New Cover Comps

After getting feedback from Joyce on my wine glass cover (which got good feedback on our field trip), here are the two latest comps I just gave her. I really love the simplicity of them both. Next on my list for the weekend are to do a layout for the Chefs Recommendation (3 pages), dedication and the sponsorship index. I will have them keep the same feel as my other pages. My only concern are the mass amounts of type that go into these pages. This is going to be my biggest challenge when creating these.

Field Trip + Reworking everything

After reworking my layouts I started by redoing my front cover. I ended up finding a very good stock photograph of a wine glass on FLICKR. Here is what it looks like:



After showing Julien's old teacher my new layouts at GCF, she gave me really good feedback on my layouts. She really liked my covers (above) and told me to make my titles smaller. I also had an element on each page that she didn't like (a filled square that reminded her of National Geographic). I really loved the firm and could see myself working at a place like that when I graduated.

After the field trip I came home and reworked my new layouts. Here is what I have at the moment:

Critique with Joyce

My critique with Joyce didn't go too well. She totally didn't like my color scheme and ignored my layout. Here are minutes that Sam took at the critique about my feedback from Joyce:

"Joyce Lavery:

Cover:

Because the cover contains a food photo, it cannot be used. No food on cover. She did not like the color choices of light blue and yellow/gold. She looked to see if the colors chosen were “matched” to the food in the photos. Again. She could not understand why Cristian chose the colors he did. …they didn’t match anything… While she liked the use of type in the masthead, she said she would prefer that colors used for type be those found within the adjacent photograph, preferably food.

Publisher’s letter:

Liked the way that the “callout” was treated, but again, did not like the color choices of light blue and yellow/gold.

Says the appearance is too “ happy”. She wants “classy” instead. Suggested that the layout resembles a TGIF Friday’s or “Olive Garden” theme. She would prefer “Ritz Carlton”.

Table of Contents:

Thought the table of contents placed over a full-page photo of a restaurant interior was interest and innovative, however whatever photo used here would need to be a “stock” photos so as not to promote one restaurant over another.

Spread Layout:

Warned against cropping photos—“photographers have provided the composition that they want you to use…
Aesthetic is too “Happy”.
Joyce admitted that blue is not her favorite color. “Keep in mind that, in the mind of a chef, that the food provides the color” Implies that we should keep colors to a minimum, at least to such a degree that they do not “compete” with food photos.
Suggests that we not use more than one food photo with the recipe.
Michel Richard will prefer a minimalist approach to layout."

... After her critique I knew that it was time for me to start all over and please the client. Mr. Julien told us to change my colors, increase my margins (A LOT!), and make things more simple. He also gave us all a style guide with typefaces to consider using.

"We are looking like "Food and Wine" and not like the Ritz Carlton" - Mr. Julien

Week 4

Next week we are taking a trip to Baltimore, Maryland to visit a design firm by the name of GCF. One of Mr. Julien's old professors from graduate school is an art director there and he wants us to see a real design firm and how they work. He told us to ask a ton of questions and take in as much as we can.

This week on Thursday Joyce will be coming around to look at our work on screen. After that during Week 6 she will be coming back to look at print outs (comps of all pages). We NEED to condition our minds and tell ourselves: This is due week 7! Julien says that so that we can use Week 8 as time to put in our final little changes before it's due.

During the weekend I further developed my layouts. I totally gave the Publisher's Letter & Welcome page a whole new look. I did a good amount of image and type overlapping in my designs to give it a bit of an edge. Here are some screen shots:

Working on first set of comps

Joyce is coming in to look at our progress on Thursday of next week (week 4). Julien and her both agreed that by then we will have comps for:

1) 4 Page feature - featuring 5 pictures total- 2 food shots, 1 picture recipe, chief picture, restaurant shot (4 pages)

2) Table of Contents (1 page)

3) Publishers Letter (1 page)

4) Michael's Letter (1 page)

Mr. Julien suggested that we scan in the advertisements that were in last years magazine and put them in our comps to see how our designs will flow with real advertisements. We are taking a field trip to a design firm on Tuesday (week 5) to see how they work. That should be interesting. I always like taking design firm tours because it lets me see places that I will possibly be working at once I get out of school.

Below are where my comps are right now. I plan on developing some of them and starting all over on a few of them this weekend. Enjoy!

Week 3: Working on first comps

Today was the first day of week3. We began class with 'show & tell'. I brought in a book called "30 Essential Typeface for a Lifetime" that was put out by Rockport. This book has helped me decide on what typeface/family I will be using for individual projects for quite sometime now. As a designer, I find it very important that keep myself influenced by buying books and looking at the world around me, because if your not influenced your work WILL suffer.

Mr. Julien had us just start working on our comps for the rest of class. During the weekend I choice Frutiger as my typeface for this project because it's clean and according to my book is an "all-purpose font for print media. Since I didn't have any real copy or images over the weekend I just designed a spread just to see how the typeface would look with images and in different styles and sizes:



From today until next class I'm just going to be working on my table of contents and four page spread to show Joyce next week for when she comes in.

Magazine Critique (San Francisco Chef)

Mr. Julien told us to look through the magazine we are supposed to redesign (depending on what group we are in) and critiquing it. Here is what I observed:

1) Don't like the master-head of the magazine. It needs to be more modern looking like the DC Chefs magazine- something sans serif and more modern looking.

