Don't Miss This — Week 8

In Eye this week, one of their bloggers provided coverage of Royal College of Art poster exhibition called "British Posters / Affiche Françaises" in which British and French graphic designers created poster advertisements or responses to these posters. Specifically, the British designers created responses to the French designers' posters. The takeaway from this (one of the takeaways, really), in my opinion, is that advertisements can be beautiful. We know this, and as magazine designers I think many of us wish we had all the freedoms that advertisers have (or seem to have. The grass is always greener, isn't it?). I am reminded of an advertisement we discussed in my Strat Design and Visuals class. It is pictured below:

The ad is part of an integrated print and video campaign that is centered around this melting idea. The professor really admired this ad, and many of my classmates were also very impressed. It is obviously a marvel of technical execution, and the idea is very thoroughly shown throughout the ad, but it just seems muddled to me. Looking through a magazine, I'm fairly confident this ad would not stop me. It's over-the-top and gaudy in the same way that the fashion ads that litter magazines are. They're lovely to look at, but they all run together. The posters presented in the French/English exhibition, however, are exciting and eye-catching. They just appeal to me more.

Tonight at the Student Center, the Missouri Student Association held a cake decorating competition with guest judge Duff (Ace of Cakes) Goldman (!!!). I was pretty skeptical about how the cakes would turn out, but on my work break, I had a chance to look at them, and they're really impressive. Check out some photos in the Missourian's coverage of the event, courtesy of photographer Madeline Beyer. I'm always impressed by people who can make beautiful things with their hands rather than on a computer screen.

Response, week 8

You'll have to move swiftly to get your hands on a design job

Finding a design job feels sort of like the world's largest game of Whack-a-Mole; the jobs pop up when you're least expecting it, and they're only around for a very short time. That's how it feels, anyway.

That said, I am in the process of putting together my portfolio book to ship off to prospective employers, so this past week's group portfolio review has been helpful (and will be even more helpful when I can get my hands on those written critiques). The entire process has me outrageously stressed, but finally sitting down and picking out which pieces make the cut has alleviated a small portion of that stress. I am finally moving forward with all the preparations for applying to jobs and internships (the March 21 National Geographic deadline is also pretty good motivation).

Critique - week 8

Here is my revised final logo. That is to say, it's revise, and it's the final selection of the original 20/5. That is not to say it's done. Were I to improve upon it, I would have to fix the sports figures and give them a clear, unifying style. They're cleaner than the original figures, but there are still issues that I'd like to resolve before handing it over to SJI if they choose it.

When Greg assessed our revised logos, he first asked how we incorporated the idea of diversity in our logos. As I said I would do last week, I looked at logos for diversity-oriented organizations, and I was unable to find one that I felt was done tastefully. By and large, they incorporated the "Hands Around the World" theme or several faces of different skin tone overlapping. Wanting desperately to avoid falling into these tempting traps, I mostly avoided the idea of diversity and instead focused on the college, sports and written journalism themes of the organization. The logo pictured above, however, can be read as addressing diversity through use of color. The colors are representative of the main color in each sport's ball (brown footballs, orange basketballs, red baseball stitching), but they are also all warm colors, which are reminiscent of people and skin tones without being overt and tactless.

Critique - week 7

As promised, this week's critique is devoted to my rough drafts for the Sports Journalism Institute logo commission. SJI is a program committed to bringing greater gender and ethnic diversity to sports desks across the U.S., and they need a logo. In creating the logos, I tried to address the iconography of sports journalism. SJI as it was explained to me is focused on magazine/newspaper/online sports journalism rather than broadcast, which unfortunately eliminated much of what we visually associate with sports journalism. (The sideline reporter looking skyward with the logo-clad microphone as he or she interviews a 7'4" center, for example)

Here are the five finalists that I picked along with the help of all the designers and our liaison with SJI, Columbia Missourian Sports Editor Greg Bowers.

