Thank You

I have been wanting to write a thank you or reflection about this past semester for a while now. I must say that it was the most wonderful, challenging, exciting, and exhausting semesters I have ever had. One of the best achievements for me as a designer was the feeling of confidence in my design knowledge and skills. I had the great privilege to work with some of the best teachers (ever). I know this letter is a bit late, but I think my mind needed some time to relax after the business from the end of the semester. I was so proud of my classmates that I had the opportunity to listen to for sophomore reviews and to have all of the faculty including Kathy McCoy was amazing. It was such a great thing for me to really get to listen to all of the good, bad, improvements, and critiques that they had for me. I think it was a great end to the year, but also inspiration for the next and for this summer. I noticed certain aspects about myself and who I am as a designer that I would have probably never have truly noticed without this process. 
So thank you to Jamie, Marty, Tyler, Kidwell, Chris, and Kathy!

Woodstock: A Youth Revolution

Woodstock, A Youth Revolution

The information graphic at the end was produced as a gate fold that is part of page 25.

Woodstock: Youth Revolution, iPad Magazine interaction

marston_iPadhippiemagazine


(still would like to make this a moving image to see the motions, but this is just the keynote presentation converted to powerpoint)

iPad: Paper to the Digital Screen

A couple steps to my iPad magazine. It begins with a gallery of images which can be tapped and then enlarged. Next you swipe to get the next page. When you arrive to the guitar infograph you have the option of tapping a number to hear a song from that album.  In my example I have the White Album being played with Back to the U.S.S.R. by the Beatles. 

Digital Magazine: iPad Sketches

Within this sketch I had a couple of interactive ideas. 

-To start I wanted the guitar to be the interactive element to the reader. I have the circles (the tuning pegs) as a moment to tap and that certain album will pop up allowing you to see the track listing and the ability to listen to each track. Along with the album cover and info on it specifically. 

-I also have the individual album name allowing interaction by tapping on it, and having the album and track listing come up. 

-With this page I wanted to incorperate a picture gallery. I have a line as a graphic element throughout my spreads already so I wanted to turn that into a gallery of images allowing the reader to change the image above. Swiping the images to see the selection on the bar as well as the larger image above. 

-I also had a couple of moments on this page. First I liked the idea of being able to actually see the location of these protests listed on my inforgraph. So a map would come up with the local as well as images of the event.
-After looking through and watching the videos about the iPad I liked how they included the viewer in the information. So taking a poll to see comparrisons of today and during the 60s of people agreeance of the Vietnam war or having some type of poll.... whether it be about the war or just along the lines of, Would you have protested? -yes, no.... ect.
-I also have a pull quote on this spread that is pulled from a chant expressed by hippies. So having that audio of people actually singing/saying the chan. 

iPad Video & Reading Responses

WIRED Magazine 

I like how Creative Director of WIRED, Scott Dadich, starts out by saying we are going through a revolution in journalism. I think that the having magazines whether it be online or on the iPad or iPhone have brought up so many new ways of interactiveness and limitless ways of obtaining information. Being able to physically touch something to interact with it allows a personal experience with the story being told. (the 360 view of the car) WIRED magazine has a sense of fluid motion. Easy access to all of the pages and hot spots that can be interacted with. 

Esquire Magazine 

With the Esquire magazine I really appreciated how the magazine now "talks" to the viewer. The opening where the person on the cover welcomes to the magazine. I think that the way they direct the viewer's eye to hot spots and the direction of the page or which way to scroll. Just like with any magazine now on the iPad there is now a chance to give the viewer even more information. With print the author only has a limited amount of space, but now with the iPad the information given is next to unlimited. The designer has control of the interaction the viewer has with the magazine where print you have the action of flipping a page. Now one can control how to move an object or fully interact with a quiz or watch a video, experience different outcomes. 

