This week on UnBeige... the new creative director of Maxim

Well the news specifically pertaining to magazine and magazine design has been a little sparse lately on UnBeige, so I went with this UnBeige news blurb published today, April 29: Dirk Barnett Named Creative Director of Maxim. UnBeige reports that Barnett is known for redesigning Blender Magazine before it recently folded, and it was announced today that he had been hired by the Alpha Media Group to be Maxim's new creative director. Before Blender, Barnett worked for the spin-offs of New York Times Magazine - Key and Play - where UnBeige reports that he oversaw art direction and design. Finally, Barnett has won 9 medals and 93 merits from the Society of Publication Designers, so it will be interesting to see if Barnett brings any type of redesign to Maxim.  

Response: Week 12

Week 12? Really? Where has time gone? Even though I didn't do a lot of design work over this past weekend, I did get the opportunity to interview for two jobs: one of which happened today and one that will occur on Wednesday. Today's interview went very well, and I hope Wednesday's interview goes as well as today. But as I seem to write every week on here in this section of my blog, it was another stark reminder of how the real world is now only a step away. And for anyone that has trouble or feels nervous in interviews, I would highly recommend going to the MU Student Success Center and scheduling a mock interview. I did that today and boy did it make me feel more confident for my interview on Wednesday. 

Critique: Week 12

Man, I can't believe it's week 12 already. Another four weeks and I will be walking across the stage at graduation. Slight shudder. But I still have a ton of classes, papers, tests, projects and job interviews before the end is finally in sight. Which brings me to my weekly critique.

So this week I didn't do as much as last week, and it's hard to show what I've done on here. I worked on getting my mini-portfolio ready, and put together the pages for one of them to see how it would look. I like it. I can't really show that on here, but that was one of the main things I did this weekend.

Last week I also added elements onto the pages of CountryHome.com, the Meredith Corp. commissioned project I am a part of. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that on here yet as it is in the final tweaking stages. Hopefully I will have pictures of that up here soon.

I also worked on my website, http://web.missouri.edu/~emsc37/index.html. I incorporated many of the suggestions made by my classmates and professor, and I like how it turned out. Once I get time after graduation to learn Adobe Flash, I plan on redesigning it completely using flash. But that is a goal right now. What I can show besides this link to my website is the picture of my newly redesigned logo, seen above. It's still a work in progress now that we have an extra week to work on it, but this is what I have now.

On deck for next week:

1) Mini portfolio

2) Website

You can't miss... the NYT's Brian Stelter on the future of journalism

So as the class of 2009 inches ever closer to graduation (now only four weeks away, counting finals), I thought this was an appropriate find. In "J-Schools Play Catchup," Stelter takes a pretty good look at the future of journalism, now dubbed the "new journalism." It talks about how journalism schools across the country are changing their courses to anticipate the changes to a mostly web format for journalism. It attempts to answer the question of what the "new journalism" will look like, but appropriately ends on the answer of we don't know. It seems fitting as every senior I know in the journalism school is stressing out about graduation and the future of journalism. Stelter's article is definitely a must-read. 

This week on UnBeige... small type!

The following news post surfaced on UnBeige last Friday, April 17, and caught my eye tonight: For New York's Adam Moss, Good Things Come in Small Point Sizes. According to the post, New York magazine has started printing really small headlines on its cover. They cite this week's New York Observer, in which John Koblin comments that the type is so tiny, "The letters weigh in somewhere between the size of a grain of sugar and a grain of kosher salt."  The cover, seen here, features a red starburst where this tiny type is located. It is currently under a magnifying glass in this picture. One of the reasons for this unique conceptual design, says its editor-in-chief, Adam Moss, is that most of their magazines are sold by subscription  - only 4 percent are sold on newsstands - so it allows the magazine, Moss believes, to experiment like this. After the cover line, everything else is considered "garnish," Moss adds. 

“There’s a certain texturing,” Moss said in an interview with Koblin. “Texturing? Is that a word? A texture object that has to do with the design of the cover. We have very large type and very small type. It’s impossible to describe graphic design, but you want to create a visual tension on the cover. We want you to see a big word that excites you. And then it’s like someone who speaks very softly and you lean in to hear them.”

Now I could not see all the tiny type Koblin describes in his article. But it really makes me want to go find this on the newsstand and see for myself. UnBeige claims this is the secret to survive "in the rapidly shrinking world of print media." 

Just some food for thought. It's pretty fascinating stuff.

Critique: Week 11

This week I had two major assignments to work on: the CountryHome.com designs for my Meredith Corp. project and the design (and subsequent redesign) of covers for the Criminal Justice Issue of Vox Magazine. 

The CountryHome.com project is slowly coming along, as we are working as a design team to make the pages look similar to each other. It's a lot of work, but I believe I will be much more knowledgeable about web design in the end than I would if I had chosen one of the print projects for Meredith Corp. My inspiration for my department pages was NYTimes.com. However, I am a very methodical, straightforward designer, learning to expand my creative box. It has shown in my print work for this class and Vox Magazine, and that struggle has unfortunately made its way over to the web design work as well with this Meredith Corp. project. But in the end, like everything else, it will be a good learning experience for me. Unfortunately I can't post screenshots of my pages since they are on the server and I don't have access to them right now.

But I will post my covers for Vox Magazine's Criminal Justice Issue. I will briefly explain each one. The one with the caution tape and body outline in chalk was trying to recreate a crime scene where each of the three individuals profiled in the story would have a hand in figuring out the crime. The black cover with the three picture boxes was modeled after a t-shirt I have which depicts three different aspects of the organization. So since there are three profiles, I decided to make each profile have its own picture box. And the font for the words "Criminal Justice" was modeled after Law & Order. Finally, the cover with the arm in a chain was my least favorite. I kind of ran out of ideas at this point, but I was trying to show in this cover a "criminal" being locked up awaiting "justice."

After I presented these three ideas to the class this past Thursday, they suggested I redesign the cover with the picture boxes, which is shown here. I changed the picture for the medical examiner and tried to make each box look like it had a brass nameplate attached to it. I'll see how the class reacts to it on Thursday.

On deck:

1) Continuing working on CountryHome.com

2) Multimedia for Vox

3) Present the redesigned cover at Thursday's lab

4) Work on mini-portfolio and Web site if I have time

Response: Week 11

This week in Magazine Editing, one of our homework assignments is to plan a theme issue for the August issue of Esquire. It was easy for me to come up with a theme but way harder to come up with 8-12 feature ideas and four department ideas based off of that theme. Even though this assignment is much easier for me to complete than proofreading or copyediting, it showed just how much I need to work on thinking like an editor. Because in the second round of presentations in Advanced Magazine Design, as students presented their findings from interviews with various art directors from across the country, the suggestion of being a designer and thinking like an editor at the same time came up. It's definitely helpful to be strong in both areas simultaneously because I believe a designer is more marketable if he or she possesses both traits and can use them at the same time. Again it was another week of identifying my weak points and now I have just over 30 days to work and polish them before I graduate from MU.