my magazine

Story Selection:
I am Russian, and it seemed very appropriate to use my younger sister's non-fiction story about New York City's only Russian neighborhood. Also, for some reason I thought that this would make it easier to illustrate my magazine- I was wrong. Nevertheless, I am more or less pleased with the outcome of my labor.

Sidebar: Awkward Music Selections.
How perfect for a magazine called "Awkward"! There are songs with awkward song titles like "The internet is for porn", and "Just not tonight".

Images: Every image in this magazine was created by me, except for the Russian dolls in the center of the spread to the right, and the tiny album images in the side bar.

Top ten typefaces

Here's a link to an article on Font Feed about the top ten typefaces used by book design winners.

I have to admit, I was surprised at number 1.

Magazine Project

Type Challenge - Jeopardy

This week's type challenge is from the game show Jeopardy.

Here's your answer:

This is the typeface used when displaying the answers on the monitors.

And here's a hint, in the form of a picture:


First person to email Professor Taylor with the correct answer wins a Starbucks card.

BazAAR!!!

I though that this spread had great visual connection which is very important. The type mimicked the red in her dress. The headline coincides with the deck head, which is a political one. Instead of red, white, and blue, it is Drew. I liked the use of the white ducks in the background that also ties in. overall, it is very connected.

Color Effectiveness

The September issue of GQ magazine featured James Franco and they labeled him as the next "James Dean". For this reason, I feel that they purposely used a black and white photo for the article that was written about him here. If you turn to other pages, you will notice that all of the photos are in black and white which I think was done on purpose to make a connection between him and James Dean. They used very large photos of him which made him look bold and strong even though the photos lacked color. Overall, I feel that although it lacked color, the black and whiteness tied well with the article and was effective in delivering the kind of message the writer wanted to deliver.

Clint Clemens

I went to the Clint Clemens presentation/speech last Thursday; although he is a really cool and interesting photographer, he is one of the less able speakers that I have seen in Newhouse.

The first part of his speech was bearable; he was showing us his work (which was so awesome), and explaining how he got those shots. He uses some interesting guerilla tactics, like hanging off of helicopters, riding in the side-cars of motorcycles and leaning over to get the car as it is turning, and other mildly dangerous methods. I love his work. I suggest everyone check out his website, because his work is fantastic!

His speech was a little bit discouraging to me as a photographer, because he only reiterated how hard it is to be an artist now, and for the future, because it is so easy to create an image with new and developing technologies. I was puzzled and annoyed, because I had started photography as an 11-year old with a busted SLR from the 70's, the film compartment of which would pop out everyvtime I would take a picture; I never got any of that film developed because it always ended up over- exposed. Nevertheless, I had to learn photography the hard way, without digital. And now all of that technique/skill is useless, because any bozo who can push a button on a fancy camera can take a good picture by accident (optimistic, I know).

Another thing that I found rather annoying was that he had clearly (or so it seemed) been payed to advertise Canon, so several times during his speech he would stop and rattle on about Canon for a good minute.

The second part of his speech was very difficult to sit through because Mr. Clemens was giving a long- winded explanation of three-dimensional modeling.

A positive thing that I took away from his speech was a realization of how important 3D modeling will be within the next couple of years. I had taken a course on it in high- school, and because it was so frustrating, gave up the idea of being an industrial designer; that is how much I hated working with those 3D programs.
People began to get bored and talk about what they had for dinner, at which point I thought it was best to leave because it became increasingly difficult to hear Mr. Clemens.