Obviously, they all require a lot of improvement. These are just rough drafts to better visualize the ideas I was playing with. I like the first and fourth the most (the first is based on the St. Louis Cardinals logo with birds perched on a baseball bat), and the fourth calls upon the podium where athletes and coaches address the media after a game or during a press conference. The last one looks pretty atrocious right now, but I like the idea. It is intended to show a scorecard from a sporting event (specifically baseball, although there are probably ways to incorporate other sports' scorecards), which is a method used to record data about a sporting event. At its most basic level, this is what sports reporting is, even though it can and frequently does reach much greater heights.

Moving forward, I have to find a way to make the fifth one look less cheap and simplify logos one, two and four. The third one is pretty boring, but it does address the idea that this is a program for college students as it is similar to many college logos. I will have to make it more apparent that it's a logo for the Sports Journalism Institute rather than anything that could be SJI (San Jose Institute, perhaps). I don't know that it's necessarily obvious that I should add color, but I certainly will. After all, these logos are not just for letterhead.

When he critiqued all the logos, Greg mentioned that he was disappointed that very few directly addressed the organization's main purpose, which is to diversify sports departments. This is certainly something I thought about, but it's extremely difficult to express this idea as an icon or with color and have it not be offensive. In my revisions, I will make a point to look at organizations devoted to promoting diversity to see how they address such a delicate subject.

Response - week 7

On Monday, we had the iPad conference on how to make magazines for the iPad in the RJI. Although it was certainly enlightening as to how the magazine industry is adapting and how much the people in charge of major consumer magazines know and don't know about the iPad, my takeaway from the conference was (mostly) unrelated. During his presentation for Mag+ and Popular Science, Mike Haney explained that presenting yourself to a potential employer is not necessarily about the many skills you possess. Instead, employers want us to be able to solve their problems. So even though I am not an expert with every pertinent software, I do feel wholly capable of coming up with solutions to a variety of problems and then implementing that solution. I also feel capable of learning the necessary software as each new program rolls out of the factory. My intangible and (I hope) more valuable skills lie in my storytelling ability and journalism judgment.

Can't miss this, vol. 7

I'm not an anglophile by any means. I felt The King's Speech was dramatically overrated. That said, Eye's post this week about the many artistic renditions of the Queen of England is particularly fascinating. It's interesting because her image is so omnipresent in the country and, to a lesser extent, the world, that she becomes the subject of many forms of visual art. She has been immortalized on stamps that feature a portrait of her in the most standard, least challenging (to understand, not create) style of art. She has also been photographed and painted by dozens others, all in varying styles. I find this intriguing not because I care about the Queen but because she is a figure that apparently spans every element of culture in her country. In the U.S., I cannot think of such a figure whose image could be made into every form of art from the lowest brow to the highest.

Onto a subject I am much more passionate about. A few months ago, one of my friends shared these posters with me, and they impressed me at the time and continue to wow me. Here are a couple of my favorites:

These posters all take a fascinating way to transform the iconic visual elements of a film into a poster that captures the essence the entire film. Each article of clothing (possibly with the exception of The Usual Suspects) is completely recognizable to anyone who has seen the movie, and they aim for the jugular (so to speak). I enjoy these because they're a roundabout way of telling the story visually, which is something we frequently have to do as designers when the obvious visual isn't there or is so overdone that we need to be fresh, new and exciting.

Critique - Week 6

I haven't designed anything new or of note in the past week (at least that I have in digital form — logos to come next week). So I've decided to critique my vidcast on VoxMagazine.com, Talking Pictures.

This is supposed to be a design blog. This is cheating, I know.

