The Fantastic Daze

Blog Assignment #6

2008-11-22T18:29:00.000-08:00

The different formats of newsletters have a few similarities. Electronic and mailed newsletters usually have some sort of cover, or masthead, with a logo or nameplate that is easily identifiable. They usually have a very basic color scheme (no more than 1 or 2 colors). And most commonly, they will have some sort of calendar of events, dates of interest, or upcoming items of interest highlighted in the text.

A major difference between the two formats is the fact that they are both different formats. Because one is published online, page size and organization of information is usually completely different. Electronically, the text is usually set to flow, so there are no seperated pages, just one really long page. Mailed newsletters have to be conscious of how big it is, how it is folded, and the grid that arises from having to turn pages.

In the publication design book, of all the designs I saw, the newsletter for ASKO Schonberg, an musical ensemble group, seems like it would be the easiest to translate into a digital format. Mainly because it is a single column format, with a relatively consistant and orderly organization of type. Many of the others are very complicated, with an abundance of callouts, overlapping type and photographs, and information that spreads across the different pages.

And to see Fontshop and Emigre news do both an electronic publication and a hard copy newsletter seems to me the smartest approach to newsletters. On the one hand, printing it is costly, but an object that is tangible can feel much more polished and beautiful. Electronic newsletters on the other hand are much more cost efficient, but lack the desirability or polished feel that printed ephemera evokes.

Blog Assignment #5

2008-11-09T14:52:00.000-08:00

Henry Wolf, an Austrian born American designer, was best known for his work at Harper's Bazaar between 1958-1961. Having succeded Alexey Brodovitch as art director for Harper's, Wolf worked with photographers Richard Avedon and Man Ray to create the striking covers that were made during this period. The concepts and imagery for his covers were very strong, and his typography always very dynamic and well put together.

Help!

2008-10-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

I'd Like

2008-10-20T15:26:00.001-07:00

under the sea.

You're such a failure.

2008-10-08T15:00:00.001-07:00

Script Faces

2008-10-06T17:39:00.001-07:00

Here are a few script faces I doodled in a couple of my classes.

Blog Assignment #4

2008-09-21T22:42:00.000-07:00

For this assignment, I found this book called The Glass Castle: A Memoir. It is an autobiography by a writer named Jeanette Walls. From what I gathered from Amazon's review of the book, it's mostly about the author's unusual upbringing.

The book design is done by a well known book designer Rodrigo Corral. The format is the same as the book I am working on, 8 x 5. The publisher is Scribner in 2005, and the ISBN is 0-7432-4753-1. As for the type faces:

For the front cover as well as the chapter headings, it looks like a script face, similar to the face used in the body of author's info, as seen above. From what I can tell, that type face is probably Mrs Eaves by Emigre. The giveaway is probably the uppercase G, C, and R.

Looking a little closer, it seems that the body of the text is set in Times Roman. The big indicator's are the short descenders on the P and the Q's. I imagine the designer chose this typeface largely because of it's ability to save space. As to why he chose Mrs Eaves for the titles, cover, and author page, probably because it's a very elegant face, reinforcing the fact this book is about a young girl's troubled upbringing.

It's a bit difficult to tell the size of the text without the actual hard copy, but my guess is around 9-10 points. I'm guessing the leading is the same size of the type face, given the nature of Times Roman. The indent appears to be maybe 2 ems, pretty close actually to what I did in my books. The line length looks like it's about 65 characters long, which a perfectly comfortable line length for extended reading.

Many of the design decisions this designer made are similar to mine. Mainly the line length, the text size, and the same leading size. However, he utilizes two different faces for this book. In my books, I chose one type face, and used color to indicate heading or titles.

Top Ten Album Covers of All Time

2008-09-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite mediums of graphic design has been the album cover. Although it has seen a decline in recent years, I think their are still many artists out their utilizing it very well. This is by no means an objective, classical look at album covers, just some of my personal favorites.

