Week 2

7-17-07
In Class set up blog and typed up my hand written notes into the first weeks post. I also continued to work on a masthead. I explored grids for common magazines and purchased magazines to go through so that I can have a reference point when I start designing.

We also discussed forums and blogs and means of communication between the team. We decided that a forum will be the best way to communicate. We decided that being able to divide our discussions into threads would work best for our purposes.

We also split the class into groups; one working on the DC magazine and the other working on the San Francisco magazine.
DC Group: Kelly, Sam, Teryn, Tammy and me. San Fran Group: Christine, Harry, Chris, Tim and Iyvonne.

7-19-07
In ClassToday I continued to work on the process blog so that I could get the style and format out of the way and get to designing a workable grid. Today Joyce E. Lavery from Out of the Box Media is coming to answer questions and discuss the vision of the magazine. This will be the second time we met with Joyce. The first time was a general discussion about the magazine, what it is about, it's goals and the direction that it is going in. Today will be a more refined discussion about what is expected of us.

While waiting for Joyce I presented to the class a layout in Fine Cooking that I thought would benefit the class. I felt that this was relevent because it is an upscale cooking magazine that used the grid effectively as well as brought color to the type treatment that complimented the food photos. Although the layout seemed a little disorganized and cluttered, I felt that it broke the text up effectively and also gave the magazine some welcomed variety in the layout.
Joyce came in and answered questions and really helped to clarify the direction that the magazine should be going. She empahsized that Michel Richard likes very clean layouts with a lot of white space. She wasn't necessarily opposed to changing the wording fo the masthead, but wasn't enthused about it either. She basically said that she would be open to it, but there was reason behind the name D.C. Chefs as opposed to Washington D.C. Chef which I thought would fit an overall brand better especially if other cities were added to the magazine at a later date.

7-21-07
At Home I went through the DC Chefs magazine and did a formal critique. It took me a while to actually type it up, but you can read it here if you like. Now that I got all of the formalities out of the way and have done plenty of research, I can actually start designing this thing. You can never get ahead of yourself on a project like this, especially while working full time and have two other classes to contend with. I have a feeling this is probably going to be a demanding quarter and a demanding class. I'm excited to start my sketches and start working on the grid and style sheets.

7-23-07
At Home I did some sketches of grids and general layouts.



It is kind of wierd sketching out grids, seeing that it is easier to see how things are going to look on the computer, but it helps me think a bit. I created an initial layout to see how the style was going to work out. I used the Dry Creek Kitchen information and pictures to do the layout—even though they are from the San Fran magazine—because I had access to the pictures and copy.