You Can't Miss: Obama switches to serif & inspiring typography from Imprint

Photo courtesy of Imprint

Check it out: Obama's making the move to a serif font. What do we think the motivation is here? See Imprint's blog post here.

Photo courtesy of Imprint

And finally, in honor of our typography graffiti assignment, here's some inspirational typography art from Imprint. See the full blog post here.

Critique: Shindig prototype progress -- she's growing up!

Since being appointed Creative Director and presenting our beginning designs of the prototype to the capstone and faculty, Shindig has really begun to take shape. I spent much of my break taking critiques from both students and faculty, and really took the time to look at ways to better show the Shindig personality I was wanting to achieve in the overall design. I also noticed the need for breathing room and full-bleed photos in the magazine, so these added introduction pages for departments not only allow for that, but give an opportunity to add photos of people.

Because of the lower resolution of the wood/other textures I had wanted to include in departments, I've taken them out – it just would really look awful if those were even slightly pixelated because they run so large, but after taking it out and working on finding other ways to show the . But after really great feedback from Thursday's presentation, I've updated the templates and streamlined them, and I think you'll be happy with them. Let me know what you all think of the changes! I think they've transferring really nicely onto each department page design. I'm looking forward to see how this prototype shapes up with these new template items.

Response: Photo a Day Assignment

It was certainly a not-so-inspiring last Spring Break of college (it was spent it Columbia working on the magazine prototype project), so our capstone's assignment to take a photo a day during our break for inspriation provided an especially interesting challenge. Here are a few of my favorites from the week...

**Unfortunately, my photo card reader broke this week, so I don't have a way to get photos off of my CF card, so as soon as I get a new one, I'll post those photos. Stay tuned.

And here is my final graffiti assignment. Each letter was taken from signs in downtown Columbia.

You Can't Miss: Charting your way to better design & typography

Who knew your text great typographic design decision can be determined in a chart? Check out this design chart designed to determine what type treatment to give your design. It uses the anatomy of a typeface to determine the type of design its best suitable for. Unfortunately, the chart doesn't give magazine design its own category, but I think we all know that creating a typeface chart for magazine design alone could be quite the undertaking. See what you think, visit the full blog here.

Response: The (harsh) reality of web design

Tuesday's lecture by Kristin Kellogg, digital editor for Vox magazine, caused me to except several true, but harsh realities on the limitations and decision-making when it comes to designing for the web, mobile and tablet. The reality is print, web, phone and tablet design are just not equivalent to one another. Sounds simple enough until you are faced with trying to design a web, mobile or tablet component based off of a print design, just as we are for our magazine prototypes in Advanced Magazine Design.

Kristin explains that as a design, you can't control the context people will be viewing your work in – an idea that designers sometime have a difficult time accepting. She says you must design for the optimum viewing experience and most importantly, "let print be print, and let a webpage be a webpage."

Kristin showed us how this concept plays out in GQ's March 2011 "The People V. Football" feature. See below how the feature design transfers from its beautiful print form into a simple, much less designed format on the website.

"The People V. Football," GQ March 2011 (print design)

Here you have a compelling typography illustration contrasted with this engaging photograph to grab your attention. Kristin pointed that it wasn't the story topic that grabbed her attention, but the illustration, which is a great example of how powerful magazine design in print can be, and how magazine designers can use this to their advantage in print.

"The People V. Football," GQ March 2011 (web design)

I think it's pretty clear looking at the web design of this feature that it is in fact lacking in design, however, Kristin explains that the decision was by no means accidental. Not only would specially design text not be read by a search engine like this text would be, but the website works off of a content management system, giving staff members at the magazine the ability to post content to the website without having to code or design the content and as Kristin puts it: does all of the heavy lifting for them. Although to a print designer, it might seem to be a lack of design, it's truly just designed for a completely separate purpose. People don't look for interesting content to read on a webpage the way they do in print. A compelling design will catch your attention in print, but the way a browser will find your content online will not always be through the same context, so it's the words that have to be flexible in order to optimize the chance that a browser will be interested in viewing the content.

