response

I have really enjoyed reading both the typography book and graphic style. I think it's really inetersting seeing how design has progressed over the centuries and how much social structures, social issues, etc...informs design. I thought reading about the art nouveau style in germany --jugend (youth) was espcially interesting. it showed how design changed due in part to what was going on in the country. i also learned from reading the books that i like russian design a lot and that my design style/taste is certainly of a simple/bold/ bauhausian persausion.

list of top typography fonts is out by the way:

also. i know i wasn't at meredith with anyone, but i can tell you right now i could not work at meredith and be happy. no offense to anyone--it's just that this home and garden stuff is really not all that interesting to me. especially when it's repeated 5 million times over with no unique design style whatsoever.

and: i was hoping for people's thoughts on this: for band posters, or any poster really, but i guess is see a lot of this with music-related propoganda, are you guys fine with the art on the poster having nothing to do with the band--having nothing content-driven about it. does the interest of the image work well enough for you? or do you like it better when it's a clever play on words or something in reference to or about the band? here is an example of a non-content driven poster. granted, i don't think this is particularly well done anyway--but you get the idea. just wondering your opinons.

you can't miss this!

ok guys. you have to check this out. i've been following headsofstate's work for a while now, and i'm so excited that my blog, the graphicdesignbar, thinks they're pretty awesome, too. check it out!!! they do mostly music posters, and one of the reason i like their style is because they're straightforward and they play off the content rather than just having a competely random image that has nothing to do with the band. very clever duo. great ideas and great designs. enjoy. www.headsofstate.com

h20 final critique

well i'm going to spare everyone from seeing the fifty versions i did before i reached my final. lets just say this was a long, hard and frusturating process, and it doesn't help that the smallest thing being "off" could keep me up all night. i'm a self-confessed nerd. anyway, i really like my concept, and i think for a story on water that this was both a creative and hopefully successful approach. I think the most challenging part of doing the cover besides being involved with the "blunder" discussed in class, was the typography. I knew i wanted a sinple, sans-serif, technical but not computery font--something mathematical--light, vertical and square. it wasn't so much choosing the typography i guess, but finding a good placement for it on the cover. Because my image started at the bottom of the page and ended halfway up, i as left with a lot of graph-paper space to work with and no other backgorund image. I guess that's the part that i don't feel looks 100% right on the cover--i'm not sure how successful i was in melding the background graph paper, the water image and the type into one cover image. oh well. it's over, and now i can sleep again.
*(hannah).

h20 revision 003.

can i or am i even allowed to bleed the water image off the cover? will it still bleed on the cover or look weird? thoughts?
anyway, b/c i think i can't i stopped the water within those purple page margins in indesign.
*(hannah).

can't miss this! why design is wonderful

in the blog i am following, graphicdesignbar, one of its recent posts features these fans made in tokyo that keep the global warming concept in mind. this is why i love design. because it's beauty with a lot of function involved. the fans are created using color swatches of cool colors to remind us of how nice it is to stay cool and feel cool in a world that is endangered of the opposite.





i also love some functionless design. although i think beauty in itself serves its own puprose. anyway, my sister who is an art major sent me this link earlier today of a place called hotelfox in copenhagen. each of the rooms in their hotel is unique--painted/illustrated by one artist. these rooms are wonderful, and ridiculously expensive i'm sure. anwyay, how fun would it be to get a chance to do this? i would love to visit this place just to see the vison behind each room. check out www.hotelfox.com. here are some of my favorites.

response: why contests are evil

i've chosen to respond to the class session we had today in which we did the preliminary judging for the city and regional magazine design contest. I think just being a part of the judging itself was quite a useful learning experience. First of all, I think what Jan said about contests and juding in general--basically, how no contest is fair--- is incredibly important to keep in mind especially when submitting material to be "graded" by others. It's hard not being chosen for something, and oftentimes people take the results very personally. (like me) I think being on the other side of a contest has shown me that it doens't mean much if you don't get picked. There were several spreads today that i thought were really well done, and only three could be picked. (luckily 2 of my favorites made the top three, and my third favorite made the top 5) but that aside, there were many that were deserving and for a variety of reasons. some had standout typographical choices. some great illustrations and layouts. it was generally tough--tough even to view these submissions under one umbrella category under which to be judged. I also think today verified how subjective design and all art is. what some poeple liked and explained would capture their attention, wouldn't have caught mine for a second, and i'm sure many people would have felt that way about my choices. but that's life. that's art. that's taste. and there's lots of different tastes out there. and that's something i've got to get used to. in the meantime i should probably work on the not taking it personally part. :) because someone out there--at least one person--no matter who you are and how good or deserving you think your work is, is always going to think what you've done is complete crap. :) so to that i say, march on, do what you love and screw them!
*(hannah).

breast cancer feature final critique

critique of breast cancer cover and feature: I worked really hard on this design. especially on the cover concept. I proabably played around with at least three other cover ideas before this one struck me. it was a frusturating process, but it was a good feeling when i stumbled upon my final idea. I think the biggest challenge of this story was illustrating its three major themes/topics without being kitschy or confusing to the reader. the themes of humor, breast cancer and putting on a show or play jumped out from the story the most as the most dominant points. so, the process began: i first played around with the idea of using a clown nose, but i figured that approach might be pretty common, so then i played around with a pill bottle image with a label that said comic relief...i also made a cover with a comedy mask whose string formed a breast cancer ribbon. anyway, none of those turned out well, and it wasn't until i was at my work at ticketmaster, that the idea of play tickets struck me. so i used those to make a ribbon, and i kept the background black to convey the mood of a dark theatre. i'm sure some people will freak out because the background is black, and the color black on its most base level is considred dark, depressing and dreary...etc...but I LOVE black, and i think it makes the image pop, and i think it can also lend itself to producing a sophisticated mood especially with such a simplified, stark graphic. anyway, i was really happy with my cover, although i will admit trying to convey comedy through the image wasn't successful. i relied on the cover text for that.



my feature i kept simple. I actually played around a lot with it as well--with different images, etc...but with my past experience doing features for vox, both of which i used heavy, illustrative design elements, i felt they didn't translate all too well from computer to newsprint. perhaps if vox were a glossy, i would feel that it could carry heavier designs more successfully, so instead, i chose to stay more airy and simple with my feature design. i played with the text, using showlights as the font to convey the theatre mood once again and let pink be my driving color. i also think it's important to play up the images, so i kept those large as well. looking back, i think my feature looks a bit text heavy, and i probably should have found a way to loosen it up a little bit--maybe a little too newspapery...

breastcancer2

breastcancer2, originally uploaded by bohostripe*.

getting there.

h20 draft 002 critique

h20lighter, originally uploaded by bohostripe*.

this is still not finished. i've added graph paper to the background to get across a more subtle idea of a graph, but again, it is still a work in progress.
i'm thinking of adding light tick marks or numbers or something to further convey the techincal/graph idea. also gradations in the heights of the streams of water will probably help as well.
*(hannah).

h20 draft 001.

h20, originally uploaded by bohostripe*.

rough draft number 1. none of the text is formatted for the publication. the image is the focus.