03.24.10

you can't miss...SXSW

This week, I was inspired by the awards and discussions about South by Southwest 2010 Conference. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the conference, it is a major conference (this year held in Austin, TX) about new and upcoming 'music', 'film', and 'interactive' people and resources that are quickly changing the way we look at our culture and how we interact. I know that m a few of our j-school professors went to the conference (held from March 12-21) specifically for the interactive portion, and learned about social media, networking, and other new media forms that are being developed and used.

As I explored the 'Interactive' division of the site, I was drawn to the awards section. I just had to see what the newest developments are that will soon be affecting my affecting me as a journalist! In the spirit of our most recent class discussions about building websites, I was eager to see what SXSW conference awarded as the best. I linked to a page with the Web Award Winners, and those were broken down into categories of their own. At the top of the list, I found that there was a category for an 'Art' site...how perfect!

And that is how I fell upon this week's inspiration. A website...which the main focus on art...and it won a SXSW interactive award! Here are some screen shots. Maybe you can use them for inspiration in your own website? Enjoy!

critique...department page, round five/vox cover

This weekend, I went into the Vox office to design my fifth department page. I am forming a pretty big portfolio of department pages already! This is both exciting and rewarding, because it is a tangible reminder of the time spent working on the publication. I am also having a good time finding new solutions to the 'puzzle' of the department page each week. The most recent design will appear in the Spring Break issue, which will run on 04/01. It feels great to have this done a few weeks early!

Here is the department (my fourth department) that ran in the 03/18 issue, which was last week.

I also had revisions due this week for my "Dialogues" story cover pitch, which is slated to run 04/08. Cassie won the competition this week, which was great. I like how fearless she is in her ability to scrap her original ideas when something doesn't work and start from scratch. I have such a hard time letting go! Here is what I presented.

response...meredith

Yesterday in class, we presented a more developed version of our Meredith designs. It was hard to know how much to present to the class as well as to our publishing group, since they seem to have new ideas each time we meet with them. I am really enjoying working with Cassie and Cara, and we are discovering that we are allowed to either embrace or veto the publishing group's ideas. At the beginning, I was feeling overwhelmed with the publishing group's expectations, but it has been much less daunting since we have been determining our own set of rules. Group projects are always a challenging, but it is very rewarding presenting designs that make our group smile. It is almost as if our group is our 'client' and we are creating work for them, much like our logo project for LBB.

I really loved seeing the other group's presentations. It is amazing to see the different tastes within each of the different groups, and I really like the original creations that were presented. Over break, I will develop my own feature designs and publish them here. Jan keeps encouraging my group to work together more closely so that each of our styles come through, and I think that will be my main focus for the remainder of the project. I can't wait to get together again once we all return from break to compare and converge styles throughout a more completed version of the project, and I am really looking forward to that stage.