10. Autolux - Future Perfect

An incredible debut from a fairly unknown band, the thing I really liked about this cover was the contrast between the light and dark balloons. It gives off a really creepy vibe, semi-science fictionish. Interesting fact, the record label the are on is owned by the Coen Brothers.

9. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Is it a good design, or is it simply iconic? I'm not sure. It's so freakishly simple, but the moment I first saw this album cover, it was seared into my memory. Like it or hate it, it captures the band perfectly.

8. My Bloody Valentine

I know. It's a pink guitar blob. But if you have ever heard My Bloody Valentine, you'd realize how absolutely perfect this album cover is. Their music is precisely this: hazy, blurry, druggy, vaguely sexual.

7. Radiohead - In Rainbows

A pretty recent addition to my top ten list, all of Radiohead's album artwork deserves a place on this list. However, this caught my eye because of how big a departure it was from their previous stuff. It's purely colorful blobs of splattered wax, with letterspaced words and a complete lack of symbols (which normally a recurring theme in their art).

6. Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Stereolab is so awesome, they make gradients look good. It's true.

5. Danielson - Ships

A crazy, fundementalist Christian family band, these guys have the craziest music. And their artwork is equally crazy. I don't even know what it is. Psychedelic Christian? Folk-psychedelic Christian? Whatever it is, it's really cool.

4 - Deerhunter - Cryptograms

A great designer as well as a great musician, Bradford Cox, the lead singer of Deerhunter is a graphic designer. He does all the bands artwork, and is very fond of illustrations like these, as well as the use of Helvetica. Really trippy stuff.

3. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

A truly classic album cover, Joy Division released this in 1979, and this cover has an interesting story behind it. From Wikipedia:

"The front cover image comes from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, and was originally drawn with black lines on a white background. It presents exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR B1919+21 (often referred to in the context of this album by its older name, CP^[1] The cover design is credited to Joy Division, Peter Saville and Chris Mathan. The back cover of the album contains no track listings, leaving a blank table where one would expect the listings to be.

The original LP release contained no track information on the labels, nor the traditional "side one" and "side two" designations. The ostensible "side one" was labeled Outside and displayed a reproduction of the image on the album cover, while the other side was labeled Inside and displayed the same image with the colors reversed (black-on-white). Track information and album credits appeared on the inner sleeve only."

2. Benoit Pioulard - Precis

What is it? A photograph? An illustration? Both? It's gorgeous, whatever the hell it is. The use of typography is incredibly restrained as well. Most bands have a tendency to have their names take up half the cover. Not here. I can't tell if the type face is Futura or Kabel. I'm leaning towards Kabel.

1. Radiohead - Kid A

I know, how predictable of me. I truly am a hack for Radiohead. I fell in love with this album cover the moment I saw it. The typography, the colors, the composition, the contrast between hand drawn and computer rendered overlay's, it captures such an apocalyptic feel (appropriate to the sound of the album).

Well, that's it for that list. I'll try to think of some other favorite designs I have found over the years, and maybe come up with a few more top lists.

Blog Assignment #3: Grids & Such

2008-09-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Pretty much every website on the internet these days uses a grid of some sort. I hadn't really paid much attention to it before, but a few websites that I frequently visit utilize some sort of grid. This first one, a blog/website for the band Grizzly Bear is a very simple two column grid. Most blogs are done similar to this, however the two columns that make up the body of the text are exactly the same width. Alot of blogs will have a much smaller right column, much larger left column.

Another website that I get virtually all of my news from is the New York Times. Their website is a stellar example of what looks like... a 5 1/2 column grid. As you can from the picture below, 1/2 column on the very far left is used for links. The next column is one single column, made up mostly of text. The next column represents 2 columns total, and is used for the main photograph. Then there is another 2 columns on the very far right, where it is divided up for links, as well as used for advertisements. It's also grided out into rows, as can be seen when scrolling down through their website. The rows are not as consistant as the columns.

