You Can't Miss: GD Books, Air Jordans and Pantonemania

This week on grainedit they featured a coffee table book that looks gorgeous and a couple of graphic design must-haves. I'd like to check out the social change book because I think it's awesome when graphic design can make a real impact and incite change.

From thedieline.com they featured the design for the new "Year of the Dragon Air Jordans." While the shoes are quite ugly, in my opinion, the design is simply lovely. I like the way the designer was able to incorporate the modern AJ logo with the elaborate traditional Chinese design. Near the bottom they also have pictures of the original sketches. Pretty cool to see the process of doing a complex illustration. I'm thinking this designer also had to hear a lot from marketing execs since it's one of the most recognizable brands today ;)

Also, Pantone announced 336 new colors today. How do they do it? Rather than show you shades of nonsense, here's an adorable photoshoot of tarts that are presented as Pantone swatches.

Critique: The Drama, the Drama!

I hope at least some of you got that Apocalypse Now reference twist ;)

So this week was one of miscommunication and frustration and eventually resolution. I didn't even think my cover was going to get chosen. Honestly, I just thought of the idea randomly and decided to execute it because I thought it was fun and made me chuckle. I mean, it was content-driven, but mostly I was just having fun with it. I was happy with what I turned in and apparently so were the editors because they picked it.

So I spruced it up on Sunday and all was good. The illustration was supposed to be cartoonish because it was supposed to be comic book esque without being overly Lichtenstein as to mimic Brittany's feature. I was pleasantly surprised to become attached to the idea as it shaped into a more complete concept.

Tuesday I got word that some people didn't like the cover at all and that they wanted a photo cover instead. To put it bluntly, I was peeved. Tuesday is not the time to be completely reconceptualizing a cover. Especially when the suggestion is to put 9 photos on the cover when they're already on both the splash page and in the feature itself. Talk about repetitive. So I fixed up the illustration a bit and added rings so it wasn't like fists butting heads or something. I wanted to get across that it was about powers uniting.

Getting a call at 9 am to come into Vox to change the cover on production day when you're at work trying to make money so you can move to Austin is slightly infuriating. However, at least Jen was on my side and apologized for all the mix ups and miscommunications. I was under the impression that I was supposed to try new ideas and if they didn't work, then we were just going to go with what we had because obviously there was something about it that made them pick it over two other choices. While walking I had an idea to cutout the basketball girls and put the same stroke around them as the one around Dynamic so that I could keep my typography. I tried that and gave options without the stroke and the full picture as well. We went with the full picture one because they said the stroke one made it look religious or something. Whatever.

I'm actually pleased with how it turned out. The colors work well with the photo and the pose is generic "dynamic duos" enough to please everyone. Hooray for playing it safe.

Response: Book Cover

Tuesday was fun. I liked seeing everyone's reactions to all the different opinions being tossed around. I think Brittany's might have been my favorite when they told her her design was too "progressive" haha.

I'm used to the marketing kind of criticism from my job and I've learned to work within the parameters that they want me to, but this was different in that I got to start out doing whatever I wanted and now it has to be fit into the needs of the marketing people. I think a lot of people thought that lady was being a bit harsh or too conservative, but really she was just doing her job. Marketing is a whole different medium of design and writing than editorial. I'll admit, I was kind of let down that I'll have to change my white cover, but I totally get that the jacket has to be easily accessible to multiple platforms of usage and has to be able to work in all sizes. It's like designing a logo. You have to make sure it will look good both big and small because it's going to be put on everything.

The one thing that never occurred to me was the authors being involved in picking the cover. I felt like a dummy for not considering that. I can totally see where they were trying to mitigate any disputes that may arise with the authors since the book is their lovechild.

I loved Dwight; he was cracking me up with his soft voice and charged opinions. He seems like a great advocate for us and will get the best, most creative covers published. Good luck to everyone, can't wait to see which ones get picked!

You Can't Miss: Posters and More posters

Grainedit featured a design group from L.A. called DKNG. They do some really cool gig poster work, especially with typography and illustration. I love how they all make you do a double take and realize the complexity of the concept within the beautiful artwork.

In other parts of the intertubez, I found that the 20-year-old kid who got so much recognition for this little number:

got commissioned by Coke to do a poster for them for their "Open Happiness" campaign. I liked that he mentioned that he likes "visual puns" because I like puns of all kinds. I'd like to incorporate this kind of humor coupled with impact into my work.

Critique: Book Covers

Now that we have another couple of days for book covers, I'm excited to continue to execute ideas. I still feel like I'm falling short, but I'm definitely going in a better direction than before. I've asked my southern politics professor to help me decipher the text, so hopefully I'll have an even better understanding of it by the weekend.

