02.24.2010

...you can't miss...everybody loves wallpapers

Straight from Veer, please welcome this season's hottest and and most stunning wallpapers. These are the most recent designs, all featured on their site. You'll probably recognize the first two if you are as obsessed with ampersands as I am. These are two separate screensavers, so you can choose your favorite depending on which you like better. Or...you could just put up two monitor screens, side by side. How cool would that be?!

This is another one of my favorites. I continue to try to figure out if that is an actually tattoo on the girl's back. Since the skin around it is a little inflamed, I can only guess that it is real...which makes me appreciate typography in the form of a tattoo much more than I have before.

This final example from Veer's newest collection is awesome because it is a completely conceptual design, which is how I have been pushing myself to think about design lately. In case you can't read the text, it says "just another pretty face" inside the intricate sketch of a mirror. This is encouraging to see that designers are continuing to use new and innovative ways to sell their message, and I am reminded how the job of a designer is much more than just placing together beautiful images - it is selling the idea in an aesthetically pleasing way that has never been done before.

response...portfolio

This week in class, we reviewed each others' portfolios. It was incredible to see all of the different levels of prior experience and to see what unique talent each designer brought to the table...literally. We laid out all of out design work (whether it came from newsprint, magazines, graphic design pieces, art courses, etc.) on the tables and critiqued each other based no what we saw and what the designer's career goals are. This was very cool to think about the designers in terms of what they want to do rather than what they have done in the past- personally, I have spent so much time in interviews being asked what I have done and what I can show rather than what my goals are and why I am so driven to do what I want to do. In class, that is how we were forced to think! It was refreshing and hopeful, which was a constructive was of criticizing our portfolios. Here are a few items I was able to bring to the table.

These are from a few art framing trade magazines that I designed two summers ago.

This is from last summer, where I was an intern at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

This is what I had to show Jan, my work in the course this far. Really cool to compile everything that I have done so far.

critique...VOX, VOX, VOX

This week has been very design-intensive for me. For Vox this week, I am doing a department, feature, and cover.

The cover has been fun, because I am able to work on a story about medieval warriors. Look forward to my completed designs for this week's competition next week.

As for the feature...also look for the completed design next week. The topic of the story is human trafficking.

Here are the department designs that I have done. I am very happy to finally be able to get them up, as promised! I look forward to adding one more to the collection by this Sunday. I hope you've enjoyed this very visual posting this week!