You Can't Miss...Tips I Wish I Knew, But Already Know

In the last year I have spent more time using Creative Suite programs than anyone other program I've used in my lifetime. This week on Smashing Magazine they had a post about tips on InDesign that designers wished they knew -- what I loved about it was the fact that I knew how to do all but a few of the tips. There's nothing like knowing that you've chosen the right career path -- and the idea that I knew how to do a lot of what others find to be "new" is great!


My favorite that I already knew...saving color swatches and loading new ones.

For a designer with a color-centered personality, I knew all about this tip about 30 seconds into opening InDesign for the first time. Maybe they should name the next color library after me ;)


A new one for me...master pages.

I knew that InDesign had a master page capability -- but, to be honest, I had no idea what the purpose was in the slightest. Now I know that if all my pages need to have a number of elements that are the same all I have to do is save them to the master page!


Check out all the other tips in the post and see how many you know -- but like they close with, know that as designers the best way to learn the "tips" of InDesign is to open the program and just start trying to make it work!

Critique...Vox Departments So Far

My first weekend designing for Vox Magazine was rather stressful -- as if not knowing what I was doing wasn't enough, I spent 48 hours freaking out about an illustration that I was supposed to make for the online version of the story I had to design. I didn't know the game in the story and the reporter was refusing to speak to me. I finished the following flash graphic (below is a photo, not the graphic) for the story and the page design, to come to find out there was an ethical issue -- the story wasn't printed and neither was my graphic. I still plan to use it in my portfolio.

Second round of Scene designing went a lot smoother -- though having my feature the same weekend did make it a bit crazy. It was fun, though, I enjoyed getting through all the stories and piecing it all together. 

Third round of Vox designing was another splash of change with the travel issue -- which was definitely a good time -- but when were told to stick with the personality of Vox in our designs it's hard to keep consistent when we only design every three weeks. Over all, this third week was my favorite because it was my type of content. I love to travel and it made me think of the idea that some day I could be designing for a travel publication's department pages.

Response...Prototype Drafts

Here's my thoughts...


Nosh
Talk about some great work! This team has really got it together for Tuesday; which has definitely motived us at Shindig to put out some great work for Thursday. I agree with their publishers on the red/green cover; though I see what you mean on the rust color -- I just the green needs a little adjusting though.

Plaid Dad
Just keep in mind that it is ultimate your design -- I know the logo you went with was the publisher favorite, but some of your other options I felt were significantly better. Overall, you've got a great start. I hope something gets worked out on the crazy gadget pages, though!


Modern Midwest
I definitely think taking a stab at your own photography is the only way to go. It'll take a bit of extra work, but if you really take the time to plan it out and frame the photos well then I think it could turn out wonderful.


Cupboard
The style of you chose for your nameplate was great -- but I have to agree with Jan's comment about the "C" being rotated slightly. I know that you did that you make the name plate different, but it looks more out of place and than meaningful.


Shindig
Here's where your comments come into place...we'd love the feedback. 

You Can't Miss...The User Experience

Yesterday's post on Smashing Magazine starts by saying: "A lot of designers seem to be talking about user experience (UX) these days. We’re supposed to delight our users, even provide them with magic, so that they love our websites, apps and start-ups. User experience is a very blurry concept. Consequently, many people use the term incorrectly."

What's crazy about this model that they discuss is that I see both sides of the spectrum. Growing up I was the user -- so I chose my magazines based on what I saw on the cover as it related to me because that made me like the product and it had the special appeal. But now that I'm at Mizzou I have been taught to focus on those first four product features as a designer: content (always content...that has been drilled into my head over the last four years), presentation, functionality and interaction. And as far as the center section is concerned -- both the designers and the users manipulate, stimulate and identify each other, which is why I believe both parties take part in that step of the model.


What's most important in this post however, was the final section -- telling us that we can not design the user experience because we can not design the use. However, we can design for the user -- and that was the plan all along.

Response...Potential Portfolio Pieces

We've all taken basic design -- so seeing the projects from that course was familiar. We've also all taken part in Vox department pages and designing logos. What I most loved about showing off my own work and seeing the work of other was to see what everyone has done outside the realm of required Magazine Design courses.


I was able to show my designs for my work with Relay For Life at Mizzou...

In addition to the infographics I did for the Missourian...

And the wireframes I created on behalf of the Museum of Art & Archaeology in my application development class...

Each of us as an idea of what our lives and careers are going to be like after we graduate. For most of us, that time will come in under two months. Many, including myself, see ourselves in New York City -- others plan to stick around for grad school among other reasons. And those differences are what our designs show. We can take the idea from a brainstorming session or be inspired by a part in the stories we design, but we each carry our own personality throughout our designs. Not only was this critique session beneficial to our portfolios, but they gave us a chance to get to know each other through our designs.

