You Can't Miss This: Typographic Dating Game

Alright. I found the nerdiest but cutest game online for designer this week on Unbeige.  Yup, you heard me right with the title... it's a Typographic Dating Game. The online game was created by Aura Seltzer, an MFA student in graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. We all know that typefaces have different personalities, "physiques, voices, and virtues." Combining different typefaces takes skill and comparability... much like dating. Therefore, she's made the typefaces into eligible bachelors and bachelorettes. The game is designed to go through a four strategy process in finding the perfect typographic match.

The game also brushes you up on terminology and history of typefaces. I played this game for a solid 45 minutes just to see the different partnerships of typefaces I could make. Whether the duo works out or not, I found that this can definitely help you (in a fun way!) with trying to figure out a typographic scheme that sends out the message and personality you are looking for your design.

You definitely have to check this out.




Also, on a completely different note for those who like nerd designer games like I do... you gotta check out this typographic guessing game. The game helps you identify and distinguish one typeface from the other. You'll keep playing until you get a perfect score... or at least I did!

 

Critique: Food Feature

This week, I decided to critique my food feature. I'm pretty proud of what I came up with. Check it out here:

I really wanted to adapt Whitney's arrow into the spread and I think I accomplished it well. With the color palette, I had help from Kuler.Adobe.com to come up with an earthy but bright color scheme. For my typography choices, I wanted something modern but neutral enough of a personality to adapt to all of the different stories. This is my secret: it's Flama, the same type Nick chose for our magazine prototype. I love the clean lines and the borders that give the layout an earthy feel to it as well. I tried to make the layout simple enough to transverse for the other stories.

Nonetheless, LOVED your design Kelsey (you are getting a lot of compliments from me this week in my blog entries). 


Let me know what you guys think and what I could've done to change it!

Response: Online Portfolio

Hello all. Well this week has been absolutely stressful for me in both school and in my personal life. Oh well. Because I wasn't in class on Tuesday for the online portfolio critiques, I decided to post what I have so far on my online portfolio. You can find it here. I decided to switch from Cargo Collective to Virb (Thanks Kelsey). I was getting way too frustrated with adjusting the template and I decided to start from scratch at Virb. So far, I'm liking what I've come up with. It still needs some major work, but I could use some constructive criticism.

I wanted to go for a very modern and simplistic look, but now I'm thinking it's too plain. It needs a little oomph to it and I have yet to figure out what else it needs. But I did finalize my logo and I'm in love with it. I decided to bring in my trademark paint splatters in my logo (I also have the exact same colored splatters on my resume). I feel like the paint splatter demonstrates my version of painting... on a computer and through design. This is partly because I have no artistic ability by hand.

Anyways, I'm working on trying to have my navigation bar located on the left hand side of the page. However, I am struggling to have the navigation bar on the left hand side to have the different categories of "Magazine covers," "News Design," etc.

It's just the detail stuff now that I have to work with since I was able to get all of my work pulled from the servers AND into a .jpeg format.

Let me know what you guys think.

You Can't Miss This: Weirdly cute designed clothes

This week on my blog, Unbeige,  I found these weird, but cute mod designed clothes. Designer Lisa Perry selected a few of Jeff Koons' work such as a a mod mix of clothing, accessories and home decorations. She will be showcasing these pieces. One of his classic designs from 1986 features a stainless steel robot rabbit. The shiny rabbit can be seen on the pictured jacket and several other pieces of his work. The pricey clothes range from $150-$4,000 but what can you expect from designer clothes?

These clothes stuck out to me because it looks slightly inspired by Tokyo style but with a mod twist to it. My favorite would be the cherry-topped bodice dress that looks like a cupcake. The bodice has a cherry and whipped cream, then the skirt portion looks like frosting. Absolutely adorable. The dress was inspired by the Trix Rabbit. Check out his work here:

