Final projects

It's that time of the semester: students are working on their final projects. We've got approximately 15 students working on full-page graphics and interactive graphics. It's been an interesting experience as we work on finding the best way to communicate expectations with students without taking away time from our guest lecturers.

I'm really excited to see what I learn from each of the projects, which range from things about cameras and video cameras to hot air balloons. We're going to see graphics on hunter safety and coffee shops.

It's inspiring me to think about making one of these over intersession. Thoughts on possible topics?

Something to make you laugh

One of my favorite blogs to follow is You look like the right type. Mark Addison Smith rights down dialogue he hears around him, sketches out something incorporating the dialogue, then posts a sketch every 24 hours. It's a great way to realize how what's going on around us can provide inspiration for what we do as journalists and designers.

Here's yesterday's sketch:

Critique: Tigers and Cupcakes

In this week's Tiger Kick-off, we're running a story about how MU football coach likes to play teams that are considered pretty easy to beat, aka cupcake teams. The original idea for lead art was a lot of stats over a cupcake (the reporter came up with this idea). What this morphed into was the idea of illustrating a Tiger eating a cupcake. That's where I came in.

Here's the second version of what I came up with:

The manager of Tiger Kick-off and I had some concerns about the illustration being too adorable for what we were going for. As a result, I replaced the cupcake with stock art of a real cupcake, and stacked the cupcakes behind the tiger.

Personally, I'm in love with it. But I adore cupcakes and got to play with a stuffed tiger hand puppet that roared for a day, so I'm kind of biased.

Critique: How antibiotics work

We're working on a pediatric health section at work, and one of the topics is acne. Many times, a dermatologist will prescribe an antibiotic to treat acne, so I was curious as to how antibiotics work. As a result, I made these two graphics for fun. I'll also be creating a visual.ly account and posting them there, just to see how the service works.

You Can't Miss: A Rant Against Apple and Typography

This week's only post from Made by Many was a rant against Apple. Paul Sims started out by doing a search on Instragram and Apple to discover people's thoughts on an Apple buy-out of the company. It goes on to discuss the secrecy behind Apple, they're total control over anything that goes out over their services and the company's failure at anything social. He goes on to point out that Instagram is actually marketing Apple products because people want iPhones for the app. He has an interesting take on the separation of products for Apple and Android.


And as some brain candy for our last week of class, I'm sharing a blog, youlookliketherighttype, that publishes an overheard phrase in custom typography pretty much everyday. Add it to your reading list; it's so worth it.

Critique: Final cover design

I had the idea for the cover last week, with the red background and funky type, I promise. I realize that it bears a resemblance to the New York Time's Magazine cover out now. Of course, if the NYT is doing it, maybe that means it's pretty cool and striking.

I'm also working on a second cover with the blueprint feel, but it's not as strong as this one, and personally, I think the typography is pretty cool.

Response: The semester

I can honestly say that this is one of the hardest semesters I've encountered in college, which is probably the way it's supposed to be, considering the grad school thing. But I think I've also learned a lot, and certainly worked on more things with so many different styles.

Designing for Vox was an interesting experience which was valuable in its own way for helping us get experience of designing for a magazine. The prototypes were a lot of fun, and I know that Cupboard came so, so far from the beginning. I think that was probably the best part of the semester, seeing how revisions can make something great, as well as how important it is to have the pieces before you start designing.

I also really appreciated the emphasis on our portfolio, mini-portfolio and websites. I think that will help us as we go out into the real world, and even for those of us who aren't going there quite yet, it's a good start for when we do.