I went with the more intellectual side of the story since it's talking about how literacy was held in such high esteem in the south and the development of southern thought/ideas. It also talked about how they were trying to hold on to a "dissolving past" so I tried to play with that idea as well with the grungy American flag in the geek-chic glasses (playing on that past/future idea). The argyle one just plays on that pattern as a symbol of academia like tweed. The dictionary one is obvious (the description talked a lot about "men of letters" so I thought a dictionary entry would be a good way to try and represent that). The last one is one I've been working on as of late. I tried to literally make a man of letters like a typographic illustration. I couldn't get it to work out right though so I just went with the silhouette (which needs to be cleaned up). I'm trying to figure out what to do with the background. Possibly letter stamps/blocks or something or some kind of iconography pattern or something. Now that I have more time I think I can make that one look really polished.

Response: Cover Competition

So since I've been and still am sick (perfect timing right?) and couldn't make it to the M meeting on Tuesday, I will respond to the first round of Dynamic Duo covers on Thursday.

Honestly....I was kind of peeved. I'm usually pretty level headed when it comes to critiques because I know that everyone else can make my work better with a fresh set of eyes. However, I spent a lot of time on coming up with a fresh concept/way to illustrate the idea of "dynamic duos" and I feel like they were received like they were lazily done. Obviously my execution wasn't complete, but I feel like my ideas were there and represented. Maybe they weren't the best ideas, but they also weren't my first ideas slapped on a page. And this is not meant to play down the other designers' pieces, it's just about how mine were received.

I was always told that your first ideas are your first because they're the most generic ones. Unless you're recreating them in a whole new way, just get them out of your head and go forward. I'm not saying that my ideas were profound or anything, but at least I tried to go beyond the 5 minute thought process. I figured since it's kind of an abstract thing to represent and you can't represent a whole group of people with one photo, I'd try to go abstract with the design. We'll see how it improves tomorrow. If I can stop coughing at my computer.

You Can't Miss: Type (duh) and Philosophical BS

From grainedit this week, a type designer from Barcelona was featured: Laura Meseguer. Her work is bold and fun, but still legible. It's not just display type or character type. I love the personality in her work coupled with the functionality of the type. It also feels very geographic to me, like I can totally get Barcelona from some of these.

Look at that freaking n. I want to eat it.

After perusing the webz for something fun, I finally stumbled on (though not from stumbleupon) these great posters that explain philosophical theories like realism and nihilism. They simplify these overly complex theories in a fun and light way. I like the irony of using something simple to explain a complex topic, so maybe it's not that complex afterall if it can be explained with a shape....? I'm so philosophical. Like philosoraptor. Below are some of my favorites, but here's the full post for you to ponder.

Response: So many ideas

So you guys are awesome. But you already knew that.

It was so great to see everyone's 20 ideas. Even though some of them got a little crazy, it was cool to see everyone's whacky side. It sounded like it was a challenge for everyone, but I think we all did a pretty good job of trying not to repeat the same idea in 20 different ways.

It was nice to go around and get to give our input on which ones to work on. It can either be surprising or reaffirming, and we seemed to have a mix of reactions. I know I usually get too attached to an idea and sometimes it's not necessarily a great one, so to get others' input is eye opening and helpful (duh). For some people it was hard for me to pick just 3 because I thought there were several strong ones, but I guess that's not very helpful to say "omgzzzz i totally like like everyyyyythinnnngggggg". It's also annoying.

I'm particularly excited to see the people's finals that made sketches. I think sketching is a great way to start, even if you're like me and horrible at it. It helps you visualize what you're going to do on the computer better and I think aids in execution since you don't limit yourself in your ideas. There's some things I know I can't necessarily do in Adobe, so if I start on the computer I won't do them. But if I sketch and I think I have a great idea, I can push myself to execute that idea on screen. So kudos to you guys; I'll be doing some sketching this weekend myself :)

Critique: ABCD - A Book Cover Drama

So you'd think I'd be ok at book cover designing since as editorial designers we strive to tell the story. Well when the book isn't exactly a story it makes it a bit more difficult. Actually, a lot more difficult.

I picked the book without art because I wanted to push myself to come up with solutions for the lack of visual representation for the book. I'm still pretty confused about what the book is actually about because the description is very academic. Like I said though, I like the history of the South and its politics/development, so I thought I'd be interested enough in the topic to help me figure out a solution.

So since the book is more of a thesis than a story, I wanted to make a nice, clean typographic cover, like a textbook-ish kind of looking, but more visually appealing. I couldn't really figure out a good way to illustrate cultural conservatism, so I tried to think of how my books from the class I had looked and how I like the way just type covers with bold colors look. I realize a lot of my designs were just because I couldn't think of anything, so I just threw some shapes and colors together. But a lot of them I tried to represent southern cultural conservatism in my type choices. Lots of serifs, traditional looking. Reds and oranges. Red, white and blue. I never thought I'd be the person who needed to do 20 more designs to actually get somewhere, but I'm glad I found that out now instead of later.

I need to sit down and re-evaluate my approach because obviously it wasn't working. I need something more representative for a book cover. I have to find the story within this piece of academic work to illustrate on the cover. I wish there was a Google translate for superfluous language (see what I did there...cuz the book is Superfluous Southerners?). Anyway, with that said, I'll probably have 3-5 totally different ideas for Tuesday because I'm not particularly proud of anything that I did.