I have no training for broadcast. I only know to design, edit and write for magazines (or newspapers — I won't play favorites). As such, when I send in my weekly script to be edited by my producer, Amber, and Vox's online editor, Ileana, I frequently get back edits that my topic is difficult to find b-roll for. This gets back to my lack of broadcast training. As a designer, most of what I do is think visually. As a writer and editor, it's about half of what I do. That said, when I'm writing or editing, I'm concerned that the story is visually compelling, not with the pacing of the visuals within the text. As I write more for video, I have become more and more aware that it is imperative that I constantly consider what the B-roll will be and how long it can last. I might discuss half a dozen or more movies (as I did with my vidcast on romantic comedies), but if the writing does not allow for pacing, the content feels uneven.

In general, I feel my understanding of how to best match moving words to moving images has improved. I won't make the same mistake I made when I decided to complain about Redbox for the duration of the vidcast (we had to use a series of Redbox commercials for the B-roll). That said, I still don't think about the visuals before I decide what my topic of discussion will be (a common problem for beginning department editors), which results in lackluster visuals because the additional cues for video are frequently added in superfluously. In other words, it's not content-driven design. But I'm trying.

Can't miss this, vol. 6

Eye hasn't been hitting as many homers as it was those first few weeks, so let me apologize in advance for being less insightful than usual (unless you think I'm never insightful, in which case I will live up to my pre-established standard). In a blog post this week, Eye's writer talks about a new men's magazine called Port (or is it PORT?). It looks very expensive and classy but gets by on the cheap because the founders have a lot of talented friends. Think of it as a not-necessarily-Mizzou Mafia of the journalism world. It reminds me a lot of Eros, which Michelle discussed in our study of magazine design history. Both are somewhat foolhardy labors of love that are run by small staffs. As Eye points out, it will likely be financially unsuccessful for a variety of reasons (the economy, the death of print, etc., etc., etc.), but the creators are making a good product that they enjoy making.

One day, it will be nice to have such freedom to luxuriate in my journalistic success. Until then, the job hunt continues. Also the yob-hunt (I'm not opposed to working in Sweden)

And now, an opportunity! I work for Mizzou Media, which is the University supplier of course packets and its custom publishing division. Among my many important duties as designer is to oversee the University Classics Series of books that we print on the Espresso Book Machine. (My duties are not, however, to design promotional material, so don't blame me for the bad letter spacing in 2011.)

This year, we're holding our second (un)cover cover contest for the books. We at Mizzou Media are calling on the considerable talents of Columbia to present us with options to use for book covers (because Creative Commons art is pretty uninteresting). You can find details here, but submissions are due March 9, and you can submit one cover per book.

I think it's a great opportunity, and I'd enter five covers if I were eligible to do so. If your cover(s) get chosen, that's one more notch on your belt. If they don't, you still have a reason to generate more diverse items for your portfolio, which is always welcomed.

After all, you should always judge a book by its cover. If you didn't, why else would books have covers at all?

Response - week 6

I'm not sure how many of my fellow designers are aware, but last week an MU convergence student, Chris Spurlock, got his 15 minutes of cyberfame when his infographic resume went viral, courtesy of The Huffington Post by way of the J-School Buzz. I admit that I had not heard about it until Vox's online editor told me about it as I was updating my resume. Internet sensations come to me a bit slower because I don't have a Matrixian news feed plugged directly into my spinal cord. Here is the resume in question if you haven't yet seen it:

In any case, just prior to looking at this, I had googled the phrase "cool resumes" for inspiration. The key word from here on out is inspiration. Lo and behold, on the first page of my search, I found this gem posted to an infographics blog more than a year ago:

I think it's very safe to say that Chris borrowed heavily from Michael Anderson's resume. Here is a somewhat exhaustive list of identical or near identical elements:

• The general layout
• The typeface and type treatment (Bold and Light all caps)
• The color palette (this was revised in the final version of Chris')
• The timeline format
• The gray shaded bars behind the timeline
• The callout style on the timeline with ruled circles
• The labels for Experience and Education in color, type treatment and shape
• The placement of all the contact information along the top of the resume
• The star to designate graduation date