The Times, They Are A Changin'

2008-09-04T08:34:00.001-07:00

So I kind of reworked my blog design a bit. I took everything David said extremely literally, and didn't really play around with the page elements. Well, I went back, and reworked a few things. Actually everything. I based the color palette and design around an assignment that I did for another class (this one).

Anyway, today, I thought I would post some images from one of my absolute favorite illustrator/designer/typographer in the business today. I've probably mentioned him many times, but I'll do it again anyway. His name is Chris Ware, and everything about this mans work is absolutely phenomenal. Instead of trying to verbally express how beautiful his design is, I'm just going to post some beautiful high res examples.

I saw this book cover for Voltaire's Candide in some print publication, but it didn't have to do with him, but the art director on this project. I recognized it immediately as an illustration he had done.

I remember when this movie came out earlier this year, and again, I knew right off the bat is was Chris Ware. His typography can be so incredibly retro/nostalgic, yet modern at the same time.

I strongly suggest picking up his book Jimmy Corrigan for those of you that are interested in his design style. The book is not only beautifully illustrated, but masterfully told as well. The format of this book is 8 x 6.5 inches.

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that publication design is serious."

2008-09-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

"OK, so it's a funny word . . . but what is publication design, anyway? Publication design is the name for when your body begins to develop and change. During publication design, your body will grow faster than any other time in your life, except for when you were an infant. Back then, your body was growing rapidly and you were learning new things — you'll be doing these things and much more during publication design. Except this time, you won't have diapers or a rattle and you'll have to dress yourself!

It's good to know about the changes that come along with publication design before they happen, and it's really important to remember that everybody goes through it. No matter where you live, whether you're a guy or a girl, or whether you like hip-hop or country music, you will experience the changes that occur during publication design. No two people are exactly alike. But one thing all adults have in common is they made it through publication design."

Publication design means different things to different people. Some people believe that publication design as is defined in the example given above. Those people are wrong, because all I did was switch out the word "puberty" with "publication design".

However, there is something of a point to be made here. In a way, publication design IS something that everyone is beginning to go through, in this current age. Publication design used to be exclusive to the elite, the editors, those with the proper technology to produce newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and naughty photographs. Indeed, it wasn't long ago that the Neanderthals known as "the people" were resorting to desperate measures, such as drawing with charcoal and/or blood to get their fix of imagery that they so desperately needed. Even though the invention of printing allowed commoners (such as yourselves) to purchase publications, it remained a mystery for a very long time how exactly these publications came into existence, and how they were designed. In fact, 95% of the public believed it was either black magic or "intelligent design".

Starting in the 1990's and extending into our current decade, publication design took a nosedive for the worse. With the invention of the computer, the internet, and Microsoft Word, Church groups everywhere rejoiced, and began to cheaply produce and distribute their own hideously designed newsletters, pamphlets, and books. It would have been the end of publication design as we knew it (becoming something closer to publication not-design), had it not been for the innovation that accompanied the introduction of all this new technology. Designers had found new, quick, and incredibly easy ways of publishing the written word. And with it, they disseminated their knowledge and advice to the commoners, so that we all could read things a little bit easier.

And here we are today. Publication design is now a tool that rests in the many, not the few. The ability to alter a few components such as font, size, color, and positioning on blogs, email, Word, and message boards has allowed millions of individuals across the world to become amateur publication designers.

Now that I have given you, the reader, a thorough haranguing about the history of publication design, I would like to give you a few examples, so that you may come to better know this nymph that is known as publication design.

The New Yorker is a magazine I read quite frequently. Their website is a very faithful, and at times more pleasant translation of their printed counterpart. The infamous New Yorker typeface Irvin is utilized throughout the website, and abundant amounts of white space allow the reader breathing room in a traditionally claustrophobic digital environment.

Another website that I have seen pop up on many designers lists of typographically-pleasing websites is a site called A List Apart. Again, the typefaces that are chosen are very legible and eye-pleasing, and large swathes of white space allow for a more comfortable reading.

Next week, a long-winded and completely unnecessary historical background of gouache, and why it is the bane of all existence as we know it.