eye magazine layout

The outline for this project was based around designing a cover, back, and article layout that was fitting to the personality of Eye Magazine, The International Review for graphic design. The featured article to be used to set the imagery and unique details to this particular layout was States of Wonder by Nancy Spector. The layout as a whole is designed with variations based upon the same grid visually playing with simplistic arrangements and compositionally sound forms of negative space. I chose to photograph unique images of Sagmeister’s work, the main featured designer within the article, rather than using a straightforward editorial based style.

The Photographs used in the layout spreads are from Sagmeister’s book series, Things I have learned in my life so far. The smaller booklets within the laser cut case are placed outside onto various doors to give the audience a different perspective with the ways to view a piece of design while upholding the integrity of the work itself. The artists mentioned do not confine themselves to staying inside the gallery system and the particular placements play on this concept within the contents of the article. The cover of the magazine left to be more experimental. The keyhole with a portion of one of Sagmeister’s works builds a relationship with the inside concept of the doors while the back is simply a beautiful and engaging pattern suggestive to another article in this particular issue.

Printing field trip to Allegra

After web media the class and I had an hour or so to eat and get to our next destination and first print stop,  Allegra. First I should mention a few of us went to Wally’s Diner for a little brain fuel andnourishment- quite delish.
Allegra is a small commercial shop and the first all digital based  printing company!

(photo by Austin Reed)
Todd Oats greeted and walked us through a day in the life of an Allegra employee… or at least a mid day. After the front desk of course we were led to see what their graphic designer, Heather, is all about. She talked to us a bit about her role in all of this and some common obstacles faced with file types and image sizes and how these things effect the printed outcome. A lot of times clients will not consider the correct types to save logos, for example, or won’t have them at a high enough resolution, which are all crucial with the quality of a print.

(photo by Tj Bowman)
Next Chandler introduced to the room where mass printing magic is made. Loved her enthusiasm and tutorials. The class and I checked out what some of the machines can do and how fast they can do it, and common problems like printing jams. We can all definitely relate to that! She even had the printers named… Bonnie is the only one that I can remember unfortunately. Chandler give us little booklets bound and all that she had made that morning and began printing a stack of sheets with all of our names on them. This turned out to be the beginning of an ongoing showing of how the Allegra team would, print, slice, and adhese together our very own pads of paper.

(photo by Tj Bowman)
From there we were introduced to the Roland printer costing $30,000 ! This thing was massive.

(photo by Tj Bowman)
This is while we watched them print off some stickers that we later on recieved (thanks you!) Quite impressive process.
Next we moved on to Andy, who showed us how the cutting process worked, what the machine was capable of, and some saftey precautions taken into consideration.
(photo by Tj Bowman)
The room after this made a bit queezy I must say so I have problems remembering all of the details…The custom printing machines! Some people like the strong smell of toxic inks but I must say I’m not a fan I’m afraid. The machines and process were beautiful nontheless. We got to see the procedure and techinques used and watched him print some beautiful envolopes. I’ve never seen such freshly printed ink. There were also some awesome magnifying lenses where we got to see the ink toned dots up close and personal.

(photo by Austin Reed)

(photo by Tj Bowman)

From there we saw how our books were glued together and learned about the different types of glues along with pros and cons. They were pressed together in the Paddy Wagon! Old school but awesome.

(photos by Austin Reed)
To finish up we observed how they would go about laminating, mounting, and cropping a large poster.
It was awesome seeing all of the things that the printers do and what a large part of the design process they posses.
And how could it get any better than receiving our own custom made, paper pads, stickers, pen, and water bottle at the end? It doesn’t. Thank you Allegra!

web media remix part 2

“To make a good website we must be good information architects. We need to learn what motivates people how they consume content visually. Then we must bake those ideas into our design.”
-Stephen Anderson.

Another beautiful day in web media yesterday! This time in class two more web professionals from medium came in to conduct our class. Josiah Roe, the president, along with Bekka Reese, a graphic designer (and utc alum!),  gave us a presentation discussing some of the process, strategies, and obstacles involving going from a site map, to a wireframe, to a stunning web page. The quote above was the kick off of the discussion which seems to be very appropriate. These are all things that should be considered constantly throughout the developing process to have a successful outcome. Josiah described it as a combination of design and psychology.
The content strategy phase, site taxonomy plays a key role with how the rest of a website will pan out. They described this piece as the base of how a webpage will be structured information-wise and the importance in deciding what information is priority for the viewer. From this stage comes the wire framing, this can be done via sketches and photoshop documents. Very basic, rough layout concepts showing where the various pieces of information contained in the site will go. Designers should be considering now what elements are the most crucial to get across to the viewer and ways to direct their attention easily in the right direction.  Grid systems should always be implemented in some fashion to keep things consistant and cohesive. There are multiple ways for navigation with complex content sites and they even gave us a few reference pages:
http://designerstoolbox.com
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui
Things to also consider are footers (a place for an abbreviated site maps perhaps), page titles, and of course, gaining the clients trust.
I soaked in quite a bit and enjoyed seeing all of the examples shown about what websites they have been a part of making from beginning to end. I really loved hearing about Bekka’s thought process and role throughout the building of a  web page. Mainly because I found it a relief that she doesn’t have to touch codes. I can deal with that. Of course the more this goes on the more interesting it’s getting so who knows where my mind will wonder off to next in the world of web design knowledge. Anywho i’m about to tell you all about the field trip following in the following entry so their will be more updates to come.