Critique Week #7

This week I had three major design projects. The 20/10 logo assignment, the 3.12 VOX feature on groceries, and a small illustration for the Short Talk Department of the upcoming 3.19 issue of VOX. 

The bulk of that work centered around the feature on groceries, which went from its original two-page length to six-pages (trimmed at the last minute to five pages). My original sketch was pretty dull compared to the final product, using just the colors of black, white, blue and green. I also had a very large text box that took up the entire second page of the spread, so I was partly glad that the feature was given more pages. But that also meant more work. When I came into the office last Friday and Sunday, I worked with Meredith on the feature, and the final product is a collaboration between the two of us. One of the biggest things she had me do during the first revision was to come up with a color palette. I'll admit one of my biggest fears or clamps on my work is being afraid to think outside of the box. Having a long history from high school until now as a newspaper designer, I wasn't allowed to use my creative mind as much as I am doing this semester for this class as well as VOX. And I think my creative mind is slowly being let free, and this feature really helped me step out of the box. When I talk about being inside the box, I mean not using creative typefaces or many colors, and always designing inside a grid. After at least 10 hours of work on this, it's finally complete! I'm really excited to see how it comes out on Thursday. But here's a sneak peak of what the six-page spread looks like (it will be slightly different on Thursday because of the added full page ad.)

I had a lot of fun with the 20/10 logo assignment, since I really like designing advertising logos. Again my fear of thinking outside the box limited a lot of what I did, and I am slowly getting over that fear as this semester progresses. Even though the logo is for a food program, I remember the organization's representative telling us that she would like to have us not include food in the logos, since the program is about much more than food. I still did a couple with food, although I tried to work with things that weren't food. I began by researching the words "Eat for Life" and then each word separately in a Google images search to see what others have done to spark my creativity. And I have included in the "Response post" what I have come up with for that assignment (there were too many images to load on this post). 

Finally, I have included the illustration I did for the Short Talk department in the upcoming 3.19 issue. The story it is illustrating is about Internet dating, mainly on Craigslist.org, an online classifieds Web site. It will be slightly tweaked later this week, and I will include it in next week's critique. I will also include the redesigned VOX cover I am doing next week, since I have not done it yet.

For next week:

1) Redesign the VOX cover for caffeine 

2) Design the Short Talk Dept. this weekend for the 3.19 issue

3) Continue tweaking my existing portfolio Web site