Response: Prototype critiques

This week we showed our M-word prototypes again. I was pretty pleased with the response to my pages. The Q&A is especially coming along nicely. I'll talk about that in my critique for the week.
Through this process I am definitely learning about how I design. While I have good initial ideas, when I have the chance to sit back, look at something again and then have an even more brilliant idea then I started with. This is really helpful since I tend to multitask while working on projects. I can do a draft of one project, then a draft of another and so on and so on. And then after finishing all my first drafts I can move back through to look at how I can make each draft better. I really hope I am able to implement this process more in the next few weeks.

Response: Magazine Prototype Presentations

This week we presented our magazine prototypes to our publishing teams. I was extremely nervous. You remember the prototype I posted last week? Well, my laptop's logic board crashed on Wednesday evening and I had no laptop until Monday morning. This meant that I lost my entire prototype, and due to other obligations I could not start to remake it until Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, minus the cover, I liked everything about this new version better than the original. My publishing group changed their feature for the publication, causing my cover concept to change, and while I am not upset with the way it came out I do prefer the cover from last week a bit better. I had some trouble placing my sell lines on the new cover. Here is my new prototype:






I ended up choosing to use the canvas box on all of my pages. I made this decision based on feedback from my fellow designers. I realized that it would be a good way to brand the magazine. I also kept the same concept for the department page, although I tweaked it by finding a better image.
My main focus was making everything "user-friendly" so that someone could skim it for quick information or read it thoroughly if they chose to do so. That's why the feature had many pull out info sections along with space for real body copy. I also tried to keep things consistent with how I pulled out information in the department and the feature. I thought this would make it more efficient for a reader. Despite not being chosen as creative director for the project I am still very happy with the work I produced. I am going to tweak the cover and play with the sell lines a bit though. And after seeing Krista's work I am excited to work on the project.

I think the toughest thing for me was having to present this to the publishing group. It was tough to have to explain every single decision I made. While I just explained a few of my decisions on here, it's hard to think of everything as you're going and make sure you explain everything so that the publishers, some of whom have no design experience, can understand the concepts. For example, they wanted a bright color palette. This sounds great in theory, but bright to a designer can be a lot different than bright to a non-designer because we know that too bright will look cheesy. They were also worried about over-using photos, which I think are great to use.

All in all this was a great experience and has me a little bit less nervous for our final magazine presentations in May. Now it's just time to get to work!

Response: Prototype Critique

This week in class we started critiquing our magazine prototypes. I showed my cover and a feature design along with a potential logo for my home decor magazine, Home Canvas. I wanted to respond to something I found interesting with my critique. To begin, here are the two pages:


While I have many things to continue working on, I want to focus on one comment made by my fellow designers. When I exported the PDF files, purple boxes showed up around the pages, about an inch from each edge. (When I exported the files as blogger-supported images the boxes were lost). The original plan was not to have the boxes, but the class seemed to like them. I am now considering putting them back in for when I show the work next week. Or I might make my masthead have the canvas box around it. I plan on playing with this concept as I work on my prototype more.
I also need to use another color other than purple. My department page is covered in purple, which while I enjoy this color, is overwhelming and was mentioned several times during my in-class critique. There are a few other things that I am going to continue to play with this weekend, but overall my biggest surprise was the idea of the canvas-like boxes on my pages. I can't believe designers thought it was a good idea. I would have never thought to do that.