2) Type is too big in most places especially in the table on contents

3) Article titles are boring and the grids on the chef features are horrible

4) I really don't like the "on the side" section, it takes away from the article.

5) Photography treatments aren't interesting at all and most photos are color corrected and lack contrast.

Week 2: Research + Rough Due Dates

Today is the second day of the second week in our honors class. Mr. Julien told us that the client (Joyce E. Lavery) will be here today at noon to answer any questions we have. Next week (week 3) Mr. Julien wants us to have initial layouts, a grid, style guide and color printouts/roughs to show in class. During Week 4 the client is going to come back and see our progress. By then we should have print outs of the feature article and table of contents. Mr. Julien really stressed that this magazine is going to be upscale and not like the regular food magazines we are used to seeing.

Research: Since we have a culinary department here at our school, I decided to start at our library and take a look at the magazines that they had. I looked at magazines such as Cater Source Magazine, Gourmet: The Magazine of Good Living, Cook Light, Chef Magazine and Culinary Trends. Here is what I thought of each:

Cater Source Magazine: Very clean but type is way too big. Standard grid but need more variation. Very elegant style and simple with color.

Gourmet: The Magazine of Good Living: My favorite magazine out of all of them. Very good photography! Cover is simple and logo-type is very elegant (script typeface). Titles are all caps, very modern and a lot of grotesque sans serif typefaces. A lot of type over photos that are on the page with a white border (very clean!). This magazine reminds me a lot of Real Simple magazine (one of my favorite magazines for type/design). A lot of contrast with colors.

Cooking Light: Not too exciting, too much going on, can't really tell what's an advertisement and what's an article. Very basic grid.

Food Safety: Thin magazine- reminds me of Dc Chefs but looks cheaper- reminds me of a Safe way Magazine ("check out line magazine"). Type is way too big, reminds me of National Geographic but without photos, very boring!

Chef: Very big in size, typical spreads with a lot of body copy, boring type & cheap paper.

Culinary Trends: Good use of photography, asymmetrically balanced and both the headline type and pull out quotes needs work (to stand out more). Good use of photography in their grid.

Introduction + Week 1

Hello everyone and welcome to my personal blog for my process in The Art Institute of Washington's Graphic Design Honors Class. In this class we are going to be redesigning DC Chefs & San Francisco Chefs. Our class has a total of 10 students and we have broken into teams of five and I am in the San Francisco team with Christine as our leader and Harry, Tim & Ivonne as my team mates. During the first week our instructor Tony Julien told us the basics of the class along with other things that were going to go down as the class progressed:

Project: Dc Chiefs is the main project & we could take on other projects. "Honors class" is the formal title.

* Class might become a formal class later on in this school. We are working out the kinks. The school & department are both enveloped, so that's going to work to our advantage.

Joyce E. Lavery- Represents DC Chiefs and works with us. Will be around campus a lot! She is out client- the "middle client". We will get files from Joyce.

Chief Michaels - Head Chef

Mr Julien wants our feedback. Stresses we are students and are working on a real world project.

Presentation- Week 6 or 7 (more then likely 6)- first presentation to AIW faculty.

Each person is going to have to keep a weekly journal and present it. "This is what we've been doing..."

Mondays- Open critique from 2-6pm - are possibly going to be interacting with other classes (Ms. Reitze's conceptual thinking class)

Paul Magnet- Director of culinary department - culinary is opening up a restaurant (in the works at the moment) - **thought: a class like this could brand and design for the restaurant ** - A LOT GOING ON HERE! - we are setting the way for this schools future.

Talking about doing an honors studio and magazine for this school. Magazine could talk about what's going on- graduation, top students.. etc- Sky is the limit, anything can be pushed.

No required text book but a few recommended texts that we should look into and buy.

We have over 20 culinary magazines in our library- CHECK THOSE OUT! - We should also look at other magazines to get inspired. This is a "high-end magazine", they will be giving these out to people with money - keep those things in mind

FIRST THREE WEEKS OR SO: Research and preliminary sketches. - competition/team work - whoever wins, your design is going to be used by everyone.

Good idea: to visit the restaurants and observe the kind of people there. Talk to people in culinary, research!!!

WEEK 2- Thursday- Someone is gong to come in and talk to us about project managing- different ways of putting down information and being able to get a handle of what your doing. "What's the status with this?.. What's the status with that?" - People will always be asking you that when you take the roll of a project manager. Also the public speaking teacher is going to come in here and help us prepare for our presentation.

WEEK 4 & ON- Mock-ups and visuals and getting more into the collaboration process.

Think about what you think could be done better. Documentation is going to be a big part of this project.

Christine & Kelly are the leaders and will each be on different teams.

Backing up of files is going to be critical. Get in the habit of saving multiple files instead of just re-saving the same file all the time. Buy an external hard drive to back up your files JUST IN CASE!

Proposal to be done by week 3.

What's in it for us (portfolio wise): We will be able to show that we were a part of this. Our names will be on the magazine and we can put this into our resumes and portfolio (as long as we show our process so everyone doesn't have the same spread/design in their graduation portfolio)

Show & tell lecture: Once a week for the first four weeks, bring in design to show and tell. Magazine spread, great typography, photography.. etc. Let's get inspired!

... for now Mr. Julien has just told us to keep researching and looking at other cooking magazines to get inspired.