Link to Final Portfolio

Here is a link to my final portfolio for this class. http://art151potfolio.blogspot.com/

Project 4 Final

For this project, the hardest part was coordinating the best way to split up the work. From the beginning, Kayli and I were able to come up with a pretty solid design idea that captured the aesthetic of a rustic farm while still being appropriate for a legal report. After meeting with John and David, we decided that the focus was going to more so be on the children instead of the farm itself. I feel that our color palette definitely connected the focus of the children to the report with the bright colors along with the picking up some of the colors you would associate with the farm. We also quickly decided that we wanted to have a display font that we could use for the section titles. John and David were really wanting something that helped to break up the density of the text in the report. To do that, Kayli and I wanted to use several different images, pull quotes, and info graphics to help balance the text.
For the presentation, the hardest part was trying to find a way to fit all of the text onto the appropriate slides while still having the same open feeling of the report. Having the two columns of text definitely helped to make the lines of text shorter and less intimidating to read. Also bringing in images and info graphics helped to add a visual appeal to the presentation.

Project 4 Brief and Initial Template

Farm to School Brief:

­The premise of this initiative is to create a healthier lunch for elementary and middle school students. In order to do this, they are proposing a three-part initiative. Part one is to increase the nutrition standards for school lunches. This would mean to increase the emphasis on the healthier food groups and decrease the amount of processed and froze foods. Part two is to integrate local produce into the school system. This would not only increase the nutritional component of the food, but it would also give back to the local economy. Part three is to create student-grown produce. This produce can either be consumed in the school lunches or the students could bring the produce home to eat. All three of these parts are completely separate from each other and each school does not have to do all three. The hope is that this initiative can also be applied to other districts outside of the Des Moines area.

For the creative aspect of this project, we really want to break up the text so that the report doesn’t seem so text-heavy. Because of that, we want to utilize white space throughout the design along with graphics and pull quotes. We also want to utilize different colors that tie back to a farm. These colors would also tie into the target of elementary school students. The key here is to use the colors in a professional way that doesn’t make the report appear childish. We are also looking at making all images monochromatic in order to limit the amount of color overall while also creating a unity in the overall design.   

Project 3 Final

This project challenged me in a different way than I originally expected. For me, finding that balance of a image-heavy design and a more clean look that was appropriate for the iPad was hard. Especially since Seventeen is so chaotic in it's printed editions. I definitely think that my ideas of how to approach the layout shifted as the project went on. By adding an additional grid system that I could switch between allowed for more flexibility in the layout. I also think that this helped to make breaking the grid to make sense in the design. One of the biggest challenges that Seventeen has design wise is that it looks like they through stuff at a piece a paper and wherever it hit is where they kept it. That concept was very hard for me to imitate because it's not the style I usually design with. However, I think having the text still fall into the grid system with having the images do as they please really created a nice balance between the two conflicting approaches. In the end, I decided to only do a landscape layout because I don't think that the interaction between the image and the text would be as effective in a portrait layout. Plus, the media content (videos) lends itself to be viewed in a landscape fashion due to the aspect ratio. I also really like that it makes it seem less like a PDF of the magazine since it is oriented differently.

Project 3 Critique

For this project, I think I need to more fully consider exactly how the teenagers will access the content of each issue. Also, I need to find a way to use my grid in a more playful way. The content of this magazine needs to be more random and loose. However, it still needs to have that designed aspect to it that will give a clear function and hierarchy to the project. I also think that I want to utilize more of a image-based layout for the content since so much of it is based on the imagery. Pulling out colors from the images will also help to unify the articles. The other aspect that I really need to finish developing is the integration of social media throughout the magazine. I think there needs to be a presence of it, while still having the focus be on the content itself. Trying to find that balance is what I still need to resolve.

Thumbnails / Ideas

Project 3 Magazine Analysis

A) Seventeen focuses on four main key themes: Fashion, Beauty, Celebrities, and Love Life. It depends on the issue as to which one is the main focus. Typically the fashion pieces are towards the end with a lot of photos of different clothing and accessory items. The celebrity pieces an vary in their placement, but they typically relate to whomever is on the cover of the magazine, which means there is a slight emphasis on them. For my re-design I think I am going to focus on more of the fashion and beauty aspects in order to connect them with social media platforms. I am unsure exactly which articles I plan to use yet, but I think one about fashion will probably be the feature article. I want to be able to have any tips and tricks be able to be tapped in order to bring up a pinterest tutorial (or something similar). Also allowing them to pin these ideas to those pinterest boards, share it on facebook/twitter, or allow them to comment within the app will allow for more of the interaction with social media that the target audience would be looking for.

B) I was truly only able to find the typeface that they use for the logo, which is Arsis. However I think that they utilize several different typefaces throughout the publication. For their body copy they use a sans serif typeface that is very similar to Helvetica. The titles of the articles are in a sans serif typeface that is really similar to Futura. The typeface that they use for the article's writers is the hardest for me to identify. It is one that I have encountered before, I just need to keep searching for what it is. All of the other typefaces that are used are more of a display typeface and they tend to vary issue to issue. Seventeen also utilizes several different colors throughout their magazine. I think that, while I will still utilize the bold colors, I am going to specify how each color is used in order to create a more clean and sophisticated look. It is really important to let the elements themselves do a lot of the talking instead of the colors. I also plan on using a lot of the typographical treatments that are used for the articles while still incorporating some of the hand-drawn qualities that they use.

