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.