Masthead Sketches

These are some sketches I did to help me figure out what I want for a masthead. I went with the name Country Kitchen because I wanted to do a cooking magazine and country/vintage has become very popular lately. I wanted to do a modern classy twist on a country kitchen. Nothing clashy, or cheesy.

Magazine Spreads

Here are the thumbnails of the tracings I did of Real Simple, Taste of Home, and Popular Photography.

While trying to analyze some magazine I had at my house I have noticed a few things. I hadn't realized before that contents aren't always a spread. Sometime (like in these three magazines) they are front and back. They also mix serif and sans-serif fonts which I think works really well and is a great idea. In the Simple magazine they use san serif for body text in some places and in others they use serif. I'm not quite sure what the point for that was. It was pretty easy once I started tracing over the spreads and placing that paper of different pages to see what kind of grid they use. One thing that was I was trying to look for was a theme line. Sometimes it was easier than others to see this but I think the real simple magazine had a real definite theme line and that was mostly due to they used a line a lot of times.

Downloadable Grids

This website is kind of a fun way to say how many columns etc you want in your grid. You can even say what point size you want to use and it will generate it.  It also has examples of designs using the grid.
http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/a-brief-look-at-grid-based-layouts-in-web-design/

http://www.thegridsystem.org/2009/templates/indesign-a4-gerstners-complex-grid-system-12/

http://960.gs/

http://www.teehanlax.com/downloads/baseline-grid/

good for a mobile grid too
http://cssgrid.net/

This has a few different options
http://crsindesigntemplates.com/free-indesign-grid-templates/blank-indesign-grid-system-templates/

This was just some research we did in class looking at grids. We went out and found grids we could download just so we can see how many columns are really used in a grid. I found that typically there is a whole but used in a grid even when it only looks like 3 or 4. It seems like its typically a high number grid and uses a 3 column layout which often fools your eye.

Invitation Design- Final

     While working on this project I feel like I was able to learn a lot. One of the first things I came to understand was that I had always thought that these first two projects and the alphabet project in Graphic Design were just to get us thinking creatively. I remember thinking that they do not really have much to do with what we will really be doing in the graphic design world but I decided that is not the case. I learned that these projects are to show us that we don't have to only use the computer. I think we are in a time when we rely on a computer so heavily and we are afraid to break out of that comfort zone. With this project I was able to do majority of it by hand. I designed the type for the invites and the tickets on the computer but I just used it so I could transfer it onto the Lokta paper. Another thing I learned was that I was able to apply a lot of the different things I've already learned in this class, previous classes and classes outside of graphic design. I remembered how we built the box for the 50 cards project and that was how I based this project. I took stuff from Typography and Graphic Design about scale and leading. I also used what I have learned so far in book arts to wrap the book. Because of my book arts class I was able to know about the Lokta paper for the invites and I feel like they added a really nice touch to the piece rather than them just being regular paper or card stock.
     I really enjoyed this project and I had a lot of fun with it. It was fun to think up the story line and plan out how I wanted to do it even though it changed a whole lot from my original idea but I am OK with that because I think my final turned out way better than I had imagined at the start of this. I can only hope that it will survive the delivery!

Mock Up Invitation

This is my mockup of my invitation. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I made the box and I made the book cloth and dyed the fabric. I transferred the type onto Loktah paper from a toner printer. I feel like I'm pretty close to the final version that I want it to be at but I think it might be missing something. I don't feel like the "keepsake box" really translates that well. So we'll see what I come up with for the final.

Invitation Sketches

For this project two of my main ideas was to either make a skeleton that the person has to dig up and put together and it has the invitation written on the bones. Or to have a witches brew and they have to put certain potions into the caldron to get their invitation.

These are all just rough sketches and I have a mockup of the box the skeleton will be buried. I just made it out of black foam board and it has a headstone. I was planning on burring it in died rice so it can represent dirt.

Invitation-Research

For this first step in the project we split up the assignments after getting our assignment. We are to design invitations for Salem's 75th Annual Halloween Festival. It will be help October 19-31 at historic down town. We each took a task of researching witches, invitations, typography, festivals/fairs and Salem. These are just a few of the things we found. After we were finished we shared what we learned with each other. I personally feel like we were able to learn a lot of and gather a lot more information by dividing up the research.

Children's Book- Rattypunzel

Now that this project is over I can honestly say that I have learned a lot. I have never designed a children’s book or even wrote one. I have not done any type of collage for a long time and I have never worked with illustrations so it was a new experience for me. I struggled a lot at first with my illustrations and I just couldn’t seem to wrap my head around what I wanted to do. I could picture in my head what I wanted it to look like but I couldn’t make it look that way. I tried cutting and gluing everything by hand and I tried doing more of a digital illustration. In the end I went with a little mix. I did a lot of research by looking at book and different collages and talking with my group members. I looked at collage books and even regular books. I asked a lot of people for opinions on what they thought would look good and I even got some help with the story. I mostly tried to think of what my son and my nieces and nephews, all between ages 1 and 8, would like in a book and I tried to design it around them. All of my typography is cut by hand and then scanned in and I placed each letter. The illustrations are collaged digitally and I think my illustrations came along way. My design is simple and very fitting for kids I think. I tried to vary the scale of the typography to help add interest to certain words and I tried to make the typography flow with the page and the design. I went with a fold out to add more to the illusion that her hair goes on for a long distance. The finished product has 24 pages and then the fold out and is an 8x8 book. I feel like this is a good size for kids because it is big enough to see everything and be fun but its not so big that they can’t hold it in their lap. I’m happier with how it turned out but I would still like to work with this more and change some stuff since this was a pretty quick project.