To kick off this semester, we started with a poster project about ourselves — we had our pictures taken on a polaroid camera on the first day of class. From there, we were instructed to alter the photograph however we pleased and add our name, design manifesto explaining who we are as designers, where we are from, and our program's logo.
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During this process, I can definitely saw that I overthought this design assignment... perhaps it was something about making eye contact with myself on the computer while trying to make a design that embodied me and was good enough to be posted online and hung in the school's hallway that led me to spend twice the time for a questionably successful result.
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I came to be a designer by mistake. In fact, for several years, I actively avoided graphic design because I didn't know how to use the computer software. Doing comics for the school newspaper was my gateway into this field, so it was important for me to use them in this design. I wanted to take the graphic quality of the comics and layer them upon themselves for a somewhat messy collage look. While I like that initial idea, I feel that the design lacks contrast in hue and a defined hierarchy.
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Moving on from the self-wallowing and onto the reading, the third chapter of Editorial Design by Cath Caldwell and Yolanda Zappaterra explains how a magazine cover will be the deciding factor of whether or not a customer purchases the magazine. While being captivating, the cover must also exude the magazine's brand and overall feel. Some magazines are known for their streamlined classy look,The New York Times, and others are known to be more experimental like smaller publishing agencies and zines. Magazines used to print in black and white, but as time went on, they moved on from referencing popular Hollywood movies in their type and color palette to finding new ways of inciting an audience. Yet, in the modern day, designing magazines are not done in the same way as each other. Some take a more figurative approach while others are more abstract or text-based. Important parts of the cover are the magazine's logo and color, which can influence the emotion of a potential buyer. These approaches to graphic design play toward human psychology and are constantly trying to push new ways of thinking. This makes it obvious as to why magazines are still popular even in the era of screens.
Blog 2
The second assignment of the semester was not revealed at first. As a class, we spent an hour painting the number and letter "4" and "F." The point of this exercise was to create as many variations as we could with this physical approach by incorporating different textures and forms of mark-making. Later, it became known that we were designing for "F4" or the Fantastic Form. From there, we took our different physically-made logos and scanned them at a high resolution to make forty different versions. As much fun as it was to scribble on paper like a child in elementary school who was practicing letters, altering what I had already made in Photoshop and Illustrator was a less messy space to play. Though I don't know which era of Fantastic Four art I would want to use for my poster, I feel like I have created different options for myself that lean more or less modern. Based on a gut feeling, the Fantastic Four comics from the nineties will probably best suit my style because of their gritty, grimy appearance.
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Reading from chapter four of Editorial Design was interesting, as I am also laying out the print version of The Daily Gamecock September News Magazine. The newspaper has a very strict style guide that even I, as 'Creative Director', have not had the ability to change. The overall appearance of the spreads feels like it was made ten years ago and has this clipart, sterile feel. Chapter four has many examples of playful and edgy layout that move the viewers eye around the page, all while remaining legible. This chapter upsets me as I won't be able to take what I've seen from it and apply it to the newspaper layout, but it inspires me for future creations and companies to look at.
Blog 3
This week, the aim was to create three different versions for the Fantastic Four Fest with the comic material we had to gather outside of class. I had gone to a comic book store before class on Monday and found three different comics with slightly more gory/body horror panels. I really gravitated toward this because I felt like the art stood out from the normal 'superhero' feel of this genre, and would give me a lot of room to play with my poster design.
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However, this week was also post-print weekend for The Daily Gamecock. While that isn't an excuse to not put out my best work, I was running on no sleep and the fumes of creativity when designing the layout of my poster, and was unhappy with what I had turned in for critique. I struggled with my type choice and deciding on what logo I wanted to pursue for these posters, so the posters themselves have a very indecisive feel about them.
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Thankfully, I was able to get a lot of feedback from my professor and peers on how to improve legibility and the composition of my posters. For next class, we are revamping one of our three posters to get one-on-one feedback with, and I haven't decided which two out of the three I want to go with (the third is most definitely a dud).
Before starting the layouts for my posters, I wish I had read chapter five of Editorial Design because they have an excellent graphic about how the reader's eye moves about the page. Within my own work as a painter, I feel comfortable with my compositions, but type is something that I really struggle with because it, to me, feels like a separate beast from the artwork.
Blog 4
This week, I continued to finesse my posters and incorporate the feedback from my peers and professor. However, I think I became too focused on one idea and put too much time into drafts that weren't going to work. My overthinking and overdoing isn't unique to this class in the last few weeks—within my internship and job, I've been told that I've made good work or progress, but that I should also start over. I used to take this personally, but now I'm taking the feedback for what it is: helpful. I want to make the best work I can and grow as a designer through my failed drafts, and going forward for this poster, I'm going to use a different image and logo so I can get out of the rut of designing the same thing. I've realized that I've merged my fine artist self and my designer self too closely in the last few weeks because I've been aiming to design very elaborate pieces when I really should be refining my work to fit the brief.
