Critique: Mini-portfolio

I've been spending some time on my mini-portfolio this week, and this is what I've come up with for the cover.

A friend of mine told me to think of it like a cover letter, so I thought I'd use it to lead into the fact that I bake a lot and don't mind sharing with the newsroom. It also can serve as symbols for the two different things that are going into my mini-portfolio: the infographics and the design work I've done.

I don't particularly care for the illustration of the cake because I think it looks like a toilet paper roll, and the cookie doesn't really fit. So I think I'm going to repeat the images of the cupcake and the pie.

Response: iPad design

It was a lot of fun seeing what other's had designed for the iPad. One thing I noticed throughout was the sort of formatted designs that Mag+ has kind of forced us into. It's all about finding photos that it's okay to put text over and forcing the text to one side.

I also think that it works better for certain types of publications that use photos and illustrations that you can do with this. It also shows that there needs to be emphasis on the extras you can throw into the iPad app, which isn't something we really have time for. But it's been fun to learn, and I'm planning on figuring out some of the different things I can do with it over the summer.

You Can't Miss: Illographics and Funny Overheards

There was a cool example of an illographic posted at Charles Apple's blog the other day. I like how they were able to liven up a fever chart for a story that could be easily passed over for it's kind of boring nature. If you read down in the blog post, it says that this graphic, which is from the Omaha World-Herald, was originally slated for the Business front, but I'm happy it ended up on the front page.

At Made By Many, they decided to post some Overheard at Made By Many, and it's kind of fun to look at as the semester wraps up and I'm going a little bananas.

Critique: Feature Design

I designed this week's feature, which was originally Faces of the Force. It changed a lot from the draft I turned in Sunday and what's being published, but overall I'm pretty happy about it. I like what I was able to do with the photos, which gave the cover designers a lot of problems. I think I was able to make them less criminal looking, at the very least.

Response: SSND judging

It was a lot of fun being at SSND judging all day on Monday. It was interesting to see what the judges thought about all of the work that was submitted. The thing that I found most interesting was that they wanted a little more text on photo pages. They wanted more than a headline and photo captions. They wanted some poetry to remind people about how cool the event so that it became more of keepsake piece that people could look at years from now and still remember being there.

You Can't Miss: Videos about design and things to never say to a designer

This week on Made by Many, they posted three videos about various types of design, including t-shirt design. My favorite was on data visualization. The last video is pretty important for any of us looking to freelance because it's on working with clients and making sure you get paid.

And on that note, Ron Reason, a newspaper design consultant, posted this list on things to never say to a designer or art director. I think my favorite is probably the second, "This story is 74 inches long and there's only a mug shot."

Critique: Does this look like a lightbulb?

This was my cover for 30 under 30, and I kind of like it. However, when newsroom people saw it, it took them a while to realize that it's a lightbulb. That confuses me, because it seems obvious to me, but I'm clearly biased. So, I'm taking a poll. Does this look like a lightbulb to anyone else?

Response: Mini-portfolios

It was great to see all of the different ways to design mini-portfolios. I liked the different ways to section them off, integrate contact information and resumes, design multipage spreads into the portfolio and the different sizes.

One of the big comments was that Erica's second portfolio was too big. I actually had a conversation with her about it later, and the reason she did it that way was because she had given the small one to a potential employer, and he couldn't read it. I think we're assuming that the people seeing this will be able to read things as well as we do. But, they're also likely to be older and unable to see them, so that's something important to think about.

You Can't Miss: Web design and Google Fusion Tables

This week on Made by Many, there's an interview with Daniel Howells, a British web designer. One thing that I especially like is that he leans toward, simple, well-designed, grid-based website designs, which is what I feel like we'll be making. You can see some of the work his design firm has done for the magazine Dazed Digital. The design is kind of unusual because so much is on the homepage; the navigation isn't that important. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it's always good to look at something different.

And for Tuesday night's kind of crazy learning experiment, I teamed up with Pat Sweet to create a graphic that showed how many kids live in each census block in the Columbia Public School District using Google Fusion Tables. It's very similar to what Flash could do, but we didn't have to handcode all 5,000+ census blocks.



The hardest part was getting the data file small enough that we could use it. I think we spent a few hours testing different methods of getting the shape of the school district, which is actually about a third of Boone County. There are certainly things I wish I could change, and I have a feeling Google will fix some of these in the future. For example, I wish you could just roll over the school districts to see how many kids live there instead of clicking. But I'm also glad I didn't have to spend hours coding. For some great instructions on using Fusion Tables, go to John Keefe's blog.

Critique: Spring Break photos and logo

For some odd reason, I can only post these two images. However, above is a peach dump cake, which is absolutely delicious despite how it looks and sounds. It's called dump cake because you dump in two cans of pie filling, a package of yellow cake mix and a stick of butter. Heat at 350 in the oven until bubbling. It's delicious. And also inspiration for anytime I'm just stuck.

This is my logo. It's a collection of Ninth St. signage. The S is from a stop sign, A from a movie poster in my living room (on Ninth St.), R from Starbucks, A from Kaldi's and H from Which wich. Surprisingly (to me anyway), H was the hardest to find. I really enjoyed this assignment because I had to actually think about which signs would work with the letters together. There was certain typography that's cool, but would not have worked with anything else, such as Shakespeare's.

Response: Assignments

It was great to learn that we'll be using Mag+ for an assignment instead of trends. Although I think it's a great assignment, it's nice to have the extra breathing space and learn a useful skill. I also think it'll give us a better chance to dig into everything Mag+ can do.

It was a lot of fun hearing about everyone's Spring Breaks as well. It was great to hear how the photo assignment kind of affected everyone's breaks, making them think about inspirational things that they might have passed by before. I know I was thinking about my drive back to Columbia a lot more because I knew I wanted to take photos then.

You Can't Miss: Start-ups and the infographics editor of National Geographic

In this week's Made by Many blog post, Justin McMurray discusses the thought process behind lean start-ups. Although none of us are working on project management, one of the things that really struck me about this post was the emphasis on talking to people who aren't objective. They talked about taking to friends of friends instead of friends. Walking the street instead of emailing your mom. I think this is great advice for anyone, not just startups.

And on another advice-giving blog-post, Juan Velasco, the graphics editor at National Geographic, gave an interview to newspaperdesign.ning.com. His advice to visual journalists is to make sure you're reading the paper everyday so that you can converse about what's going on with other editors. If you can smell a visual story and suggest it, you'll have a lot more respect than if you just wait for assignments.

I also appreciated his description of the information graphics reporting process: "Graphics are journalism, and the process is the same used by a writer or a photographer in a newspaper: first, gather all the information you need by doing research (in the field, online, with phone interviews), etc. Then, you need to be able to select the most relevant information and sketch out a visual narrative that is clear and engaging." Sometimes I think that people forget that visual journalists are still journalists, we just tell a story a different way.