Critique...Logos Through the Drafts

The number 20 didn't seem that big when it was my age or when it was the number of miles I'd driven on my 432-mile drive home, but designing 20 logos is a lot harder than I expected. In hours I spent on designing my first drafts I came up with a handful right off the bat; I thought I was home-free -- I still had 14 more to design. I stuck with the color red in my first drafts because I've grown up visualizing black and red as a combination of colors that were bold...strong...unbreakable. And when I think of the women and minorities that the Sports Journalism Institute support, I can only imagine how tough they've got to be to make their careers happen. So here's what I started with:

Round two we were told to narrow the field to five logos. The following were my top five and how they changed from the original drafts to the final five. Note: the ORIGINAL is on the far left of each.


Choice 1: Received 2 votes during the in-class selection.

Choice 2: Received 5 votes during the in-class selection.

Choice 3: Received 9 votes during the in-class selection.

Choice 4: Received 4 votes during the in-class selection. As you can see, I opted for a brand new logo -- I now think they look like baby rattles. 

Choice 5: Received 3 votes during the in-class selection.

And in the final drafts our five selections were brought to two choices with the help of Greg Bowers.

Choice 1: For this logo I wanted to take on the image of designing a seal for the institute, because when I think of an institute I think they must have a seal of some sort -- University of Missouri has one, it's displayed in the Student Center as a remembrance of Brady Commons.

Choice 2: Sports are all about motion -- there's constant movement, even when athletes take a moment to breathe. I designed this logo around that motion and took into effect the way the motion encircles the team; hence, the motion is encircling the name plate. As for color (in both logos), I was told that symbolism was not as powerful as color -- so I chose colors that were vibrantly different, dark with contrast, and lastly a resemblance of skin colors.

You Can't Miss...Design Cliches

This week on Smashing Magazine I wasn't interested on many of their posts...so I went back a couple of weeks to a post about cliches in our designs. I can see where they're coming from because we all know what already works -- and so, we turn them into cliches for having been so overused. But I have to say -- sometimes the old cliches make perfect sense when it comes to design, because it draws a reader into something that is familiar to them.

Critique...Cover Competition 2

I was excited about the fact that I would get to work on the cover competition for the travel issue -- my ultimate goal with my career is to work for a travel publication. What was difficult was thinking so locally, because when I think about travel and where it can take me. It's hard for me to think that traveling could mean less than 100 miles.


Here's what I came up with:

For my first cover I was inspired by the idea that we all relate spring break with jet setting to some place far from the reality we live in for most of our year. I chose the image I did because the child brought the family aspect of traveling from the stories in the issue.

The second cover I took special interest in the road trip feature story. I wanted the give the idea that we can vacation only a short drive away. It was a great photo -- though I understand where the editors were coming from with respect to the landscape in the mirror.

The third cover was my favorite...although it wasn't a favorite of the editors. I understand that passports are for world travel -- but one of the story titles on the DTS had something to do with the world of Missouri. So I thought the passport stamps could be from Missouri.

Response...#MUiPad Conference

National Geographic

Talk about hard core – they have three no-so-simple steps to iPad development at National Geographic. 1. Know your readers. 2. Hone your process. 3. Get great content.

#1 Readers: “If I had asked people what they want, they would have said ‘faster horses.’” – Henry Ford. They thought that the tablet would be the standard for homes by 2015. You either stay true to your publication or do something completely new. This includes replicating or redesigning your original content. “This should be easy.” Wrong. He has a chart to prove it. There are at least 5 different devices that all requires something somewhat different. He says to worry about the iPad/iPhone first because all the others are somewhere in between.

#2 Hone: “We were designing a train without knowing the size of the track.” One-off apps versus a monthly magazine. “The cool thing about the iPad is that it doesn’t have the limitation of paper.” Photography is not the center of the iPad, because photographs are already important for their print publication. Breaking up the graphics allows you to show more pieces of the information. The cave graphic gives you the “flying” version on the iPad. Will the readers get fatigued from all the information?

#3 Content: It’s reader/user controlled, and that’s the different from anything that there is out there. We have to think digitally and give them the opportunity to do whatever they wish. Some of the examples he gave us was NOT video, so the users have the control of going forward and backward within the content. Tiger has a conversation with the robot, Steve says “don’t lick the lense!”

ESPN
Even coming from me, one who's not exactly a sport fanatic -- ESPN's vision for the iPad has got me motivated. There mission is "to serve the sports fan wherever sports are watched, listened to, discussed, debated, read about or played" -- and they have no plans to stop short when it comes to their iPad app consumers. What the iPad is doing is to provide the most dynamic media channel: you. You can make your own world and they have learned how to "sell you, you."

One of the biggest thing that they mentioned was that "you can't transfer the old model to this new model" -- meaning that even though the print magazine has been successful, this new product being developed with the multitudes of tablets.