At this point, you might be asking why this matters. The transitive property does not give Chris Spurlock Michael Anderson's work experience. The content of the resume is presumably not a falsification. It would not matter if Chris were applying to be a social worker or a sandwich maker or an exotic dancer. In all those cases and more, this would just be a way to make his resume stand out. In journalism, however, the skills exhibited in creating this resume are relevant in several different areas. It suggests that Chris is capable of generating brilliant ideas, has wonderful design sense, can make a wicked infographic, and so on. These all might be true, regardless, but it essentially lying to employers to present this as his own work. He did not come up with the idea to present his career and education in this precise manner.

To me and several other visual journalists I've spoken to (some of the Vox designers and Missourian photo editors), this is clearly visual plagiarism. Every detail of Spurlock's resume is lifted directly from Anderson's. Had it been a matter of Spurlock seeing it once, remembering the rough layout and accidentally copying it, that might be more excusable. But in this case, each element is copied directly from the original with only minor, relatively insignificant departures.

In the process of examining the two resumes, I returned to the originating source: J-School Buzz Editor-in-Chief David Teeghman. He at first said that Spurlock's was different enough that it was not a direct copy, which I felt was untrue, but understandable for someone who admits to knowing nothing about design. I don't mean to sound self-important by any means, but as a designer, I feel the quality of work lies largely in my attention to detail. Type, layout, color palette, etc. are not snap decisions; they take a great deal of time and thought. When I explained that, as a designer, I felt this was untrue for the reasons listed in bullet points above, Teeghman responded that "To say this is plagiarism is like saying that Catch-22 is plagiarized from Huck Finn; yes, it's the same language and layout, but different in very important ways."

In general, this is a pretty confusing parallel. Book design and layout is pretty standard, by and large, and I don't think anyone in the history of academic dishonesty has ever considered using the English language as cause for dismissal. That said, I've only read all of Huck Finn and the first chapter of Catch-22, so perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps Teeghman, married as he is to print, has a far more profound knowledge of American literature than I do. But that's neither here nor there. This asinine response elicited the rash suggestion that Teeghman does not understand design enough to speak to this, which, in turn, elicited a response from Teeghman that I do not understand plagiarism.

Evidently, Teeghman spoke with Mike Anderson, and Anderson assured him that it was not plagiarism. He gave Chris the green light after the fact, so everyone's sins are absolved. In following with Teeghman's Huck Finn analogy, I asked if it would be plagiarism if I had taken the novel and rewritten half of it while keeping the other half verbatim. In this scenario, I am claiming the work as my own with no credit to Mark Twain, but Mr. Clemens has so graciously given me permission to butcher his life's work.

To this, Teeghman responded "And yes, I would consider Mark Twain to be the eminent authority on what could be considered plagiarism of his own work. The creator of a work would know better than anyone else if another work had been plagiarized from his own work, or if his original had merely served as inspiration." I had hoped (wrongly, evidently) that I had given such a ludicrous example that Teeghman would be forced to see the error of his ways (more repenting cliches, etc.). In this case, plagiarism is not subjective. In my hypothetical, I took another man's work and claimed it as my own. The same holds true for Spurlock, though, in his defense, no one asked him, especially not Teeghman. It was not until last night that the J-School Buzz article included any reference to Anderson's original work, and considering the premise of the original article (the coolest journalism student resume ever), an acknowledgment of something that is only a couple years old seems necessary. But that would require a knowledge of or attention to events in the immediate and distant past.

It is alarming that the EIC of a website devoted to navel-gazing and the inner workings of the "World's Best School of Journalism" does not have a simple grasp on the concept of plagiarism. It would be more alarming that he does not make this a priority ("It's not that I feel strongly that I'm right, I just didn't really care enough to focus on it, because I have so much other work to focus on with the site.") considering that ideas are currency in journalism. But again, if you don't understand what plagiarism is, it's hard to fight against it.