TIME Magazine

One thing that really struck me with TIME was that the viewer has total control of the experience they want to receive from the magazine. The options the viewer has to go through the magazine to receive information spans from a birds eye view of a map to watching videos of precisely what one is watching.  They really take on the challenge of using as much media as possible. This gives the reader personal experience and understanding by actually see what you are reading.  The use of imagery with photographs is unlimited. The page no longer limits selecting 2 photos. Now you can view a slide show and scroll through a whole gallery. I also found it interesting that by using certain finger motions it allows the reader even more options: breaking news and sharing media by highlighting the text and sharing it through social networking. 


READING
Thoughts on Designing for the iPad
The thought of designing an App for the iPad is pretty crazy to me. It's the allowance of anyone and everything having a physical interaction with your design. It's almost like skipping the part of printing and paper and jumping to to screen for the same product. Just like all parts of design everything has it's own language and designing for the iPad or iPhone is no exception with "Swipe" and "tap." One thing that Powazek brings up is the intimacy of designing for the iPad. This is a person's personal experience. Thinking that you have no idea where a person might touch or try to scroll so designing something that will accommodate this fact. Being clear and concise with the placement of what you, the designer, wants those to be interacting with and making sure that that is clear. 

Some "Hip" Inspiration

In my History of Graphic Design class the last lectured consisted of posters from the  60s. We talked of Wes Wilson and Rick Griffen. They are both creators of what we think of today of very lucid, lava like type. Wes Wilson's work is unlike any other. His work and creation of this very well reconized type is found and replicated on many others posters as well.  Rick Griffen is also a illustrator from the 60s who created the famous album covers for the Greatful Dead as well as comics during this time. 

 {Wes Wilson}

{Rick Griffen}

Hippie Layouts: round 3

Almost there… A few tweaks and fixes within the body copy. I also have been struggling with getting my Woodstock '69 infograph to flow within my spreads. Something I am going to try is keeping the gate fold, but changing my infograph to horizontal spread instead of having it vertical. It has not been successful with getting the viewer to actually turn and open the gate fold to see the infograph. 

Spread Layouts, Round 2

All Three Spreads

[With the two above the infograph will be a fold out or a gate fold- see below. 

The infograph will be page 1 and 2 of the example below.] 

Spread Layouts, Round 1

WOODSTOCK: A Youth Revolution

-For this first round we focused on the opening spread.  I wanted to have bold type and simple layouts. I like the first one the best with the full bleed image, as well as the typeface for the title. I wanted to incorporate a quote on the first spread as well because I think that helps pull the reader in. I didn't know precisely how to go about aligning the quote, but since crit I have solved that issue. For the folio I Incorporated my icon to show that this is the music section for the magazine as well as the rectangle so when the reader flips through the magazine they easily find the section they are looking for. On the other two I wanted to bring another color element and use different typefaces for the titles. For the second one I wanted to try something different by really enforcing my columns. I think it makes it a little uninviting... the columns set that way seem to have no purpose. On the third one I liked the pink bars framing out each page. I thought it would be a good element that could be incorporated throughout the other spreads. 

Lecture Poster: Reflection, think bigger & be bigger

       I wanted to write about my thoughts after completing this project and what it has taught me. Initially I thought that my designer, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, was picked for me due to her feminists beliefs and what she has done for women in the design community. I still think that is a big part of the selection but now after doing this project I think another reason was to really push me out of my comfort zone. This was a challenging project at times. I think the poster I created is different for me, but it still shows me as a designer and represents Levrant at the same time. Levrant's big ideas, strong personality, and my teacher Marty pushed me right along through this project. I just needed to get out of my usual little design "box" and think bigger and be bigger. Be bold, but still thinking about the small details. Levrant is a bold person with bold opinions and design, which I needed to get across in my poster. So really for me in this project I wanted to show my designer's beliefs and represent her as a woman and feminist.

More Poster Iterations...

>>This was me still being safe.... I needed to get bigger and better. 

I think that I did on my final poster. 