In creating those smashing Roy Lichtenstein shifts, Lisa Perry gave herself a tough act to follow, but when the going gets tough, the tough call Jeff Koons. “He gave us full access to his entire body of work,” says Perry, whose five-year-old label offers a mod mix of clothing, accessories, and homegoods. “It was more inspiration than I could have ever dreamed of!” She selected some of Koons’ greatest hits—including his stainless steel “Rabbit” (1986), the porcelain sculpture that proved to be the Pink Panther’s ticket to Versailles, and the inflatable simian star of “Monkey Train” familiar from Koons-sanctioned beach towels and skate decks—and turned them into a capsule collection of dresses, jackets, handbags, and jewelry. Although a few of the pieces are reminiscent of Stella McCartney’s 2006 collaboration with Koons, a shiny bunny-accented range of chiffon dresses that excerpted canvases from his “EasyFun – Ethereal” series, Perry excels in showcasing details from these same works in fresh ways: the dollop of whipped cream eyed lasciviously by the Trix rabbit in “Loopy” (1999) becomes the cherry-topped bodice of a frothy white shift and pops up again on a colorful bangle. Priced from $150 to $4,500, the collection is now available at Perry’s Madison Avenue shop, which recently moved a few doors down into the corner space previously occupied by the Gagosian Store.

Response: Book Covers

This week, I decided to respond to the book cover presentations that we had on Tuesday. It was pretty interesting seeing what exactly the Missouri Press was looking for and what they liked. I didn't realize how much was needed in the design of a book cover. (Talk about being content-driven!)

I also realized how different it is to design a book cover... and how similar it could be for designing magazines. The whole white cover completely blew my mind. I hadn't thought that the cover would be used for promotion or on Amazon.com. Pretty interesting that the design of the cover has to have that much thought placed into it.

In addition,  I didn't think it would be such a big deal whether the cover is white or that the lighter covers tend to scuff less than darker covers. There's just a lot more to take into mind than designing a magazine.

Overall, I thought it was a great experience. I don't think a lot of the other designers get the opportunity to compete in a design contest for producing a PUBLISHED book cover!

Critique: Book Covers

This week I decided to critique my revised book covers! I came to the realization that I am a very conservative, traditional designer (I'm conservative in my views and life in general). I like seeing books that are traditional in look... but I soon realized that not everyone are attracted to the same aesthetic book appeal as I am and that isn't necessarily a good thing. I really enjoyed everyone's illustrations. It gave me a new perspective on book covers.

With my designs, I looked at how typical covers looked like and modeled my cover after that. Considering that the book was a biography about Mary Louise Smith (an elderly woman) I wanted the cover to represent her and what she stands for. Although after seeing my other classmate's designs, I realized I could've been a lot more creative.

Nonetheless, here is what I came up with:

You Can't Miss This: Bubble Furniture

So this week on Unbeige, I found something that made me cringe, but I couldn't stop staring at it. Maartan, a group of designers from Milan, have came up with a mutated, bubble furniture. Check it out here:

I think it looks absolutely disgusting. I understand it's trying to be "trendy" or something new, but these chairs look like a colorful disease. The designers came up with the furniture series to look like they were formed organically and not by hand. Ironically enough: "They might be the result of a mutation in cells, or the result of a chemical or nuclear reaction. Perhaps it’s a virus or bacteria that has grown dramatically out of scale.”

And that's exactly what it is... a mutation. There is no way that these pieces of furniture are actually comfy. I have a feeling the lumps would even give someone back problems over time. In my opinion, I think that designs have to be both appealing and useful. I don't think these designers were going for that angle.

I can't help but get goosebumps (the bad kind) from looking at these designs.

Response: Magazine Prototype Presentations

We're almost there guys! Just like everyone else.... I've had a ridiculous amount of things to do design wise.... It's crunch time.

Anyways, we just had our second round of presentations and I'm not going to lie... I'm pretty proud of our group and how far we've gotten. We still have some work to do but at this point we just have to make sure our photos have a high enough resolution, add advertisements and some nit-picky design things. So I'm hoping we don't have TOO much intense things to redo. I've noticed a lot of my problems have been with the images... whether it has to do with finding high resolution photos, photos that relate to the story/recipes and hierarchy. I think it won't take me too long.

Well this is my "good luck" post to you all!

Critique: Magazine Prototypes

Hello fellow designers.

This week, I will be critiquing my updated magazine prototypes. For my revisions, I found them particularly fairly easy once the publishers cut down on the text and gave actual links to photographs. I still need to work on some of the image's resolutions before tomorrow.... but nonetheless, here they are:

In This Kitchen Department 

Splash Page

In This Kitchen Department 

 In This Kitchen Department 

 In This Season Department

Party Supplies Feature

Splash Option #1

Party Supplies Feature

Splash Option #2

 Party Supplies Feature

Wines by J.O Department

Option #1

 Wines by J.O Department

Option #2

You Can't Miss This: ASME Awards

This week on Unbeige, The American Society of Magazine Editors have announced the finalists for the 2012 Magazine Awards!
Here they are:

Design: Honors overall excellence in magazine design, including the use of illustrations and photographs.
Bloomberg Businessweek, GQ*, Interview, New York, Wired
Photography: Honors overall excellence in magazine photography.
GQ, Interview, National Geographic, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vogue
News and Documentary Photography: Honors photojournalism and photography that documents news, sports, and entertainment events and news-related subjects.
Harper’s Magazine for “Juvenile Injustice,” October
Harper’s Magazine for “Uncertain Exodus,” July
National Geographic for “Too Young to Wed,” June
The New York Times Magazine* for “From Zero to 104,” September 4
TIME for “Birds of Hope,” January 17
Feature Photography: Honors portraiture; fashion, travel and nature photography; and food, shelter, and other still-life photography conceptual photography; and photo-illustration.
National Geographic for “Taming the Wild,” March
The New York Times Magazine for “Touch of Evil,” December 11
TIME for “Portraits of Resilience,” September 19
Vogue for “Lady Be Good,” March
W for “Planet Tilda,” August


I thought the finalist list wasn't too surprising... especially because I went to New York and visited a majority of these magazines. I hadn't paid too much attention to Bloomberg Businessweek prior to my trip, but after... wow. They have the most amazing designs and it's no surprise they are on the finalist list for the design category. However, I am surprised that Esquire did not make the cut on this list at all. Maybe it's because I've put Esquire on a pedestal, but I do think they deserve to make the design category.

Anyways, check out the list and tell me what you guys think of the finalists.

Response: 20/10 Critiques

This week, I decided to critique the 20/10 presentations. I really wish I had more sleep the previous night and didn't have a running fever to present my designs more enthusiastically... but I did like them a lot! For the presentations, I was kind of glad to see that my fellow classmates had some creative designs for the last of the covers. I was a little worried about mine looking a little ridiculous....

I think the one that stuck out to me was LeeAnn's "missing person" cover. I really didn't think it looked like it. I thought it was the most creative one I've seen. Okay, I lied. I also loved Katie Landis' American colored lips. If I saw a book cover that looked like that... I'd pick it up and check it out. I might be a little disappointed though to find out that the book was about an old woman.

Anyways, I can't wait to see what y'all come up with in your redesigns on Tuesday!

Critique: Book Covers

Hello fellow designers.

So this week, I decided to critique my Suzanne O'dea book covers for the 20/10 assignment. After seeing everyone's covers, I wish I could've made more illustrations or had more photographs of Mary Louise Smith to work with. Either way, I'm pretty proud of MOST of my covers. It was a pretty interesting trying to create 20 completely different designs. I typically create a ridiculous number of design options anyway, but this assignment really pushed my limits. My favorite would have to be the first one. I'm going to combine some of the gimmicks and see what I come up with!

Anyways, here's what you all voted for me to redesign:

You Can't Miss This: The Knot

As everyone knows, I have a love for wedding magazines and I aspire to work for one... so this week on Unbeige, I decided to talk about their post on touring The Knot, the famous wedding planning website. The just got a new space in lower Manhattan and it's absolutely gorgeous. This also attracted my attention because I recently visited and fell in love with New York. So this was the ULTIMATE Andrea blog post.

Check out the video here:

Since you all didn't get to come to New York with me, I decided to include this video to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what a New York office is like. It's very similar to the ones I saw at Conde Nast and Hearst, but with a few twists: They have a bar with a kegerator and a giant screen projection for xBox Kinect.

Man, I love New York.

Response: Magazine Prototype Presentations

For this week, I decided to make it all about our prototypes... considering it's the project that is consuming all of our lives. I thought it was appropriate.

Anyways, as I have said before, I love hearing y'alls critiques. I especially took to heart what Jordin said about my party supplies feature. I never noticed that the page didn't flow well or give any hierarchy to the photos. Now that I've seen my groups' pages, I think I have a better understanding on what to do now.

better cook: The pops of color and vivid pictures really bring out the personality of the magazine. Our team was inspired to make our magazine with the pops of color too. I loved the consistency and I can't wait to see what y'all come up with tomorrow.

The Modify magazine: REALLY impressed what y'all were able to come up with considering the circumstances...  Really great job. Katie, I feel like you've really got to push for that first cover. It's really beautiful and different... which is what they wanted right?

Home Canvas: Not going to lie, after seeing Krista's work, I've fallen in love with what you could do with cutouts. I think y'all were off to a GREAT start, but I'd love to see more of those cutouts throughout!

