Final Newspaper Club

This was my final Newspaper Club design, I changed from using the bright pink the whole way through to a more subtle lighter colour, and had a go with playing around with more versatile type.

Stefan Sagmeister

From my feedback from the Newspaper Club one thing that was strong in my newspaper was a good choice of quotes, however sometimes the quote possibly highlights the wrong words when read by the reader. The newspaper had no images and was very type driven however and it was recommended that explored  display typography, so I want to research into how I could make the type statements out of physical type in the environment rather than just relying on the computer and inject more hand drawn vernacular type into the project. Obviously I wanted to look into Sagmesiter's work as he is renowned for using objects to create type.

One of the projects that really interested me was, 'Keeping a Diary' where the Sagmeister Inc were  invited to Singapore to produce another installment of the series "things I have learned in my life so far." This one minute clip about the importance of keeping a diary was shot in one day in an abandoned historic Tang Dynasty park in Singapore.

Keeping a Diary

Obsessions make my Life worse and my Work better.

"I rarely obsess about things in my private life. I fail to care about the right shade of green for the couch, the sexual details of an ex-lover or the correct temperature of the meeting room AC. I don't think I miss much.

However, I do obsess over our work and think that a number of our better projects came out of such an obsession. Doodling obsessively onto a poster depicting a headless chicken and an obsession with white angry monkeys that ultimately led to the giant inflatable animals all over Scotland are just two such examples.

From Bernd and Hilda Becher's obsessive need to record every water tower to On Kawara's date paintings and James Turrell's Roden Crater, obsessions seem to be an important ingredient in the work of many of our favourite contemporary artists." - Stefan Sagmeister

Urban Play is a project Scott Burnham created for the city of Amsterdam in 2008 in collaboration with Droog Design and presented as part of ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008, which explored open approaches to design and creativity in the city. While some social attitudes have previously dismissed urban intervention as a form of vandalism, at the heart of this current wave of DIY urban design is in fact a deeply sophisticated movement driven by artists and designers who want to expand our relationship between creativity and the city. Done without permission or commissions, the vast range of work on display represents the intersection of the latest genre of street art and the beginnings of open source urban design.When Sagmeister's studio took part in Urban Play Experimenta Design Biennale 2008 there contribution was a large scale typographic installation in a public space set up on a street around Pietheinkade. It consisted over 250,000 cents  put together by 100's of volunteers. 

Newspaper Club Work on design

I have decided to join with a couple of 2nd years from the newspaper club brief to meet every week to discuss our ideas and designs with each other. The idea is that by discussing our ideas together we will be able to generate better design proposals that are more suitable for the brief. We started looking at my colour palette as one of them commented that bright pink can make things look quite cheap and trashy if not used properly. As the whole idea of using pink was that its the cliche colour associated with girls, so I was using it in a kind of sarcastic and ironic tone, I wanted to keep this idea and so we played around with different shades of pink. 

original front cover design

Another thing that I wanted to play around with was the typeface on the front cover of the newspaper. I feel that the original design, for a front cover, was not very attention grabbing and to me it looked really messy and unorganised for some reason.

I was playing around with colours but also with the layout of the newspaper, although at the moment I prefer the current layout of the old newspaper as I think it looks better, however the grey writing did not print well on the newspaper print in my prototype. I like the idea of a square in the back ground to break up the newspaper a bit...maybe it could be something that is used throughout, or pops up on a couple of pages?

Nathan recommended trying to darken the background to a more darker chocolatey colour however I still prefer the original. The chocolate background definitely makes the type stand out in comparison to the old one so I will definitely have to work on the colour however to me the dark brown background just doesn't quite fit. 

Bit more of a play around with the layout of the magazine. The light grey and pink text on the white background in the original when printed is really unreadable. And by incorporating the pink square again it breaks up the page a bit more. I want to look at different ways of displaying the quotes in the newspaper to stop the newspaper being overly text based.

Newspaper Club: Final Presentation

Today I presented my newspaper designs to the newspaper club group. I definitely spent way to much researching and the designing was all a bit last minute, so I am going to try and spend more time on it now its over to see if I can improve on it.

