This one was a bit rough. I ended up rushing it more than I even did the poster, which isn’t the best for something like this.
I had a few issues following the template as well. There were a few bugs I could not figure out. I had an issue or two with the padding and margins in between my main text and the side bar., so I decided to take this in stride and design the sidebar a bit differently. The spacing between elements in my main text is way too large as well and I couldn’t quite figure out how to tweak it. My solutions did not tend to work. I fixed a few other issues I had by centering all of the text.
I went with something a bit quirky and contrastive for my color scheme. Again, I see a few ways I could have perfected the idea. The color scheme started because I was inspired by the slate-like colors I had by the end of the week’s main exercise.
I rounded the borders on a few elements as a way of adding some extra personality. It looks a bit silly on the navigation bar, but I quite like how it looks on the sidebar.
Illustration is not a skill I feel very confident in. I struggled with the unit a bit and also had a few issues keeping up with the workload for outside reasons. Thankfully, I still learned quite a lot from the last two weeks. Adobe Illustrator is easy to use once you understand how it works. That does take a bit, though.
Click the image to see my design!
My poster is for a special event lecture that won’t actually be held. As much as I would love to hear an academic talk about the politics of author Franz Kafka’s work, I can’t imagine that would draw a crowd large enough to fill Shreve Auditorium. In a perfect world, it might.
My inspiration is the feeling of isolation and alienation present in Kafka’s work. This often happens to his characters at the hands of cold, bureaucratic systems that do not and have never made sense. Kafka lived in a world when industrial capitalism was brand new and he seemed to be terrified of it.
In The Metamorphosis, when the main character wakes up to discover he’s been turned in to a bug, his first thought is that he will be late for work. The man seems insane for thinking everyone will still want him to go to work. The reader will likely find it funny and an example of the character being highly anxious.
It turns out that everyone actually does still expect him to go to work. In Kafka’s mind, the world makes demands of us that are just as strange.
With this in mind, I drew a little roach and directed the eye to it with two far larger elements, including an arrow that serves as a guiding line. The text being so large is meant to make the bug feel smaller in comparison and create a feeling of insignificance. From there, your eye goes to the informational text.
I wanted Kafka’s name to be a secondary point of focus. To do this, I made each letter its own element, and then gave the characters different sizes, colors, and “warp” settings. I worry the end result might be a bit too loud, but efforts to tone it down didn’t give me much.
My color scheme started with red. I wanted that to be the background. When I needed to make other choices, Illustrator suggested the browns and off-whites. The red background was most important to me. Along with the texture, I wanted to create a kind of dirty feeling that might remind someone of rust and old houses (or roaches).
Admittedly, this involved me drawing very little. I am proud of my roach, though. I used a reference image but didn’t trace it directly, which is not something I thought I had in me. I hope that this is a satisfactory drawn element. I was, admittedly, a little stressed and afraid of the pen tool.
I found this project quite challenging in a very rewarding way. I often felt exactly where I needed to be as far as my eye for design and technical understanding of InDesign and Photoshop. This meant that I felt perfectly equipped, but that there was no spot where I was fully comfortable with my abilities.
I used a minimalist design for my cover, highlighting the Tube merchandise I would later use for my sidebar. I did this to help strengthen the overall visual and thematic cohesiveness of my design. I used Time and National Geographic as inspirations for what a more minimalist magazine cover can be. My use of the thick frame in the bleed area is an obvious ripoff of those covers. The primary focus on one large subject or setpiece, a smaller focus on a simple brand identity, then some small text for the date and an explaination of the image is also a formula often seen on this type of cover.
I originally tried a cutout of Big Ben on a more abstract background for the cover page. I had two primary issues: 1) I was not fond of how my ideas looked when completed, and 2) creating image cutouts are my greatest weakness in this class so far. I get a bit better with each attempt, but I was simply not happy with my transparent Big Ben at the time. It’s a difficult shape to cut out and I’m still struggling with coins and bottles.
My opening spread is also minimalist, which is still a way to utilize my perceived current strengths. The bars with text over a Gaussian-blurred map of the London underground gives me an opportunity to showcase the map in a grand fashion without overcomplicating the design.
The minimalism also allowed me to work efficiently on the next spread. I used two images, one of Beck and one of the 1933 map, which framed the story well and allowed it to fill the available space almost perfectly without many subtle tweaks. The story is about the origins of the map, so I wanted the map someone can actually spend time looking at to be the 1933 draft. A full version of the modern map is easy for someone to find if they would like to look. Including the image of Beck also felt necessary.
My sidebar used the “Tube Gear” idea. Through the cover and a frame around a white background, I wanted to make the sidebar feel like an integral part of the story. I then used three items that allowed for puns and alliteration. I complimented that with a playful decorative type. I imagine this is a common kind of sidebar to see in ThreeSixFive Magazine.
I broke with minimalism for my ASF in order to challenge myself and distinguish it from the rest of my project. This was incredibly difficult. I still feel as if the spacing I gave each object and the size everything ended up being is deeply flawed. I worry that things may feel uncentered and non-rythmic, even if the proportions are technically very squared. I am, overall, still very proud of the design. Despite its flaws, it is the page that makes me surprised that I put it together as an amateur graphic designer.