Good luck to everyone. Can't wait to see everyone's magazines tomorrow.

Critique: Magazine Prototypes

Hey everybody! Hope everyone had a great spring break. This week, I decided to critique my magazine prototypes for Eat Now you saw on Tuesday. Here they are:

 In This Kitchen Department

 In This Season Department

Get This Party Started Feature

Overall, fairly proud of my work. I still have a lot to revise as of right now. I have to basically cut down the In This Season department in half. Nick also worked really hard on standardizing the typography, recipe formats and tip formats... so I have to update those. My biggest struggle was trying to make the few/large amount of text as visually appealing as possible. I think after our team's discussion, I've got a better idea on how to revise it.

Well it's going to be a long night!

You Can't Miss This: NYC Subway Art

Since I miss New York so much, I decided to continue talking about the wonderful city with a post I found on UnBeige about NYC Subway Art.

By Friday, I pretty much mastered how to maneuver around on the subway. At every stop, there were different artworks displayed on the walls. On UnBeige's blog post, they showed you an app where you can take a look at all of them!

There are 237 works of contemporary art that you could find on the New York City Subway, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and MTA bridges and tunnels. There are different artists who have contributed to each stop, such as Alice Adams and Joe Zucker.

After seeing these beautiful works of mural art in person, I wondered who created them and why they were there... hence my interest in this blog post. Some are created through mosaic collage, while others could be painted. If you can appreciate street art design, you have to download this app and check it out!

Critique: Vox Cover

Alright guys! I was in New York last week, so I didn't have time to update my blog. I'm double posting for this week to catch up... therefore plenty of things for y'all to take a look at!

Whew! So I finished my Vox cover for the March 15 issue and I'm very satisfied with the way it turned out. The little icons were a pain to deal with since I had to make them individually on illustrator AND make them look less clip art-y. I'll show you the process I went through to come up with the final product :)

First Draft

I liked how the hands played a dominant and abstract role in this cover piece. However, some of the editors expressed that they wanted the cover to be more content-driven and include some aspect of the stories. The solution? Icons... which then proceeded to take over my life for two days. I had the icons originally colored, then turned grayscale... But they still looked like clip art. THEN, I had the idea of making them just outlines and I think it worked out well.

Since I worked so hard on these icons, here is my favorite one... the robot!

And here's how I played around with incorporating the icons (Ignore that some icons are repeated. I wanted to find a good composition first):

Finally... I ended up with the final cover:

I made the hands less dominant by putting a transparency. Then, I completely moved the sell lines to the bottom to even out that awkward blank space. I decided to place less emphasis on the icons by making them MUCH smaller. I thought they looked more like icons this way.

Overall, I like my cover. I still wish the hands were more dominant, but gotta satisfy what everyone else thinks!

Response: New York

Since class was cancelled this week and I was in New York last week... I decided to respond to my trip! I figured it was still magazine-related and it was still relevant.

My trip was absolutely amazing and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I definitely recommend anyone to attend the trip if you get a chance to.

I've never been to New York so it was completely a new experience for me. I left for St. Louis the night before because we had an early flight Wednesday at 6:48 a.m. We arrived in New York (after a LONG, complicated commute from Newark) at 11 a.m.

From Wednesday through Friday, we had a jam-packed schedule of magazine appointments. It felt like we were doing go-sees like on America's Next Top Model, because we would have set appointments, have to cut them early and RUN (in our professional clothes mind you) to the next appointment via subway or taxi. I visited Esquire,  Harper's Bazaar, Bon Appetit, Niche Media, Marie Claire, Veranda, Rolling Stone, Shape and GQ over the course of three days.

My favorite visit would have to be Niche Media, surprisingly. I say this because I have never heard of the company prior. Niche Media is a publishing company that furnishes 12 regional luxury magazines, all based in New York. They have magazines for Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, Vegas, Aspen, Michigan Avenue, etc. Their target audience is high-end consumers and explores fashion, travel, food and the social scene for each area. I LOVED their designs. They were all very clean and professional, similar to my style of design. If you have time, I would definitely check it out.

I also loved the Bon Appetit visit. We got to see the testing kitchen and photography area. We even got to try some of the desserts! The atmosphere was very comfortable and casual, much like the magazine. GQ and Esquire's offices were just about everything you would expect from them. The editors from Esquire were an absolute delight to speak with... and hilarious. GQ was more laid back and very chic.