In her lecture, Kristin went on to explain how GQ and several other major publications have adapted their design for both mobile and tablet apps to fit the demand from those platforms as well. After hearing so much from publications on tablet design from the recent iPad conference and from my Magazines Across Platforms course, I found her focus and angle on the subject to be incredibly refreshing. Kristin comes from a design background, so I truly appreciated hearing her perspective on making the leap from print to the less familiar web, mobile and tablet realm.

Critique: Protoype Progress

Our advanced design capstone has certainly come quite a ways since first being introduced to these magazine prototype concepts from the publishing capstone teams, and believe it or not, in just a matter of weeks each team will have completed a full 30-40 page printed magazine.

It was great to see how each team has evolved their chosen creative director's prototype in class on Tuesday. Seeing the evolved designs with the magazine's actual stories really brought these prototypes to life – you start to realize how big of an undertaking this truly is.

After seeing some of their work on Tuesday, here are some notes I have on some of the other teams' progress:

Nosh: Beautiful job with giving the magazine a distinct style and personality. It was great to see so much progress on your prototype, and to see how well the template is transferring to each department and feature page. I would want to suggest to be careful with using your arrow element too much, it's really a nice touch when used sparingly, and I would hate to see such a nice element get overused. Also, I loved seeing the additional cover options, it's really coming along. Theresa, I know you made a comment in class about how the color palette of the second Nosh cover option didn't seem to go over well with my publishers, but it seems like the only reason it's not working here is because the rust color for the nameplate seems to be bringing out the rust color from the sauce in the cover photo, which isn't the prettiest color of sauce. I think if you find a way to highlight the beautiful greens and orange tones in the spring rolls, you might find a nice way to focus less attention on the color of the sauce. Again, prototype is really coming along! Beautiful job.

Plaid Dad: Wow, what a transformation this prototype has made since you all began. I really like the way you all have collaborated on so much of this prototype's template design elements, the revisions you've made on ways to use the tool box icon, etc. are working nicely. This magazine audience is such a challenge to design for and you guys are finding really great ways to design in a way that would appeal to that type of reader.

Cupboard: You guys are really coming along in finding your magazine's distinct personality, I would just like to see the designs come together to make a more cohesive package. There are some really nice feature and department designs that are working well as individual pieces, I think Cupboard just needs to work on emphasizing the Cupboard brand and show us how that transfers from department to feature designs throughout the magazine. 

Modern Midwest: I love how your team has been able to take this magazine's editorial mission and given its design a fresh, modern vision that appeals to this audience so nicely. This prototype is full of some very unique content and its great how you have found ways to unify the content which such a nice color palette and design template. The features are always difficult to keep cohesive with the rest of the magazine, so I think this is something that could be worked on, but has seemed to be a challenge most teams are facing.

Again, it's really incredible how much progress these teams have made already, and it's only a matter of weeks before they're all fully transformed into a printed publication. (Deep breathe, everyone...)

The Future of Typography & Mizzou Makes Cakes! [YOU CAN'T MISS]

YOU CAN'T MISS: The future of typography, according to Richard Rutter, Fontdeck

"I've seen the future and it's 326 ppi." – Richard Rutter, SXSW 2011


Print magazine's Imprint blog featured Rutter's presentation on the future of typography given at this year's SXSW complete with slides from his presentation. Follow the link and you can download his notes to keep in your library for future reference. What a great resource! Check it out here.

YOU CAN'T MISS: Mizzou Makes Cakes – and some great promotional designs!

Photo courtesy of Student Design Center

I just had to give a shout-out to the beautiful flier, poster and banner designs created by the Student Design Center for Mizzou's latest event: the Mizzou Cake Challenge, featuring Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes and Food Network's hit show Ace of Cakes. The designs are beautiful! A perfect fit for such a noteworthy event.