Feedback from Darren, Jo and Alex Jarvis:

Print-out would help if it was correct scale on newsprint – greys might not print that well

Good angle, interesting topic

Nice use of pull quotes

Quote highlights possibly the wrong words when read by the reader

Legibility – pink on blue??? Might not read well

No images

Interesting concept/idea clearly explained. Good representations, choices of quotes and information gathered. Visuals could be developed more. Very type driven.

Great concept. You really need to get good with display typography for this project – have a look at how you could make the typo statements out of physical type in the environment rather than relying on the computer – inject more hand-drawn and vernacular type into this project. I think that if you keep on with this and really get it good that the course should do something with it. It’s got a long way to go before it’s 100% resolved but the underlying idea is strong. Maybe you got sucked into the research a little too much – that happens with interesting subjects though and if you can’t do that when you’re a student when can you? Great project overall – keep up this level of thinking.

OVERALL GRADE: 62.

Newspaper Club: Panic Mode!

Playing around with some designs for newspaper club presentation tomorrow...maybe left it a bit too late! I wanted to play around with type and colours as well as hopefully using the ladies and gents images and playing around with the colours that are stereotypically used for men and women, heres a few examples:

 Here I am trying to input the colours and symbols and text into spreads just to see how it looks and play round with it. I am finding it hard to keep the symbols in the spread as it takes up so much room and to make the text smaller makes it hard to read.

 I prefer this page as its much more clear to read though I wish I could put the symbols in still.

A Conversation with.... Jessica Hische

During my research for the Newspaper Club brief I have come across so many really talented Women in Graphic Design. A name that I constantly keep coming across and keep getting referred to is Jessica Hische a young successful typographer and illustrator currently working in Brooklyn, New York. She was a Senior Designer at Louise Fili Ltd whilst continuing working on her freelance career. Jessica Hische has worked for clients such as Tiffany & Co, Chronicle Books and New York Times and been featured in most major design magazines. Luckily she was kind enough to agree to a phone interview today and I have to say for someone who is so busy and successful she was the most down to earth genuinely nice designer I have met so far and so helpful! Heres the interview...

1) In 2011 do you feel that graphic design is still a male dominated industry?

In general I think the industry is male dominated in the powerful positions however it depends on which subset of design you are in. For example publishing is full of women, every art director I have spoken to has been a women though I think that this is because this side of the industry has much more regular hours. Also it has more of an aesthetic appeal I think because you can physically hold what you create which in my experience seems to be a much more feminine attitude. However advertising has much fewer women, but in advertising you have a much more demanding job and schedule. It still seems to be that the traditional role of women being family orientated and staying at home and the stay at home dad is not common or even picking the kids up from school. In advertising you have to be much more upfront, the schedule goes out the window, you have to work long and late hours and it seems you have to work constantly until your 40 with no social life and so I think it is easier for men to fill these roles.

2) Do you think that the decision to have children effects how successful a women can be in this industry?

I definitely think it will effect your success if you have children young. It will impact on how quickly you will excel in the industry. However with social networking being made increasingly more easy and everyone having a website it is so much easier to locate them for work. I think if you have children too young trying to balance that with the amount of work you have to put in at the start of your career, to be successful, and work that around your children you would be too tried out all the time!

3) What kinds of challenges, if any, did you have to overcome to succeed in the beginning of your career as a female designer in a predominately male profession?

In my career so far I have never faced any challenges as a woman the industry has been perfectly accepting. I think this is because when I started up as a designer several of my bosses were women probably because these were small personal companies whilst in more corporate companies there are less women. If anything I feel there are more advantages to being a women in this industry, it depends what kind of person you are and how you look at things. For example I think that people find me much more of an approachable person but that personality trait can either help or hinder people, for example if I wasn’t freelance and represented a corporate business this approach would probably hinder my success. I am easy to talk to and have much more of a personal approachability. However some people may find that I am too much of an over sharer and too personal. Sometimes its not professional to be approachable, it really depends on what setting. If you worked in a more corporate company and your bidding to get a massive corporate account you need to be closed off, dry, competitive and serious. However I do not know if this necessarily a gender trait as I know plenty of male designers who also have a personal approachability, one designer friend is definitely an over sharer, he would tell you anything! 

4) Do you think you approach projects differently to men?