Rolling Stone was another amazing visit. They had this incredible hallway filled with all of the covers they ever made. Not to mention, I also got to speak with the art director and see exactly what he does.

After talking to the editors in New York, I've got great news for everyone: There is a reason why the Missouri School of Journalism is one of the best in the country. We ARE over-trained and we have the Mizzou Mafia to back that up.

Almost all of the editors advised me to "expand my horizon onto the digital platform," which we are doing with the iPad. They also said to get as much experience as we could doing as much design as possible, in other words EVERYTHING we do in our capstone. With the Mizzou Mafia, all of the magazines had a Mizzou alum there and excited to see you. It was absolutely crazy how many Mizzou graduates were working at these top magazines. Get excited guys.


I've included some pictures too :)

You Can't Miss This: SPD Winners

This week on Unbeige, the Society of Publication Designers announced the contenders and medal finalists of the 47th "Magazine of the Year" competition. Surprisingly, the list was overcome with men's magazines, including last year's winner, GQ. Other magazines on the top of the list are Intelligence in Lifestyle, Il Sole 24, Lotus and Port. These titles will go up against these weeklies: Bloomberg Business week, Time and New York.  A complete list can be found here.

This blog post made me question something very important. Why are men's magazines so well-designed? I've always wanted to design for a men's magazine because their designs are creative and completely on a different level. Not to mention, their subject topics tend to be provocative and leave plenty of room for creativity. It's interesting to see the list and who's on it, and who you THOUGHT would've been on it, but didn't make the cut. For example, I thought for sure that Esquire would be on the list multiple times. However, Esquire only made one category: Design: Feature, Service. Even from our judging of the regional magazines, I thought that there would be more of those magazines on this list.

This just goes to show you that people like different designs and there is always room for creative concepts.

Response: Portfolio Review

So this week in class we had our portfolio reviews.... and wow, was that helpful. I love hearing feedback from our capstone and it really does help me out in the end. Because I'm going to New York next weekend to tour magazines with the Magazine Club, these reviews really motivated me to fix up my designs.

The whole process was very effective. I looked over every single word and made sure that I soaked in all the advice. After the portfolio reviews, I feel like I get a better sense of my design. Will's comments stuck out most in my mind. He said that I needed to take more risks, which I believe to be completely true. I've been trying to do that more, but I think I just need to work on the execution and concept to completely master the "risk."

Another comment that stuck out I believe came from Krista. My goal is to eventually work at a wedding or men's magazine. Her advice was to make a layout that would be in a wedding or men's magazine. It seems like a simple idea, but I really never thought about it. I've made it my spring break GOAL to create an amazing design fit for a wedding magazine and another fit for a men's magazine.

Critique: Vox 5 and Vignette Covers

So my design week has been absolutely nuts. For my capstone, I had to make the splash cover for the Vox 5 iPad, the cover, TOC and feature for the Vox Weekly iPad, and also participated in the Subculture vignette cover competition. Not to mention, I designed the front page of Sports for Thursday and a feature single page and doubletruck.

Thank God I really do love design, otherwise I probably would've snapped by now.

So here's my splash cover the Vox 5.

It was featuring some cover band for Queen... You won't believe the strange photo choices I had. I decided to go for him dressed in the traditional royal red robe with his crown ascending into the Vox logo. I also put a gold filter on just the background to make the cutout of him pop more. My experience with the Vox 5 was pretty painless actually. In fact, I can almost say that I enjoyed it. I think my design was fairly simple, but overall I'm pleased with the outcome. Let me know what y'all think.

Next on my design adventures is my subculture vignettes. Definitely not proud of them at all. I was very much on a time-crunch and could've done so much more with it. Nonetheless, here they are:

 

The puzzle piece one could've been executed WAY better. I'm combining a mix of typography and puzzle pieces for my redesign. I'm also making another cover with a completely different concept to make up for how horribly created these above three were.

You Can't Miss This: Pritzker Prize

Every year, an architect is awarded for an incredibly constructed design with the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The winner receives $100,000 and a bronze medallion inscribed with the Vitruvian ideal of "firmness, commodity and delight."

This week on Unbeige's blog, they posted about this year's winner: Wang Shu from Hangzhou, China.

Anyways, I was scanning through Unbeige's blog and stopped when I came across this post. I was completely in awe of these beautifully constructed buildings.

