Critiques: Spring Preview

Spring Preview has sprung - almost.

Last week, the assignment was another competition among my classmates, where we were supposed to design the cover, splash and a two-page spread for the upcoming spring preview edition of Vox. Although my cover was not picked, I felt pretty good about my final design because I made a few goals for myself this semester. The first one is to learn more about Illustrator and creating illustrations. This project was an opportunity to start working

on those skills. While I feel like my idea/design was simplistic, I also felt it was clean and executed well, and I added to its design value through some new techniques. For example, instead of just placing a colored box on the page, I gave it some texture and shine. I guess I will let you all judge for yourself about the quality of my front cover.

I thought quite a bit about what kind of design I was going to do for this cover; however, none of my ideas were particularly spring-ish. It was mentioned in class that we didn't have to go with a typical spring theme, so I steered away from the flowers and rainbows that tend to overpopulate the spring editions of magazines.

While I initially wanted to go with a marathon/running theme, there were some technical skills that I just wasn't ready for when it comes to illustrating people. Since Spring Preview is more of a collection of dates/upcoming events, my second idea was to create a cover that played off of the idea of a wedding save-the-date card. I have quite a collection since many of my friends have gotten married, and I used to write all the engagement and wedding announcements at a newspaper in Mississippi. I went through quite a few design ideas, but they all felt just too girly. I didn't want to isolate half of the readers of Vox, so that idea eventually evolved to creating a cover that played off the idea of "saving the date" and incorporated a modern calendar. I think the use of digital calendars has become ubiquitous.

Once I decided on my concept, I didn't want it to be just boxes on boxes. I wanted to take the design up a notch, so I customized the look. Since I was using a plain-colored calendar (black and white), I knew I needed the other colors to pop. I wanted them to be colors that would catch someone's eye from across the room, so I went with red and orange. For the "Spring View" event box, I added a texture in the background and used a slight glow to make the box feel less flat. I also chose to put a translucent box over the orange box to add depth and make the font easier to use.

My proudest part of the cover is the check mark that I made by hand (with the pen tool). I real

ize it is a basic skill, but it was my first time doing a free-hand drawing with the pen tool. I also liked the check mark because I felt it allowed the cover to play to the reader and make them feel like they were interacting with it by already having the check that they were attending the events. I also continued to struggle through choosing the appropriate font.

Making a splash:

I decided to change the theme slightly when I worked on the splash page, which introduces the Spring Preview section to a refrigerator door. Yet again, I was using inspiration from my own life because where do I put reminders about important upcoming events? On my refrigerator! I also wanted to keep with my illustration practice since this was an opportunity to work on my desired skill. (I think it is probably for the best that I didn't go into animation because even these basic designs took quite a bit of time).

The biggest challenge of the fridge was trying to create the metallic look. I could have gone with just a white fridge, but where would the fun have been in that? Plus, I wanted an upscale brushed stainless steel refrigerator. Way classer. So I watched an online tutorial. This was not the one I used, but it has similar steps (and isn't video, which may make it easier to follow. I had to watch the video one 3 times to figure out what I was doing). To learn how to create your own brushed metal box in Illustrator, click HERE.

When I was thinking about the fridge and how I wanted to tell people this was the opening to "Spring Preview," I couldn't get those alphabet letters out of my head. However, after reading a tutorial about how to create 3D letters, I couldn't get them to look right on the image. It had to do with them being at an angle, which you would not see on a fridge. I decided to change the letters and use a drop shadow. This was definitely not ideal and something I would change. Actually, I think I would change the whole thing if I was going to do this project all over again. It just didn't come out how I would have liked it too. To continue with the theme, I wanted little "magnets" to let readers know what the different types of events would be in the spring - music, visual arts, community and sports.

Moving on:

Ahh, the spread. When I printed out the final pages, the font looked HUGE. This is not normally and issue, so maybe I was just suffering from screen blindness - I am not joking, I think in less than a decade that could be a medical term. If so, I am calling it right here, right now that I came up with the term.

I went with a simple, clean design for the inside pages, where one event would be highlighted with a longer story and a big picture for each month and the other events would just be the basic calendar listing. I used large numbers again. This is not the first time. I used numbers in my last design. The numbers this time were to tell what day of the month the event was going to be hold, but they also provided a graphic design that helped lead the idea through the page and break up constant text. I also thought it would be good to add a picture here and there within the columns to make the page more colorful. I definitely would change my "month" font because the rounded edges just felt cheesy/childish on this page.