It's all about the consumer, though, that's the biggest push in journalism right now. "Angry Birds is your competition until the next thing comes along." But when it works -- it sky rockets and it becomes a trending feature in everyone's life, one way or another. The panel gave a great example from this summer and the World Cup games. We all remember when Donovan scored, but even listening to the game on the car radio you can find a connection with the person driving next to you when the reaction to the score is a loud horn that you both hit in reaction.

It takes a special type of atmosphere to make a room full of journalism students, professors and professionals feel like they're making a difference in the industry -- and it takes even more to motivate them to keep at it. Rob told us that "it is all going to work out, we just don't know how." And I suppose that's true. I will say though, my friends are pretty awesome -- so I plan to be working throughout this industry and look back on this conference in 10 years with some of those same people.

Better Homes

Over the course of this conference we have heard a lot of the same things -- and Better Homes & Gardens did little to let that effect our expectations of their presentation. 

Digital Editions: 1. Quick to market, 2. Pixel Perfect, 3. Time Intensive  

With their "Celebrate" app they were building a native app. How did they do that?: 1. Longer lead time, higher initial investment; 2. Only works on target device platform; 3. CMS-driven, rapid content creation. 

They have an extensive media library because they bought all the rights to their photographs.  You download the shell of an app and they create chapters -- they are collections of beautiful parties (both decorating and recipes). It looks really simple, but they had to find a way to integrate multiple things in one space.

The hardest part about creating this iPad app is to design something that provides a relaxing experience for the users. But they had a short amount of time and a strict budget in planning the final cuts for the apps. Right now it is still a learning curve, because they want to figure out where to go with the next round of digital products.

You Can't Miss...Web Font Formats

My design personality is alway geared by color -- though oddly enough I like black and white photos more than full color. Regardless, the post about on Smashing Magazine today was about another design love of mine, typography (for the web -- and they call typefaces "font-faces," which I find hilarious because so many of us correct each other when we say "font" and now they've combined the two to make their own). 


"There’s hope that regular system fonts will soon be abolished by Web font embedding, which enables us to choose practically any typeface and font style they want — just like in print design," says Smashing Magazine. Now that's what I like to hear -- I have hundreds of "font-faces" on my computer, and having to reduce my web creativity to those that are formatted correctly would have gotten old. I can't wait for this revolution!


Also...as promised, check out the March desktop calendars post! They've got some really great designs this month!

Critique...App Development, outside class

This week I didn't have anything in the way of Vox, our prototype projects, or any other assignment to critique this week -- so I took a que from Ashley and decided to critique the wireframes I designed for my app development course. 


At little overview on the project, first. My group is working on an application for the MU Museum of Art & Archaeology. We are going to create an image driven application (as opposed to map-driven) that will divide the museum into its historical and artistic exhibits. Everything will be based on a short tour, with links for a longer tour if they wish - essentially the user will be able to choose what kind of experience they have. We are planning on creating a four-button application that will lead to (1) contact information and hours and will include a link to donate to the museum, (2) main content of the app (exhibits), (3) a map of the museum and (4) an events page that will link to either MU events or the museum’s facebook events page. The main content of the app will include a shortened versions of the museum’s already existent 40-minute podcast, a gallery featuring some of the museum’s more visually striking pieces and we'll feature pieces, such as very small coins, that the technology can showcase better than the museum itself can. Some pieces will also include additional information such as similar pieces elsewhere and random tidbits, such as information about the artist.


Check out the first wireframes I put together:

Creating the wireframes were a lot less difficult than I expected -- though having templates for creating them made it that much easier. I didn't expect there to be so little design work in developing an app -- but I suppose simple is always better.

Response...Back to the Big Apple

After landing in New York last February in the midst of a huge blizzard you would have thought that I would be disappointed with my first impression of the city. Wrong. I was in love.


I was born a Windy City girl, but my heart has always known that the excitement of Manhattan is where I was meant to be. This summer I spent 12 weeks with Hollywood Life and got to know the culture and inner workings of the city -- though being 20 limited my fun sometimes. So when it came time for the Magazine Club to head back there, I was more than ready to visit the place I will soon call home. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week our group of 24 eager Magazine students visited 17 different publications. The following was my line-up. 

ESPN The Magazine
The offices at ESPN were a lot more casual than a normal newsroom -- including a large poll at the center, signed by dozens of athletes that have been interviewed by the publication. It was great to start off the trip with this visit, because they had a great atmosphere to work in. Of course they take what they do seriously, but their focus is not on pleasing every reader. "If [they] don't like, we've got another one coming in two weeks," said Gary Belsky. He also went on to talk to us about how he really wanted us to take advantage of the contacts we made on this trip. According to him, we all deserve to be published if we're got a story to pitch but very few of us every take the initiative to make the call and get our foot in the door.

