Critique: Food Feature

So my apologies, I can't get on the server from my laptop so I don't have the PDFs to show you now for the food feature. But you can see it tomorrow! I'll get them up here tomorrow at some point in case you want to see non-newsprint versions.

I was really proud of the way it turned out. Since the photos weren't like totally stellar or anything, I wanted my typography to be subtle and the crops to be bolder to add some oomph to the photos. I think my fish one is the favorite. Those colors.....yum.

I tried to take the detail shots and make them just like nice scene setters or backgrounds to the main photos of the people in the farmer and the garden stories. I also tried to use some nice spot colors to give a nice tone to the package. It's very earthy and natural feeling.

Helvetica Neue Ultralight is my weakness. I've been wanting to design a package with this all semester long so I figured I'd take this as my last chance to try to sell it. I think it worked really nicely with this particular package because the stories are about eating healthier, knowing where you're food comes from, etc. so it's not like a gluttonous food package. I think the lightness of the type also helps the colors in the photos pop.

Also, props to Kathryn for her wonderfully done salt charticle using the style I set up. Looks really good!

You Can't Miss: Postcards and Star Wars

Grainedit had a very fitting post for us graduating seniors this week. It's a series of postcards that are supposed to represent "everywhere and nowhere at once." It kind of reminded me of an updated "oh the places you'll go" sorta deal. It just made me smile because we're all going to be going on hopefully exciting journeys after graduation and the cards just reminded me that it's ok to get lost :)

For my last random find, I've got some hipster-esque Star Wars posters - as if Star Wars wasn't geek chic enough. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the popart one; that whole thing kind of seems overdone and a bit of a copout for commercialized design (people know it will sell to the general public). But the rest of them are pretty nifty; I especially like the last ones that illustrate the vehicles or whatever they are and the ships.

Response: World Wide Web of Opinions

So I think we've all learned the lesson that websites are a lot harder than we think. It's hard to put yourself into the mindset of an average web user and then make a design that can play to that "skill set" if you will. Everything should be an average type size, a web safe font and easyeasyeasyeasy to find. This limits your creativity on the web immensely.

I'm of the mind that people are not dimwitted. And that people who are hiring designers will respect a more atypical layout (LeAnn's comes to mind obviously). While I respect the right to be awesome, you also have to make the website usable and accessible. You don't want someone to turn away because they think you can't code correctly. I think we've all learned this semester with Vox and the book covers that compromise is an inevitable part of design.

I do like that we've all come into our own though. The comments are so much more critical and on the flip side, people are standing up for their designs a lot more. It was great to see the push and pull in this critique. From that kind of conversation usually comes great ideas, whether they're completely new or a brilliant solution to an old one.

I think the most important part of web presence is to stay true to who you are as a person and a designer. Don't make a standard site just because you think it looks more professional and clean. If you're bold or whacky or classic or contemporary, emulate that in your site. You want to be working for someone who wants YOU as a designer, not someone who wants the predictable, templated person that's on Cargo.