Critique: snack your ass off — final(ish) Nosh production

The following designs are the culmination of my work as a designer for our Nosh magazine prototype.

cover

The publishers wanted some extra covers for their prospectus, so I got a chance to design the autumn cover for Nosh. The cover story is slated as "healthier halloween," and I didn't want to use cheesy autumn colors. I also created the sweet sell lines.

NoshMagazine.com

 This page had a lot of information about the additional content readers can find both online and on iPads. I wanted to show people interacting since this page was all about interaction. Also, we had few opportunities to use photos with people since so many of our pages featured recipes and food histories, etc. I wanted to take advantage of my ability to run a great picture here as big as possible.

Seasonal snacking department page

The content on this page is about combining rhubarb with strawberries to make use of a pretty unique — or maybe just weird — vegetable. I found that phenomenal parfait photo, and Theresa suggested I bleed it to take full advantage of it. I think everything on this page just goes together.

Three ingredient snacks

 This my least favorite of the pages I worked on. I never really liked how that vertical photo fit onto the page, but I just kind of went with it and kept working with it hoping it would evolve into something more interesting. Overall I think the page is too white for my liking, but there comes a time when you have to prioritize and move on with your life.

Feature: International snacks

Coming up with a concept for this took quite a bit of thinking, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I even came up with the title, which I think is pretty clever. You might notice the large amount of copy. Even though there was a lot of copy, I still decided to run the photos as big as possible because I thought they really lent to the story, even if that meant forfeiting my only real ability to use white space. I'm ok with my decision, though, because there's a great deal of white space on the splash page that opens the spread.

Packaged to homemade

 The content on this page teaches readers how to take packaged snack foods and make them from scratch. I love that photo of puppy chow, and the color scheme turned out quite nicely.

You don't even want to know how much noshing I did while working on these pages....

Response: portfolio production

Based on our discussion about how to put together a mini portfolio, I'm considering the following approaches:

• 6"x6"
• a clean cover with some sort of logo to brand myself
• black backgrounds behind my samples to set off the whiteness of the images
• one design sample image per page
• blurb-type captions on each adjacent page
• content will be organized by topic (e.g. VOX covers, VOX features, Nosh, and other projects)
• tabs that differentiate different topic sections

I'm still tossing around the idea including some samples of my photography, though I might just create a separate book for it.

online portfolio

This is a screenshot of the online portfolio that I made last summer as a part of my news design class. Don't judge, I made it completely from scratch.

I'm obviously hoping for the final product of this class to look a little more professional, though I'm not sure how exactly I plan to achieve that since I haven't coded since the summer and thus have not enhanced my online design skills whatsoever.

You can't miss: trendy indie fashion blogs

 a screenshot image from Sein.Box

With the ever-growing success of the new Midwest Style blog, it seems that people are finally starting to take midwestern fashion seriously.

A few months ago, somehow ran across a blog called Sein.Box that's based out of Springfield, Missouri. Although it is a little too "hipster" for my liking, the photography is pretty good. And at least somebody is trying to get out there and represent.

As far as my personal style goes, I really like the stuff that Urban Outfitters comes out with, though I never really have enough money to actually justify buying the overpriced baloney from there (Also, my hips/thighs are far too big to rock most of their looks, ha). Either way, check out this sweet wall hanging I found:

And who can pass on this sweet hipster mustache that's on clearance for just $2.99?! Can you believe they didn't sell out of it while it had its original price of $8.00?!?!?! Maybe Midwest Style will pick it up for an even trendier indie outfit...

Critique: 30 under 30 contest for VOX

Last week the advance design students competed amongst ourselves for a shot at designing VOX's 30 under 30 feature. The story featured 30 up-and-coming Columbia residents under the age of 30 who are impacting the community in one way or another.

cover

The VOX editors really wanted to emphasize diversity with this story, so I wanted to show it right from the start. I also wanted to use fun, bright colors to emphasize the quirky youthfulness of the story. I wasn't crazy about the solid orange background, but I wasn't able to come up with another idea that I knew I could execute in a professional manner. Also, I grabbed the arrows from our Nosh prototype (two birds, one stone haaa).

opening spread

I wanted to continue presenting the diversity of those featured in the article. I absolutely loved this photo of Phylshawn Johnson. It's really fun and energizing (as are the other lead photos here), which I thought would attract readers.

secondary spread

With the secondary spread I was trying to show how I would work to squeeze 30 vignettes into the 10 pages that were originally slated for the story. Because there was so much text and a photo for each story, I didn't want to use too many "decorative" design elements. We all knew the pages were going to be tight. I chose to use bold drop caps, numbers and pull-quotes to help break up the seas of gray.

In the end, I still feel as though my designs were far too text heavy. I wish I would have found a better solution to help split up the stories more definitively, as did Theresa. She developed a really great broken grid technique that convey the story's VOX-y edginess, which, of course, is why her design was chosen :)

You can't miss: more 30s under 30s!

how I feel about 30 things after working on the 30 under 30 assignment: ribbons and flowers. and really REALLY good clip art :)

for those looking to find a job

Inc. 500's 2010 list of the 30 coolest young entrepreneurs. The founders of Her Campus, FourSquare and Living Social all made the list.

for those interested in photography

Photobite.com features a 30 under 30: women photographers to spread the world about influential women in the field, as the industry is often stereotyped as being dominated by mails.

the best of the best
The Power 30 Under 30 Awards recognizes young leaders from the following categories: 1) Arts, Entertainment & Media 2) Business 3) Community Service 4) Politics 5) Science & Technology 6) Sports. 

for the country music fan
Nashville's top 30 under 30 functions in a way that's very similar to VOX's concept. No, it's not about twangy, corny singers, but people who actually make a difference.

Response: photo a day

I spent my spring break in my hometown of Lowry City, Missouri since it was the only time I would really be able to spend time with my family this semester. Here's a visual diary of my week at home.

day 1

Last year Lowry City was recognized for having the best tasting water in the state of Missouri. It was then recognized as having the fifth best tasting water in the nation. Naturally, I felt I should take a picture of our water tower :)

day 2

This is my grandpa Greg coming in from doing chores. It was about 50 degrees this day, which isn't really cold enough to warrant that many layers, haha.

day 3

I took a little walk around town and stopped by the city park where I used to practice basketball when I was in high school. I'm not really sure when these bleachers were placed ON the court, but they definitely shouldn't be there, ha.

day 4

I visited my dad's parents, Mama Sue and Papa Tom :)

day 5

This is just a flower outside of our house. I'm not sure what exactly it is, but I used to call them "snowball flowers" when I was younger.

day 6

My mom and I drove out to the lake. Isn't she pretty? I think this one is funny because it looks like a senior picture.

day 7

I stopped to take some pictures of cattle before I headed back to Columbia. Such a classic.

Critique: found typography assignment

For this assignment I wanted to focus on the bold neon typography of big name companies because I'm so intrigued by their use of of color. I chose the word "mammoth" so that the word itself and the type would refer to each other. While taking the pictures I tried to do so from the same angle for each sign to get a consistent 3-D perspective.

While designing the piece I cut out each letter individually. To get across the neony feel of the signs, I added a drop shadow and a glow to every letter so that the letters would pop off the page more.

Anyway, that's about it. I was really surprised with how well it turned out. Can you guess where each of the letters came from? Some are pretty obvious.

From left to right: Wal-Mart, Subway, MCSports, McDonalds, Target, Dollar Tree, Chuck E. Cheese.