Esquire
I was disappointed that we didn't get to see the offices at Esquire, but meeting with them really opened my eyes to the fact that not every magazine is standard to what we talk about in class. Day in and day out we discuss the importance of reader-driven content, design, etc -- at Esquire, they really seem to care less about what the reader wants. Tim told us that they like to force change and designing for that starts early. They don't care who likes their publication, because they want to do what they want do -- and that's final. Apparently they're doing something right with that mindset, because they are obviously tremendously successful. 

Popular Mechanics
At first thought, I didn't think I would enjoy the visit to Popular Mechanics. I'm not a mechanic, I don't love science and I honestly knew little about the publication other than that it was referenced in the Friends episode when Rachel was applying for jobs in season one. But of all the magazines we visited during this trip -- their design was BY FAR my favorite. It was creative with bright colors and interesting divisions between stories. There were a number of infographics and illustrations, which I proceeded to recreate in my mind as to how to create it in Illustrator -- such a designer thing to do. And with that design, they told us to "embrace the fundamentals" but to also "embrace the chaos."

Sports Illustrated
If you're looking to get into sports journalism, Richard Dimack (former sports editor for the Columbia Missourian, by the way) said to "know how to tell stories about sports, if you don't love it you'll be bored." Hence, it is highly unlikely that I will ever work for Sports Illustrated. But one thing he told us that I did take away was this: "Where did you go to school? We don't care. How did you do in school? We don't care. Clips are what matter." As graduation quickly approaches I have looked back and compared myself to the person I was when I graduated high school. I was the straight-A's girl with the perfect GPA and the list of extracurriculars that could make anyone dizzy. In May I won't graduation with a perfect GPA, but I do know I'll have a kick-ass portfolio to show off. 

Marie Claire
A group of 12 magazine journalism students visit a magazine very much driven by fashion -- what do you first? Take them to the fashion closet -- and, trust me, the fashion closet at Marie Claire is wonderful. A little cleaner then I expected, but still filled with shoes and bags and dozens of racks with designer clothing. I will have you note (because we discussed this topic during our meeting with them), that the cover I've selected is one of two. I knew it happened, but there is actually one cover for the subscribers and one cover for the newsstands. Why? Because selling a magazine to someone that doesn't subscribe is a lot different that impressing the readers who receive the magazine in the mail each month.

American Lawyer
I'll be honest, sleep deprivation took over while visiting American Laywer early Friday morning -- and I don't have much to say on the visit other than that they were definitely more open about the possibility of internships and entry level jobs right out of the college gates. Because it is a trade publication the publication puts out an number of different magazines with a very narrow target audience. 

Men's/Women's Health
We got a double dose of magazine offices when we visited both Men's Health and Women's Health. And with that double dose we got to see a number of different personality types that go into collaborating these two publications and putting out a number of different additions to the actual magazines -- i.e. Eat This, Not That! They told us that we'd start with FOB once we land a job after graduation, which is a start -- and that aside, we've made a good choice with magazines because there's more job security. This visit was probably the most beneficial for me because they really got into what it takes to get a job after graduation: be searchable on Google (they want to see you interacting with the wonders of the internet), typos matter (so have a friend look at it, many friends), address the topics of location and your willingness to move (don't assume they know you'll move for them), be immediate with the important information (name, school, what job you want), etc. I have worried about where I'll really end up because there are so many different people we're expected to attract via our resumes and cover letters, so it was nice to get some clear answers from the people that will eventually look to hire us.

Real Simple
As if the 20lbs of magazines we all were taking home wasn't enough -- the editors at Real Simple were so generous as to also send us home with a Wedding issue AND a cookbook -- my first cookbook I can call my own. And the fact that it was given to me by one of my favorite magazines makes it all the more exciting. The editors there were so wonderful to speak with and really emphasized our roles as interns in the future. "I don't want an intern that really wants to be at Time, I want one that wants to be at Real Simple," said Jacklyn Monk, deputy managing editor.

Hollywood Life
Being back in New York instantly made me remember this past summer -- 12 weeks at Hollywood Life and 56 clips later I realized that I could see my future after graduation. At a number of the publications we visited on this trip they told us to work hard at our internships and come prepared to do a million things and do them well. It wasn't until I walked back in to Suite 9A -- home of Hollywood Life -- 7 months after saying goodbye, greeted by hugs and happy hello's, that I knew I had done a great job as an intern. It was privilege to bring Magazine Club there and to show them what I had been a part of for the summer. When I worked there, Hollywood Life was still a baby -- only 6 months old -- and I walked in to growing publication last Friday. It was great to see how far they had come in 7 months and it was wonderful to be welcomed back. Who knows...maybe I'll return at more than intern this summer.