03.03.2010

you can't miss...home typogrpahy

Since I have been spending so much time looking at home design recently (thanks of my home magazine prototype pitch), I have found some really cool ways typography is used in the home. Here are a few awesome things I found.

This furniture site is courtesy of Human Resources. I would just love to see this in someone's home! Who knew typography could also be so functional?

Here is also a doormat that says "Come in" one way and "Go away" if you flip it the other way. I could see this on my doorstep. Thanks to this blog for the image.

And if you're interested, here's the matching door hanger! Of course, you just can't have one without the other. This image is courtesy of this site.

response...magazine prototype

This week's major project was pitching a magazine prototype to members of the Publishing capstone class. At first glance at the assignment, I felt overwhelmed. However, the more time I put into the project, the more excited I became...I just kept finding things to tweak and improve for my presentation!

The magazine I was assigned is called "Boost", and it is about maximizing and improving home value by making worthwhile and timeless investments in your home. It is a fresh way to think about home and definitely is different then the traditional "Better Homes & Gardens" home magazine that I think of when I imagine a home magazine. I am very excited to see what this project has in store. Here is my prototype pitch!

I wanted to create a creative, elegant, ad timeless way to represent the audience and contributors to this magazine. I wanted it to be classy and classic, while still inviting. I wanted to keep in mind the 'flash value' of the cover, remembering that someone passing by a newsstand will only have a second or two to glance and the cover and decide whether or not they want to pick it up. I kept in mind that this magazine was one that emphasized movement, both in increasing home value and in investment return (for the long run). Keeping this idea in ming, I wanted the beauty of the cover to pull people in and the feature and department to pull readers from page to page, wanting to learn more about their home and how they can make their home more of a timeless reflection of themselves.

What does the magazine say to you?

critique...cover, feature, and department

This week, I had the privilege of learning the true meaning of "production" for Vox. I worked on the cover, feature, and my ARTS department, which all went to press just a few hours ago. It took a few long nights and lots of coffee, but I am really excited to have so much of my own work inside of Vox this week.

I was also pleased with the variety of stories I was able to work with. My cover was based on the main feature about Medieval Warriors here in Peace Park, and I was lucky to work with some very talented and fun editors working on this piece. I was also able to talk to Cara throughout the creation of the project, since she was working on the feature. Although she had a different concept for her feature than I did for my cover, I think we were able to create a package that compliments each others' ideas. Here's a look.

The feature that I designed was about human trafficking, and how it occurs right here in Mid-Missouri. It was a 2-page spread, and there were no photos in the original design. We were able to get a single photo of the man that the story was profiling on Monday and place it, but I designed the piece as a typography layout since we were unsure about what we would be able to et in terms of photos. The editor that I worked with was very accessible, which made it convenient when I needed to communicate with her. The piece has a very strong message, which was that human trafficking is very real in areas that we don't normally expect - so I was thankful to have the opportunity to be able to work with this kind of content. It pushed me to create a design where the visuals were based on the shocking statistics and emotions from the story. Here are the pages of the two-page spread.

Finally, I also worked on my Arts department. Aimee mentioned to me that my past 2 department pages looked very similar, which you can see if you scroll down to the images of the pages that I put up last week. This week, I moved the recurring section into vertical spaces rather then the horizontal space at the bottom, where I was previously placing it. It was rewarding to find new ways to fit together sections that I work with every week, and it was almost like a puzzle fitting everything together. Hopefully, you'll immediately see a difference from last week's page.