I do not think that I approach projects differently to men because the process is always the same. However I definitely work in a style that is considered feminine. It is a style that is familiar to me, when I left school I just stuck to what I knew as it was comfortable and then more and more people hired me to do more feminine work and because I had done it so many times I have gotten so good at it its definitely a very strong style. After school people hire you because of your style you have done so far and it snowballs and snowballs and so you get very good at that style and familiar with it and work well within it, but now I guess I do not really get hired to produce more masculine work and I would have to approach that definitely.

5) How do you think graphic design is going to progress in the future? What role do you think female designers will play?

I definitely think that the industry will even out soon, especially in the industry specific stuff, such as advertising etc. I think that the role of women will be that other women will become more aware of the successful women designers. At the moment men seem to be much better at waving their flag and pointing at themselves, whilst women who are just as good at design concentrate on being good designers rather then promoting themselves. Although home care will always be a role traditional to women with tools such as Twitter, Facebook, websites etc. it will make it easier to socially network and get yourself known and so I think there will be a balance in the industry soon.

6) As you are a very successful female designer do you think your experience is typical of women designers? Why do you think men tend to be more successful at promoting themselves?

I disagree and think that men are not better at promoting themselves, just they are able to take more risks as women struggle to find the balance between being taken seriously or being approachable. When they first started out years ago the industry was much more male dominated and so they would have strived to be seen as a serious professional in the work place rather than having to be putting yourself out there constantly to be considered successful in the public eye. Some people are known because they are known, it is not necessarily to do with their skill but because they are better at promoting themselves. When you first start out as a designer you generally only know the really reputable designers but as you get better as a designer, looking at annuals, networking, trawling through websites you get to know more designers who are really good at design not just crazy famous people. There are many people I know who are designing just as well as the celebrity designers but they just have not got themselves out there. 

It will be interesting to see what responses you have to this subject!


7) Through my research It has been frustrating at times as a minority of male designers I have asked on design forums when asked why they think the industry is male dominated their reply is because ‘men are just better’...

Sometimes its difficult to see the forest between the trees. In the design industry or any industry you will meet people with these kind of views but its important to not concentrate on these smaller details as they may prevent you from seeing the overview as a whole, I think it is important to notice that the design industry has changed over the years and it is not as male dominated as it was however you will always have a small group ruining it.

Newspaper Club: Jo's One Day Brief

Yesterday we were given a 1 day project by Jo. We were split into four groups and instructed to design a 12 page newspaper called 'Success by Design'. Each group were given 3 pages each to design and we had to delegate positions and jobs roles.  Our group had page 1,2 and 3 to design which was tricky as we had to keep running round all the groups to see what they were putting on their pages so we could make the front page relevant but also to ensure that no topics were repeated or too similar. 

Jo suggested using a flat plan to work out and plan our ideas and content. It sounds silly but it is such a useful and easy tool but really obvious as well! Why did I not think of this before! 

I was given the role of Editor and so my role was to plan the content on our pages, write any features, commission photographers and check over all the writing for typos and hyphenated text. We learnt how to demonstrate and practice how to delegate, time manage, plan and work as a team and individually. It really helped me with my individual project as it made me start thinking bout my newspaper and how i am going to arrange and edit the content for it to be successful. 

The content was made up of the questions and themes we are using in our current brief what does a designer need to know and be able to do to be successful in the 21st century? And because we were all looking at different topics we felt that the cover needed to be simple and bold so it didn't just represent one category but we created a line to follow that runs the whole way through the newspaper to tie in the front and back cover and all the topics in the paper. 

Art Directors: Tuuli Platner, Nathan Medford, Anna-Maria Gkeorgkieva, Iza Munoz

Editors: Shodor Uddin, Holly Bodle, Anna-Maria Gkeorgkieva, Ben Rider
Senior Designers: Hali Olalemi, Ben Rider

Graphic Designers: Sarah Rahim, Kara-Jessica Mallett, Spyros Kourtedesis, Charlotte De Castro, Costas Archondous, Brijesh Bhagwanji, Eliott Richards

Artworking: Kyle Gall, Charlotte De Castro, Costas Archondous

Digital imaging: Spyros Kourtedesis, Kyle Gall, Hoi Lam Yuen