A blog for Summer 2015 NEiA Publication Design class with instructor, Coni Porter. The purpose is to offer faculty and peer feedback in a timely manner, allowing and encouraging the students to progress in a focused and productive way. As the semester ends, this class has produced 117 posts, 263 comments, and been viewed by over 5,000 internet readers. See the last group of postings below to view final student work: sample pages for the (fictional) Habitat Magazine: The Future of Food.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Nazar Revised Edits For Ex 1,2,3
Revised based on critiques, additional feedback is welcome!
Cover – it’s one thing to crop a photo so that all we see is a mouth biting a pepper… it’s quite another thing to cut into someone’s face. That’s what you have done here – because we see the image continue behind the masthead… you have attacked someone’s eyes! Yikes… the message this sends is confusing, aggressive, and worrisome. No can do. Really. What about returning to the 2 squares of color holding typography that you had sitting at top in the earlier version?
Another issue I see is the tagline “The New Face of Hunger” used with this image. Does that make sense? What does Hunger have to do with eating peppers (unless that is the future of food… peppers, peppers, and more peppers)? Instead, the image makes more sense with How Our Eating Habits will Change… because it’s suggesting that our choices will change.
I see that you are emphasizing “Habi” in Habitat. Why? I’m curious… there must be a reason because it looks very intentional. Or… is that red box there to counterbalance the lower right box on the bottom corner? Well.. that probably isn’t a good enough reason to do this. You need a good reason….
Feature: Looks dull, really dull. What can you do to pull some lighter values back into his figure? Black and white images can be beautiful, usually based on their range of values. I think you have purposely compressed the value range… and I wonder if you have gone too far. This image should be beautiful, even as its message is disturbing. I think you take the chance that someone will simply find this important article uninteresting to read based on this grey on grey on grey image. Draw us into this article by giving us a more interesting, compelling-quality image.
Department: Please start another article on this page. Find some other content that could sit under the main heading of “Underused and Overlooked” and fill this page with more content. It needs it. Even if you decide not to add more type, more something has to happen here – although the elements on the page look well placed, there is simply not enough here.
Focusing on the feature article with my comments I just want to say that I think it is great. The tone you portray in the spread really goes along with what you were saying. I don't think the picture looks dull but rather drives home the point of view that you were looking at the article through. The only thing I would add would be either line breaks or carry through the line from the title throughout the article.
Congrats on the cover layout and design efforts. The cover is looking like a real mag cover. Your department is also looking very fitting to your cover design. White space, color, typography, it fits within your magazine design. The feature doesn’t look like it would be found in your magazine. It’s overall look and feel might be too dark. Possibly way to dark. I understand you’re trying to set the mood here, but I’m just not sure about the level of darkness. I think the refrigerator light would be on, and you could still get the message across with brighter imagery. My recommendation is to see what other are saying about this feature design and go from there.
Dan – I’ll take these one at a time.
ReplyDeleteCover – it’s one thing to crop a photo so that all we see is a mouth biting a pepper… it’s quite another thing to cut into someone’s face. That’s what you have done here – because we see the image continue behind the masthead… you have attacked someone’s eyes! Yikes… the message this sends is confusing, aggressive, and worrisome. No can do. Really. What about returning to the 2 squares of color holding typography that you had sitting at top in the earlier version?
Another issue I see is the tagline “The New Face of Hunger” used with this image. Does that make sense? What does Hunger have to do with eating peppers (unless that is the future of food… peppers, peppers, and more peppers)? Instead, the image makes more sense with How Our Eating Habits will Change… because it’s suggesting that our choices will change.
I see that you are emphasizing “Habi” in Habitat. Why? I’m curious… there must be a reason because it looks very intentional. Or… is that red box there to counterbalance the lower right box on the bottom corner? Well.. that probably isn’t a good enough reason to do this. You need a good reason….
Feature: Looks dull, really dull. What can you do to pull some lighter values back into his figure? Black and white images can be beautiful, usually based on their range of values. I think you have purposely compressed the value range… and I wonder if you have gone too far. This image should be beautiful, even as its message is disturbing. I think you take the chance that someone will simply find this important article uninteresting to read based on this grey on grey on grey image. Draw us into this article by giving us a more interesting, compelling-quality image.
Department: Please start another article on this page. Find some other content that could sit under the main heading of “Underused and Overlooked” and fill this page with more content. It needs it. Even if you decide not to add more type, more something has to happen here – although the elements on the page look well placed, there is simply not enough here.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteFocusing on the feature article with my comments I just want to say that I think it is great. The tone you portray in the spread really goes along with what you were saying. I don't think the picture looks dull but rather drives home the point of view that you were looking at the article through. The only thing I would add would be either line breaks or carry through the line from the title throughout the article.
Best,
Chris Cefole
Congrats on the cover layout and design efforts. The cover is looking like a real mag cover. Your department is also looking very fitting to your cover design. White space, color, typography, it fits within your magazine design. The feature doesn’t look like it would be found in your magazine. It’s overall look and feel might be too dark. Possibly way to dark. I understand you’re trying to set the mood here, but I’m just not sure about the level of darkness. I think the refrigerator light would be on, and you could still get the message across with brighter imagery. My recommendation is to see what other are saying about this feature design and go from there.
ReplyDelete