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.