Thursday, December 17, 2009

Final Porfolio: Eight

Magazine Spread: Missouri Conservationist
"Time in the Woods"
11 x 17
4 hours

The article comes from the Missouri Conservationist, and we were instructed to shoot our own photos. I knew that with the nature of the magazine, the layout had to be natural and organic feeling. The article mentions the colors of fall and so the trees at this time are wonderful for photographing. I took a semi-arial view photo of a tree from my porch and also a photo of thousand hills state park. There was not too much body copy in this article, which is why I decided to add in the photo on the right, without it the layout was too minimal. The colors of the layout work fantastically.

Final Porfolio: Seven

Call for Entries Self-Mailer: Society of Illustrators
17 x 22
8 hours

My concept for the Society of Illustrators' 53rd annual book was "Get Aroused," how exciting! I feel that it may need to be played up slightly more in the design, but I really wanted the play on words to be the most prominent aspect. Get aroused can have a double meaning, as does get used, and I used them both in the concept. I used red because it is a 'sexy' color, and I just had to take what I could get with the illustration for the poster, but I think that the one I landed on works well. I wanted to design the side with the information so that each panel worked both individually and as a larger design.

Final Porfolio: Six

Beer packaging and Label Design: Angle Ales
19 hours

The idea behind the concept of this beer series is degrees of flavor.
30 degree blonde ale
60 degree raspberry
90 degree pilsner
180 degree amber ale
270 degree brown ale and
360 degree stout

I wanted to try an innovative package for the beer carrier, and so I created the template for a hanging beer. It was not without its trials, but it ended up working out and can hold 6 beers filled with liquid.

Final Portfolio: Five


Audio Book Redesign: Catch-22
5 hours

The audio book design was not completely unlike having to design a cd, but it had its unique challenges. I designed Catch-22 because I had the idea from the start of using the theme of language from the book. The cover has a repetition of the book title with letters omitted because of the part in the book where the main character omits words from soldiers letters. Naturally I worked the air force symbol into the design as the book is centered around it. The challenges involved the large number of chapters that I needed to place somewhere (42 to be exact). I am pleased with the clean look of the design, and plan to read the book soon.

Final Portfolio: Four

Promotional Campaign: Red Barn Arts Festival

Redbarn Poser
13 x 19

Redbarn newspaper ad
10.5 x 10.5

Redbarn brochure
duplex, 8.5 x 14

Redbarn web banner
3.5 x 9.5

17.5 hours

'Welcome to our neck of the woods' is the tag line that I stuck with. It sounds pretty small-town and so I felt that it fit with the event. The photos were all taken by myself at the event, and I found that the people surrounding the event were just as important as the arts and crafts being sold. Red Barn is a very important event to Kirksville, and so I tried to make it show some of the town's personality. I made the design the same throughout all four pieces and found that I could alter them each a bit and still make them a cohesive design. It may have taken a while to finalize the graphics, but I believe that it came together well.

Final Portfolio: Three

Advertising Spread
Clubhouse Music Venue
11 x 17
3 hours

The changes that I have made to this spread since midterm are the logo in the bottom right hand corner and slightly darkened the color of the type on the right side. This took an hour.

This layout was meant to utilize the found photo in an attempt to find a concept for a client that worked. This time I found something that I was interested in, music, and discovered a topic that this photo would work with. The spread is actually an ad for the music venue and I found that the repetition of the photo made an interesting texture and works well with the subject matter. I mimicked the lines on the opposite page and added the color from the sky in the photo to the text to make the spread more unified. This spread took about 2 hour total.

Final Portfolio: Two


Magazine Spread: National Geographics
"How Safe"
11 x 17
3 hours

Once again, this spread is making it's second appearance with some minor changes to improve it. I have altered the color of the background, and while it is still yellow, I have dulled the intensity. I have also made the copy of the short article on the left side of the layout so that it would be the first thing read, even though the type is smaller. These changes took around an hour. Everything else has stayed the same.

With little body copy to work with I new that the photo element that I chose would need to be interesting. I really wanted to get a shot that included water because I felt that one of the most important aspects of the story is the need for individuals to wash all fresh foods. With the full page photo, I wanted to give the right page more breathing room with about 50% negative space. To finish it off, I added in the top page break line and the lines to separate the text boxed.

Final Portfolio: One

Magazine Spread: Time Magazine
"The Secret of Feeling Full"
11 x 17
4 hours

This layout appeared in my midterm portfolio. Since then I have made some minor tweaks, spending an additional half an hour making it look as good as it gets. Otherwise, all is the same...

This spread involved a good deal of body copy, and so it required more attention to the type-how big or small, number of columns, and so on. The type size is slightly larger on the left page, by .5 point. The initial layout of the text took around two hours to work into this format. I knew where the photo/illustrated elements were to go, but still had to create them. I chose the open mouth on the photo because it is the beginning of any process that deals with food or digestive hormones. The graphic element of the digestive tract was decided upon because the nature of the side bar was digestive hormones. I believe that this layout looks professional, and after having figured this out I felt more confident in my spreads.


good news.

final portfolio: to be blogged soon. be excited.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

(untitled)




Redbarn Poser
13 x 19

Redbarn newspaper ad
10.5 x 10.5

Redbarn brochure
duplex, 8.5 x 14

Redbarn web banner
3.5 x 9.5

This post is untitled because I have gotten sick of seeing the name of this project. Red Barn. It was slow to start, but alas, I prevailed and knocked out these layouts. The concept has been around from the beginning, the actual design of these pieces took a bit longer to form in my mind and so on the paper/computer.

'Welcome to our neck of the woods' is the tag line that I stuck with. It sounds pretty small-town and so I felt that it fit with the event. It took around 1.5 hours of brainstorming to land on this particular concept, having looked through my photos and noticing that I had just as many if not more photos of people than crafts at the festival.

Once I had the concept, I perused the photos I had taken and selected a diverse group of them that showed a variety of things that take place at the event. Once selected I resized/cropped them to fit in a format that I had decided upon for the photos for the outside of the brochure as well as on the other 3 items to be designed. Doing so took close to 3 hours.

Once I was finally able to wrap my head around the massive amount of copy for the brochure, the next step was to lay it out in a readable, cohesive manner. This process took a total of 3 hours.

I realized after going back to the way that the photos were laid out that it was a bit difficult to work with and looked a bit awkward, so it took my a good amount of time attempting to either work with it as was or tweak it to make it look more pleasant. I ended up discovering that the layout as a whole would look much lovelier when the photo was changed to a duotone involving red. I also needed a better way to make the concept on the whole more understandable. I did so by drawing stylized trees. Awesome. Getting into the newspaper ad and the web banner, I realized that the full tree layout would not fit as well, and so I did COBs on some of the individual photos to add to the design. The final layout process for all 4 pieces took 10 hours.

So, adding it all up, I have spent 17.5 hours looking at these layouts (not including the countless and unmeasurable hours spent thinking about it alone). I am pleased with the concept, but am aware of a few issues that need to be resolved.

Thank you and goodnight.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Society of Illustrators



My concept for the Society of Illustrators' 53rd annual book's call for entries came a little late in the game, but I am very pleased with the concept. I feel that it may need to be played up slightly more in the design, but I really wanted the play on words to be the most prominent aspect. Get aroused can have a double meaning, as does get used, and I used them both in the concept. I used red because it is a 'sexy' color, and I just had to take what I could get with the illustration for the poster, but I think that the one I landed on works well. I wanted to design the side with the information so that each panel worked both individually and as a larger design. So there it is, finally.