First Postcard Iterations

FINAL POSTER: Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

poster

front of postcard

back of postcard

         The process of creating this poster for the current perspective lecture series has been a really rewarding and challenging process. The hardest part for me was portraying my concept within my type composition. I wanted to portray Levrant's boldness and her sophistication. It was difficult for me to really go over the boundaries. The difficulties were in me trying to integrate my type and image. I wanted to show that feminism is about women as a united whole and not about just being a women. It's about representing women's rights and equality. I derived my title from a quote I read from an interview with Levrant when asked about what it means to be a feminist. I have touched on this before but the image represents my concept again with the one burnt out bulb which represents the "me" and then the two lit up contrasting with the background represent the "we." I also added a little moment with the lower case i in Sheila. It is a moment that I kinda of arrived upon accidentally but decided to keep it. It resembles a person/human form or specifically a woman. It helped me a lot when my teacher Marty said to me, "Sheila didn't get to where she is today by being safe." This helped inspire my new ideas for my poster. It has come a long way from where it was. I really enjoy how simple my image is but at the same time portrays a larger message. With the one light being burnt out which represents the "me" and then the other two on which represents the "we." I placed the phrase, "It's not about the me," by that light and underneath the bulb really show this concept. I placed "It's about the WE." much larger and in white so that it has a high contrast with the light fixture it is placed on. I am overall very pleased with my end result. My poster has come a long way from where it was to where it is now, and I hope that it does a good job of representing Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. 

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Poster Explorations: Round 3

me and my designer.

I wanted to share some information about my graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. She is a woman of great achievments through out her career. She is known for her feminists ways and what she has done for the female community. After reading interviews about her, I got inspired by her strong voice and knowledge she has as design. In an interview with Broad Recognition: A Feminist Magazine at Yale. Interviewer Jessica Svendsen interviewed de Bretteville and asked she if she thought that typefaces could represent gender and if certain typefaces are more masculine/feminine then others. Her response, "I think a better way to desribe a typeface would be to talk about its decorative aspects, basic structure, figure/field, how each element related to another element, how they can be different or the same. I think there is a whole range to talk about formanl aspects of anything you look at with out haveing to knee-jerk back into gender stereotypes." Her comments from this question led me to my typeface choice for my posters. I am using Gotham. I kept looking at it thinking that if you really have to classify it in a gender I would say that it goes both ways. 


My title: "It's Not About the Me, It's About the We."
 A big part of what I am trying to represent is not a to make my poster look feminine but what it means to be feminist. She was asked if there was a distinction between a female designer and a feminist designer? She reponded in saying that a female designer talks for herself and a feminist designer represent women as a whole.  I feel that I can sum up what she says, but read it for yourself below. Her ending statement inspired my title when she states that being a feminists is not about me as a woman , but about all woman and representing women as whole. 

Imagery: I think her design is bold and uses type in an overall simple way that's to the point. I imagined if I were her  walking around Vanderslice trying to find inspration. I found a light ficture that had one bulb burnt out and then two lit up. After already pretty much having my title down, I thought about how that represented the me and the we. I want the poster to look like it was designed by me, and inspired by her. I think that is the fine line within this project. I also knew ran into a bright yellow door, that reminded me of one of her posters in how it was bold in color and pretty simple with the type.  

Bretteville's poster

Bretteville's magazine cover

Bretteville's poster

PHOTOGRAPHS

 

 



MY POSTERS

 

 

 

 Certain posters of her inprired my choice with color, imagery, and text. I want to portray her and what I have learned from looking at her work. 
These are the two ideas from my my first round that got pushed to the 2nd. I hope that each are represent my ideas conceptually but that the viewer has to take time with them and the image. 
-with the lights so far have been the most obvisously conceptually with my title/concept. The one bulb is out so it is the "me" whereas the other two are lit, so that is the "we" but they are lit up, full of engery, like a group. I found this light in Vanderslice by the Epperson Auditorium underneath the steps by the restrooms...
-for the door it is just the simple fact that Bretteville opened doors for women. She unlocked the pathway for feminist designers and for women in general. Her goal is not only to focus on feminist designers with her work, but to care about women in general. Thinking about women who don't have anything, and figuring out what really keeps women from seeing/reaching their full potential.