Downbeat Magazine Redesign

"Downbeat is a music magazine which deals with everything that moves in the jazz and blues genre. This was a school assignment, and I tried to recapture the spirit from the jazz musics prime time." 
-- Jonas Emmertsen

I found this editorial redesign by Jonas Emmertsen on Behance, and I love it! The combination of sans-serif and serif typefaces works very well. I like how the designer used a very modern sans-serif typeface for the display type and a very readable serif typeface for the body copy and other small type elements. By using different weights and styles, the designer was able to create a type hierarchy using only two fonts. Also, the typefaces help translate the feeling of jazz music, which is perfect for a magazine featuring jazz musicians and events.

The Inward Eye: Transcendence in Contemporary Art

I looked at the catalog The Inward Eye: Transcendence in Contemporary Art, which was published to accompany the exhibition (by the same title) at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. 

This catalog uses a consistent grid system for organization, interesting asymmetrical text layouts for variety, and in the Plates section, emphasizes imagery of the artwork displayed in the exhibition. ALSO, as Maia pointed out in class, the imagery spreads had margins around photographs of paintings, while photographs of sculptures/installations bled off the pages. This is an interesting element to think about for our book designs!

Imagery Group

We were focusing on imagery in our exhibition books. Between the 5 books we were looking at we found many things different as well as many things the same with the way the images were handled. For example in a few of our books there was a obvious grid they were going off of such as the boxed images in Elizabeth's example and also the book we were given by Mia had a different grid as well. Both grids were completely different due to the face they were chosen for different reasons. The one on Margaret Kilgallen was kid of a "clustered" style grid of images which was most likely chosen since her style of art is also in that "clustered" style. Most of our other books were photography or paintings and sculpture installations which some bled off the page and others were strategically placed within the margins amongst plenty of whitespace. It was interesting to see the different play in the exhibition book for the Guggenheim versus the one about transcendence in art. In the Guggenheim book you see a clear approach that was very clean and organized with the intention of trying to just simply showcase the amazing work that is there while the other book had different things going on in different images leaving some full page bleed and others with multiple photos per page. The photographs in Emily's book represented the softness of the artwork which was appropriate for the exhibition while the Guggenheim is covering a much more wide range of art leaving that style a little more basic. In most all of the books the images were in CMYK except Jaclyn's book had some two-toned images as well. The books we were looking at were:

-The Guggenheim Collection (Jennifer)
-Margaret Kilgallen; In the Sweet Bye and Bye (Mia)
-Michael Sailstorfer Forst (Elizabeth)
-The Inward Eye; Transcendence in Contemporary Art (Emily)
-Eran Shakine; Sunny Side Up (Jaclyn)

Children's Creativity Museum

I like the typography used in promotional brochure designed by Viet Huynh for the Children's Creativity Museum in San Francisco. The overall goal for the new brochure was to create a vibrant design that would also expand the museum's demographics and increase museum membership and attendance. They used bright colors, kid-friendly graphics, and very legible sans-serif typefaces.

I love the cover of the brochure, where the designer made the word "CREATE" the same color as the background, using a drop shadow for differentiation.

I love how the designer used different colors to create hierarchy within the text. It helps me tell what is a title and what is body text. I also appreciate that the black & white colored text is still readable on the bold colored backgrounds. I'd like to use this technique in my work sometime. 

But of course... what I love MOST about this brochure is that it includes a sticker and when you unfold it completely, it becomes a coloring page to keep the kiddos entertained!

http://creativity.org/

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Childrens-Creativity-Museum-Brochure/4129419

Alex Perez likes to Type Fight

This week I discovered Alex Perez, an illustrator and graphic designer from Madison, Wisconsin, who recently competed in Type Fight, a typographic design competition. 

“Type Fight started as a project to distract Drew Roper, Ryan Paule and Bryan Butler from their day-to-day grind. Each week they ask two designers to create the same letter and pin them against each other in the typographic ring to battle it out for best looking character.” http://thetypefight.com/

This past November, Alex Perez went up against Neil Rook to design the best “3.” After 862 votes were cast, Alex Perez’s beautifully designed letter won the competition with 65% of the votes.

I love the dimension Alex created and the colors he used. I also like how Alex created an organic shape while still keeping parts of the character as a rigid block letter. My favorite part of this design is the decorative line-work, and I would love to be able to use an element like that in my work.

Check out more of Alex’s work at http://theworkofalexperez.com/# and follow all of the Type Fight competitions at http://thetypefight.com/. 

The Casual Vacancy

I love the typography used in the cover design for J.K. Rowling's latest book, The Casual Vacancy. The book jacket was designed by Mario J. Pulice, and the jacket illustration and hand-lettering was done by Joel Holland. This "big novel about a small town" is J.K. Rowling's first adult novel after writing the Harry Potter series, and the cover design definitely has a more mature feeling than the Harry Potter cover art. The white text pops off of the bold red background, which is surrounded by a vibrant yellow border. The black "x" mark in a box in the middle of the design represents a vote on an election ballot, and it's very appropriate since The Casual Vacancy mainly focuses on a small town election. I like how the colors and typography give this design a very strong look, and I would like for one of my future designs to be as vivid and dynamic as this one.

Vogue magazine & Didot

A typeface in use that interested me was the Didot typeface used in Vogue magazine. Didot, classified as a Modern typeface, seems perfect for the elite fashion magazine. Its high-contrasting strokes and thin serifs without brackets help express Vogue magazine's elegance and high-fashion drama. This typography decision (along with other design elements used in Vogue) contributes to the magazine's look and feel, which attracts an international readership, mainly including upper class women and fashion enthusiasts.

I especially liked how the Didot typeface used for the Vogue title was carried throughout the magazine as headlines of articles, like for this "Flash" section featuring Andrew Garfield.

I really liked how the white text of the "FLASH" title was mostly offset by the image and a red background, but the bottom serifs of the "F" and "H" blended into the white area surrounding the image. It was a subtle design element, and I'd like to incorporate something like that into my work. I'd also like to work with text that bleeds off the page like this one does. 

Emil Ruder's Typographie

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2635/3923214090_1473d6411c_o.jpg

An example of typography in use that interested me was the book cover for Emil Ruder's Typographie. 

The book, originally published in 1967, aimed at educating typographers and graphic designers on the fundamentals of typography. It also helped spread the International Typographic Style (or Swiss School), which Emil Ruder developed. 

The International Typographic Style emphasized the importance of sans-serif typefaces and the need for a grid system that produced asymmetrical layouts. Emil Ruder supported the idea that form follows function, and he believed that text lost its value when it could not be read.

I feel like the book cover for Typographie expresses the ideas behind the International Typographic Style, because it shows a sans-serif typeface, an asymmetrical layout, and the text is readable, despite the letters being backwards.

I like how the letters of the book title are backwards and stacked along the left side of the cover, yet the title is still legible. It makes the viewer think about the author/designer's design choices. I also like the contrast of black and white in this cover design. I'd like to try to incorporate something like this into one of my future designs.