 Above left, you can see the Library of Wenzheng College at Suzhou University. YEAH... that's a LIBRARY, sitting in the middle of this lake. Gorgeous.
The planning must have been absolutely extensive because the architect had to choose strong, stable materials that could also stand in water AND look chic and modern at the same time.

On the right is the Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum. I really like the long bridge leading into the glass-enclosed building; it looks like a gateway into history. I love it.

I'm a big fan of how these two buildings were constructed and designed. I have been interested in architectural design ever since I took a class here at MU about the topic. For those of you who haven't even thought about architecture as being artwork or creatively designed, you should definitely check out this blog post. Better yet, take a look around the building next time you are in a big city's art district. They are inspiring.

Response: Historical Perspectives

This past Tuesday, our class presented their historical perspectives for their magazine and era. Unfortunately, I did not present mine, but I'm pretty excited to show the class what I came up with next Tuesday.

I loved everyone's presentation. It was interesting to see how my classmates could turn a simple "powerpoint" presentation into something well-designed and informative too. Considering that I will probably have to make a number of presentations in this career, I found this to be a very useful assignment.

When I started my assignment, I had problems with coming up with sources. After some help from classmates and Theresa, I was able to guide myself in the right direction. I wasn't happy at all with the design of my presentation, strictly because I had to maneuver something in powerpoint. Maybe it's just my opinion, but I felt awkward leaving the Indesign comfort zone.

Since I don't have to present until Thursday, I'm going to switch it to Indesign and spruce it up a bit. I don't know about y'all, but I have a huge issue of showing my work to someone if it's not completely up to my standard. I only like showing my best work that I could be proud of.

Critique: Department Pages

This week, I designed the the department pages for books and back of the books. I would post a .pdf, but I forgot to personally save them for my portfolio. I'll update this post later when I get it.


Anyways, I noticed a weakness of mine when I do the department pages. Since I'm in News Design this semester for the Missourian, my designing becomes very standard. There is a template for what seems like everything from type to infoboxes. With magazine design for Vox, I've noticed the same issue.

I'm scared to stray away from the templates. I want to be more creative within the department pages, but I'm struggling to figure out how. This is great that I figured this out now, because this is what I plan to do with the rest of my life: design... which means designing department pages.

Something Theresa said stuck with me. It's that bit that she said about how employers are looking for designers who can design within the templates, but do it in a creative way.

Well, I guess I still have another half a semester to work on it!

You Can't Miss This: Wood Shop

This week on Unbeige, they posted a follow-up on David Stark's Wood Shop. I previously commented on his unique creations made out of wood and odd objects. Because I have a weird fetish for carpentry (I like to build furniture), I was immediately drawn to this blog post. Plus, this follow-up included plenty of pretty pictures.

This exhibit has a wide variety of vases, necklaces, pillows and even dessert. Check them out!

  

Shown in the picture above, you can see all the intricate vases. As a carpenter myself, I can fully appreciate how he was able to get the vases so smooth using poplar wood. From my experience, poplar is considered one of the softer of the hardwoods and probably one of the best for painting. The fact that David Stark decided to leave the wood naked and in its natural state, shows his own of his characteristics for design.

 

Okay. This is by far my favorite piece out of the pictures he's shown. It's a little slice of cake made completely out of Smartply. This particular type of wood is usually used for roofs, floors, etc. and comes in large sheets. It's less expensive than plywood and is formed by woodchips and waterproof glue. I've worked with this type of wood plenty of times and let me tell you, it's really tricky.

One, it's completely not supposed to be used to make decorative pieces because of it's rough texture and high density. (But it creates the different layers to this slice of cake!)

Two, it's made through bonded woodchips, so when you take a circular saw or jigsaw to it, chips tend to fly EVERYWHERE. I can't tell you how many times these little flying chips has gotten in my eye or pierced my skin. Plus, unless your blade is super sharp, it's hard to make smooth edges. From what I can see in the picture, it has been sanded down to create smooth, but still defined top and edges.

Okay now that I've completely shown the masculine side to me, you can understand why I love David's Wood Shop exhibit. As a magazine designer, I have complete respect and understanding for product designers. They use their hands, while I use my mouse to make designs. It's the same aspect. The whole dessert made out of wood was a completely kooky, creative and adorable idea that probably took a LONG time to come up with. That's exactly how it is for magazine designers. It may take a long time or a short time to execute the design, but it could take twice as long to come up with the concept.

I guess what I'm saying is to put as much effort as you can into the concept. Take risks and do the unthinkable.