fun. This is what all photo shoots should be, yes, they do need to be professional, but why not both. 

Can't Miss: CALENDAR GALORE

Just a little something...

     I don't know about anybody else in the world, except my good friend Ashleigh, but I like making lists. Something vital to making lists is that you need to know dates and times of when things are happening and when things are due. An interesting something I found, would be a calendar stamp. I don't mean the normal calendar stamps from the library with due dates, but it's a little month calendar.
     For designers, we always have things due and recently I've started making notes on flash cards with when things are due. This is the perfect addition to my note cards, one side with the calendar and a red mark circling the date. Just something nice I though y'all might want to see.

One Martini, Two Martini, 3 MARTINI Critique

The "Three Martini" covers were interesting to work with. I decided that I wanted to use the silhouette photo illustration because it had the Mad Men feel completely and I furthered that with the colors (black, red & white). I think this cover would have worked really well; however, I think it would have been better if I put the Vox Magazine logo behind the head of the silhouette. Andrea, that's a great idea. The sell lines are at the top and in bar form because I think they don't actually affect the the photo illustration or take away from the photo. Since they are red and white it enhanced the cover. The fonts don't actually do anything for the cover, but I put them on there because I thought they worked well as Mad Men fonts.

Photo Inspiration: Ft. Pickens comes to life

To the left is a staircase at Ft. Pickens on Pensacola Beach in Florida. This picture was one I liked because it just has a rustic feel and everything about it shouts, old to me. However, I also really like history, so going to this fort was awesome.

You Can't Miss: Apple Design Tips

We all design on Apple computers, so I figured, why not let y'all check out some design tips from apple.

My favorites:

• Keep it Simple
• This is so true, sometimes we just overdue our designs. Sometimes we just think we should keep going and going and going. We want to make everything so intricate and when we have a design in mind we can get a little carried away. This helps us remember, we gotta KEEP IT SIMPLE!
• Sweat the Small Stuff
• Oh boy, oh boy. Keeping in mind that being a perfectionist isn't a bad thing. Sometimes we have to SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF to make everything look the best it can. 
• Make it Friendly 
• Erica and Andrea always remind us of this one, but we need to keep our readers in mind and making it user friendly is very important. 
• Be Consistent
• Wow, this is definitely something we have had to learn working on the Meredith Project with so many different designers. I am interning at Anthem Publishing this summer and having different designers it's going to be important to be consistent and try and make our designs co-mingle. 
• Create Beautiful Custom Icons
• Illustrations aren't my strong-suit, but I decided that I was going to put illustrations on my list of "things to get better at."

That's all for now, but I didn't think y'all should miss this.

Response: Quick to judge

The New Yorker wrote an article called "The Saudi Marathon Man" and this article I really thinks makes journalists think twice. We are always thinking, "be the first," "get the story out there," but something journalists had to think about after this story broke, is what if the story isn't the right story.
A young man, marathon runner, and Saudi Arabia native was harassed and his reputation torn to shreds when police destroyed his house and image, accusing him of the bombing. Why did they do this? I mean, it's quite obvious to me and The New Yorker, it's because of his race, his beliefs, and his culture. As Americans, we should be accepting of all foreigners, our country was founded my immigrants, but as journalists we have to be knowledgable and understanding of different backgrounds. I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I think journalists forget we have to step back and analyze the situation.

Response

Art Director. Creative Director. Designer. I don't care what I get, I just want a job and I think everybody feels the same. It was crazy hearing about all the different magazine and the ages of the art directors. It's good to see the advances at different magazines and the industry overall. Wired magazine has definitely changed over the years, and of course, seeing these presentations, is hopeful. These different magazines helped me see that even within one certain industry there are many trends different magazines choose to follow. Paper. Colors. Typography. Covers. The list can go on, and on, and on, but I'm ready for next week to see the rest of the presentations. 

Photo Inspiration

It's getting warmer outside and, I love a good spring rain. What is crazy is last summer I started my interest in shooting firework photography. This was one of my first shots of a fountain going off. Persistence and determination, that's the key.

Critique

Mini Portfolio

We all have to make one for class, but I had to accelerate my production for an internship interview. This made me thrilled, yet anxious at the same time. While making it, I wanted it to represent myself in the pages. The cover went through many different revisions, but the main body of my portfolio is organized with identification bars to the sides and then I have introduction pages with quotes. I chose my favorite quotes and decided to place them on section pages, so Sara Steffens (AD at Anthem) could get a little sense of my personality. 

I think I chose nice colors throughout, but I think when I get the bound version I'm definitely going to adjust the layout and make things a little more uniform. Below is a little "taste" of my portfolio. 

You Can't Miss: Swiss-Miss

Ok. Okay. I don't know how much easier things can get for kids these days. Yes, I'm aware I sound like an 80-year-old grandparent. But when I was young if we were going to have a bake sale, lemonade stand, or any other way to increase our piggy bank's weight we had to make posters for "advertisement." It was real "homemade" looking, but it was my childhood.

That being said, I will now step off my soap box.

Ikea thinks of everything and now they've done it again. While this cardboard stand is meant for play, it is definitely a way for kids to have a business with a professional look. It's wonderful to see the different items that appear on Swiss-Miss. This is what I posted from my blog this week because when I first saw this, I thought, "wow, how things have changed." If even a lemonade stand business is changing this much, it only makes sense our field can and will drastically change over the next 15+ years.

Wired's most recent cover, April 2013. 

Wired's first cover, 1993.

Hannah was talking yesterday in class about how Wired has developed and changed so much over the years. And before that, I talked with Sara Steffens about Anthem Media and KC Magazine doing a redesign this summer and how she things digital magazines are becoming bigger, I just keep seeing change everywhere in this industry. I had another interview with Steffens and she kept stressing all the different programs we use constantly developing and it'd be really hard to ever know everything about them.
-AMA