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I also watched the Graphic Design for Fiction: Visual Identities with Stories videos by Tom Muller to get advice for designing comic book covers, and he made the decisions seem so easy when he was showing the limited-edition version of covers he had made. Maybe the result seems simple, but it sure seems to take a lot of work to get there.
Blog 5
This week, I decided to completely pivot from the direction I was heading with the previous poster. I felt like I was spiraling in the same reheated design because I couldn't bear to break up with the art I was using. For this new poster, I decided to up the drama by having a reduced color palette of white, red, and black, and by giving more attention to the typography of the event information. While I prefer the strange quality and color usage of last week's poster, this new one is much stronger overall because it has a better graphic appeal and is easier to create a whole branding for the other billboards and ads I have to make.
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Creating new variations of the same poster is a new kind of challenge because I'm aiming for them to be cohesive without being too repetitive. To give myself a brain-break, I read an article that had an interview with Alan Berry Rhys, an extremely talented, unique designer based in Buenos Aires. I found it relatable for how his limitations of what he knew how to do guides his work because he follows his voice and strengths to produce results that are distinctly his. I also watched a tutorial of how he stipples his illustrations, and I was surprised to find that he was using photoshop for his entire poster. I suppose I assumed most everyone used Illustrator to have the perfectly vectored, crisp art, but watching Rhys hand draw on photoshop and use the subtractive method with the eraser tool gave me new ideas of what I would like to try in the future.
Blog 6
After finishing the poster dimension, I had to resize the same information for a print ad, billboard, and an art book. With the base for my Fantastic Four already discovered after weeks of experimenting with the poster, it was much faster and easier to create these other versions. I decided to stick with the imagery of the Human Torch because I was able to make a streamlined red, black, and white color palette that felt cohesive and graphic across the board. The billboard is the most similar to the poster because it utilizes the same art with a white background instead of black. Yet, for the art book, I went with the initial art I had used for my failed poster attempts. While the book stands out from the other designs with its green and blue color palette, it's my hope that the typography I used still unites these designs.
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​On Thursday night, I went to the Keith Haring exhibition at the Columbia Museum of Art. I was most surprised to learn that Keith Haring's career was blended fine arts and graphic design so early in. Haring never sketched out his designs beforehand, yet his lines had a confident, unwavering quality to them. While there is art in design and vice versa, I find that when I apply my more painterly style to a design assignment, the work becomes overthought and not bold enough (and ironically takes at least three times as long to make just for no one to be happy). Going to Haring's exhibition most definitely gave me career envy because he was successful both in the galleries and private auctions as well as in his own pop-up store.
Blog 7
Instead of developing my Fantastic Four graphics like I probably should've, to keep in time with the pacing of this class, Jon Glover and I worked closely with Professor Marius to write a proposal for the Magellan Grant. A few years ago, Marius had two students serve as creative directors for their class's broadsheet publication for USC's women's soccer team. This publication focused on who these players were beyond the field. For Jon's and my application, we aim to work with SVAD MFA students and highlight how the work of these graduate students and their personal lives intermingle. Regardless of whether we receive grant funding or not, Jon and I will create a brand style guide and lead our class in the making of this year's publication. It would, however, be such a great bonus if we received funding because then we could afford to have 500 copies professionally printed and hand them out during the MFA students' final shows in March. While I've struggled to manage the current demands of my jobs and classes, this would be too good an opportunity to pass up.
Chapter six of Editorial Design focuses on essential design skills, and I found this chapter to be particularly relevant to the design project that Jon and I will be leading. The reading included Roger Black's ten rules of design, and I found rules 2-4 very helpful, as Black said that white is the primary color, black is the secondary color, and red is for excitement when it comes to print. I know that I can get carried away with color range and typography choices, but this chapter helped me reset and see the importance of limiting myself in order to have a better result rather than going crazy and having too much of everything and it somehow be both underwhelming and distracting.
Blog 8
This week, we wrapped up Fantastic Four for good! This project as a whole trained me to have patience for myself as I tried and failed different ideas until I found one that I liked. It was gratifying to put all the designs I had made into a final document and see it printed. That being said, I am relieved that this project is over because I was starting to get sick of my designs and overthinking all that I had done in the end.
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This next project excited me, especially since I will be one of three senior designers working to lead the class in making the broadsheet publication of MFA SVAD students and their work. Over the weekend, I am going to look at The Newspaper Club template and the types provided for us as I start thinking about how I want to approach the brand style guide. I've used many brand style guides for The Daily Gamecock and Creative Services and have made some too for Creative Services and my internship, but I must admit that I'm intimidated for making one that so many other people with view
and use.