Project 3 Magazine Selection

For this project, I chose Seventeen Magazine. According to the demographics of their readers, most of their readers are close to 16 years old and they typically access the content of the magazine in print. However, I think that re-designing their application could allow for more digital subscriptions to be more interactive with social media. Currently, the application does allow for social media interaction, to a point. I think just increasing the amount of interactivity between the elements of the article with the user's social media is something that is crucial for their target demographic. Right now, their app does not flip orientations. Also their layout doesn't really seem to target the actual demographic. It seems very old-school and not visually pleasing overall. I do like how large their image elements are and how they relate to the articles. However,  everything seems very flat. I really want to have a different way that the user can access the different editions. Their application also lacks any type of visual hierarchy until you get to an article. Changing that could really add some dimension to the overall design.

Project 2 Final

For this project, space was really a constraint for me. Trying to fit everything within the required page numbers really challenged me. I eventually had to increase my page height from 9 inches to close to 11 inches in order to accommodate the content. While I was admittedly very hesitant to do so, I think increasing the page size gave me a lot more freedom to allow the page to open up and the images to vary more in size. The images themselves were a struggle for me as well. It irritated me to no end that the images weren't the same size and couldn't fit in the grid. However, once I let go of the idea that they had to fall in a certain spot and just allowed them to simply break the grid, I think that the spreads began to flow a lot better.
The grid system that I used is the only part of the layout that really didn't change a whole lot. Other than increasing the columns between my text columns, the grid stayed the same. I really like how constrained the text was on the page. I think that that allowed for the images to really speak for themselves and interact with the text in a way that is different from what I normally do. Having those objects simply fall where they did forced me to back away from my typical structured way of thinking and made me just let things be as they are.

Project 2 Critique

For my critique, we discussed the possibility of increasing the page size to allow for the photo elements to increase. Overall, my project needed to 'air out.' There needed to be an increase in space in the gutters. There also needed to be an increase in the point size. My initial layout had a lot of text that was tightly packed together that made the catalog have a text-heavy feel to it. By allowing the text to have more room and allow the images to break the grid a little more, it would help to break up the page. I also need to add in some horizontal correlation in the spreads in order to create a flow from page to page.

Current Layouts

Here are some of the current layouts of my catalog. I haven't officially worked out how my titles are going to work yet and I don't currently have page numbers or captions. Right now, I was just trying to drop in the content to see what was working and I think I may make a few modifications to the overall interaction with the text and image. I really like how some of the images break out over the grid, but I think I need to vary the image sizes more. In order for that to happen, I will probably have to increase the height of my catalog since I am already at 24 pages. My other option is to utilize all of those pages and create a separate cover, which I may do anyway because f how I am thinking of utilizing images on the cover.

Layout ideas

Reading Responses

Based off of the readings, I think that I would like to explore a few different grid systems. One of the options is a modular grid system. Overall, this system would allow for a lot of flexibility with the placement of the elements. I am leaning more towards a grid that has three columns and a currently undetermined number of rows. The text and images will be able to span the columns in different ways, however I would like to keep the text of each essay in the same area of the page to create a sense of continuity in the piece. I am currently debating if I want to repeat the images that are mentioned in each essay, or if I just want to reference the images in the essays.

Exhibition Catalogue Examples

These are some examples that I chose based on their grid system or their image and text treatments

Final Book

For my final book, I decided to change the typefaces that I was using. I originally chose to use Times because it was really legible and was a serifed typeface. I decided to use two different typefaces instead of just the one. For all of my titles, I decided to use Modern No. 20 because it had some of the playfulness that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz needed in a title. I then decided to change the body typeface to Baskerville so that there was a nice paring of the typefaces in terms of the weight of the text itself. Both of these typefaces have their own quirks to them which also added to the overall feel of the story. I also really like that Baskerville lightened up the body text so that it didn't seem so daunting since the dimension of the book is rather large.

The images that I decided to go with are purely graphic. I liked that these images had that childlike feel that the storyline needed, yet they didn't seem to cartoon-like. This made it feel much more mature, yet still playful. The only thing I wish I was able to do is to emboss the cover so that the actual title of the book was on there, but I really like how the cover represented the yellow brick road.

Project 1 Critique

Overall, I think that the thing I wanted to work on most in my piece is just making everything look unified. Right now I have all of the text laid out in the spreads, but I want to create a better flow and use of hierarchy that brings the whole book together. One of the things that I am going to play around with is the placement and size of my page number. I also want to work with the headers and make them more distinct.

One of the things that I have been struggling with is how to add in images. I mentioned during the critique that I didn't want the images to have a childish feel to them, but rather a more mature aspect. However, considering the content of the book, I think having those more cartoon like illustrations used sparingly may help to unify the book. Ideally, I would like the illustrations to be on the chapter pages, but I may incorporate them into the header or footer. I do want the title page to be more illustrative as a way to tie it all together with some of those graphic images spilling over into the table of contents area as well.