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!