Response >> Presentations

I was honestly really nervous before the presentation about the 2 seconds of speaking I had to do. But, I was proud of myself at the end. I think I did well and explained my design well. I want to give a big thanks to Jan for pounding content driven design into our minds & forcing us to explain our design in design 1--it allowed me to have purpose in my design and be able to speak about it. To not just stand up there and say, well, I thought it looked pretty.

The presentation for me was also good practice for the interview road ahead. While other companies may be more intense or less understanding of mistakes then Meredith, it gave me a little boost of confidence in my capabilities not only as a designer but to speak with purpose.

Congratulations to everyone on their projects!!!!!!!

You Can't Miss...

I found this great site called Pikaland...check it out. It has tons of fun illustration. The site creator also puts together submitted illustrator work from artists all over and creates pika packages that you can order. Very fun and unique gifts, as well as inspiring ideas! (The photo below is of the March Pika Package @ pikaland.com)

This Week....

CRITIQUE:

This past week I had a slight of a print design break. I still have a photo essay spread to do for VOX this week, but won't be designing it until tomorrow...so that will be posted soon. I spent a lot of time working on my site and am SOOO close to being done. I am sending off my mini-portfolio today. I spent some time on it, trying to make it fun and let me design personality come through. Finally, I revamped my tecktonik illustration, too. Since I don't have much design to show you, here is some old stuff from Inside Columbia I put on my site..





WHAT'S NEXT:

(I'm making a list...because they help me be less stressed.)

1. WEBSITE
2. Portfolio
3. Designing a graduation invite
4. Finding good shoes for my graduation dress. Yay!

Response >> Ad Design

So, to "be able to do everything," I decided to take on some spec ads at my internship about a week ago. WOW, it was challenging. I had to design an ad for a salon/spa, a title company and mc sports. The salon ad I showed was the easiest. I tried to play off the new salon's name (the beach salon) to help with name recognition..so i found the photo of the woman on the beach and came up with the headline get away/getaway... a clever little play on words I must say. I really like this ad. It's pretty and simple.

The MC Sports ad was hard. They just remodeled in the mall and the store is HUGE. I wanted to do something with that so I did an all text ad that made the shape of a roof saying something like everything you need under one huge roof. My boss wasn't crazy about it and I wasn't either. She wanted me to use photos, so I ended up with this. I was going for a dream like layout, with all of these photos overlapped and crowded, like an athletes thoughts about sports. It may be a stretch, I know...but....


Finally, for the title ad (PS I had to call my dad to figure out what a title company was, I just couldn't wrap my head around it), I had a lot of trouble. The company was looking for name recognition and credibility, so I first designed an ad that looked like a dictionary entry of his name, and the definitions were things that set his business apart. It worked in theory, but not on the page..the layout wasn't right at all. So, my boss again encouraged me to look for a photo. The business prides itself on giving clients personal attention, so I ended up with this. (The photo hasn't been downloaded yet). I like it because it's fun, but its one of those things I don't know if other people will get right away. I knew it was for a title company...but I'm not sure others will get that right away...so i'm guessing it still needs tweaking.



Overall these projects reminded me how hard ad design is. What I took from it is that while with mag design you have a few pages to get across a concept or idea, to be complicated and daring, with ads it's best to go the route you do with covers--simple and direct. there is room for concepts, but if you do go that direction you have to be able to get it across immediately.

You Can't Miss

So, I came across this following my blog. The website it comes from isn't necessarily fantastic, but I wanted to show this for the people doing web projects for meredith. I think this would be a great way to display the site work on our personal site. You could have detail shots of elements you designed, and then the overall screen shot of the site..the same presentation idea as this:

Oh, Mizzou.

Since everyone is feeling a bit nostalgic, I thought I would share with everyone a picture taken on the day I moved in. It's okay, you can laugh at my blonde hair. :)

CRITIQUE:

Let's see...This past week I spent a LOT of time designing a brochure for a job I applied for. I designed two and was debating on which one to send. They ended up allowing me to send both, which I was really happy with. Both designs were completely different, showing them, in my opinion my versatility as a designer. Crossing my fingers, folks!

I also spent a lot of time this week designing spec-ads for Inside Columbia. They were a challenge, but I'll get to it more in my reaction. I worked on 3. One for a salon, one for a title company and one for mc sports. Here is the salon one, which I was most happy with (and it came the easiest if you didn't guess that already.)



WHAT'S NEXT:

My website took a back seat to the above projects as well as my diligent effort to finish my online class, ONE TEST LEFT! Yay! It will be my focus as well as my mini portfolio in the next week. After looking at everyone's websites I always get really excited about working on it..I can't wait until I can send everyone the link to my completely finished, flawless website. COMING SOON! I will also be designing a graduation announcement for myself!

And finally, I will be working on some more Vox things. I will be finishing up my tecktonik illustration from a few weeks ago..it is now going to run in the 5/14 issue as well as figure out some type of multimedia for that. I also will be doing my second feature for the magazine, a photo essay about working women..no word on that yet, however..i am awaiting photos.

Response >> Vox Redesign

I wanted to say congrats to Meredith on her redesign of Vox.(Vox is a weekly city magazine published with the Columbia Missourian newspaper) We can all definitely respect the time and effort she put into this project.

I really loved the redesign. I think the editor's were probably squirming a little bit that text is going to be cut. a lot. but, i think in this day and age, witty short writing is necessary. save the long winded stuff for the feature well. in all honesty, i rarely read all of the department page stories from week to week. i usually thumb through, read things that LOOK interesting and then move onto the feature well.

I think Meredith's design will get people like me to stop and read the different department pages, which usually do have some great and fun writing. It goes back to the purpose of design--to get reader's to dive in.

great job, i hope to get a clip with your new design to share on my blog!