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.

Critique - week 5

This week I'll be critiquing my cover roughs for the True/False issue of Vox. The theme is WT/F? Or "What True/False?" As in, the who, what, when, where and why of True/False.

This was the first cover I created and my favorite of the three. I like it because it's very immediate and fun; it would have great newsstand appeal. Conceptually, it might be a bit fuzzier (to use a technical design term), but the general feeling I get with True/False is that we're essentially putting a silk hat on a pig. That is, Columbia is a very nice college town in the middle of Missouri. It's impossible to comprehend, therefore, how it came to host one of the top two or three biggest, most popular documentary film festivals in the world. It's loved by the directors (plug!) and the community alike, but Columbia is not Hollywood or Cannes or Venice. Columbia is an average Midwestern town the other 361 (362 in leap years, of course) days of the year. So I tried to evoke that disconnect or cacophony in the design. The type is derivative of something that was elegant but has been cheapened, and the color palette is just a little garish but still very pretty (I think, at least). This combines, of course, with the text to be very jarring in a positive way.

My second cover is essentially a more literal interpretation of that the concept I was trying to convey in the first cover. Here, the idea is that the acronym "WTF" has been spray-painted as graffiti onto a brick wall in downtown Columbia (where True/False takes place, primarily). The film of the festival is then projected onto the city to add culture, but the city remains part of the landscape. Execution-wise, this is rough, and would likely require actually painting a brick wall and photographing it or a more skilled Photoshop artist.

The final cover is my least favorite, and, therefore, it was everyone else's favorite. It bores me, and it was exceedingly simple to put together and conceptualize. My thinking behind it would be to emphasize the emptiness of the documentary director's chair as he or she is out-and-about rather than sitting in a studio. That said, people took the proportion of the chair to signify the importance of the director to the documentary process.

In each of the covers, I chose to not use sell lines because the T/F package deserves full importance. It is the biggest thing that happens in Columbia each year by a wide margin. Furthermore, as a city magazine, Vox has little value to out-of-town visitors for T/F for anything but our festival coverage. As such, cluttering the cover with extraneous info about swim instructors and gaming conferences would be less worthwhile than it usually is.

Don't Miss This vol. 5

Last week on Eye's blog (nothing this week really piqued my interest, sadly), they discussed the combination of infographics and music. These are not typical interactive web infographics, but moving infographics (video infographics, essentially) that use sound creatively. In their first example, the designer created a New York subway map in which the trains create cello string noises as they cross paths with other trains. (My words don't do it justice, so you should check it out here)

This relates to my post last week in which I discussed the expanded dimensions (and senses!) in which we as designers must think as we move our skills to the tablet format. Both examples Eye gives are brilliantly creative ways to express frequency of occurrence in a way that is more easily understood than a visual with many moving parts.

In other news, I'm a sucker for movie art. That's the last time I'll say that, I think. You all know by now. As such, I can't pass up a great opportunity to spread the movie love. This week, IFC.com created their list of the 50 Greatest Opening Title Sequences of All Time. The sheer volume of great options allows us the ability to compare the varied visual storytelling styles exhibited in each. Just for kicks, let's look at #41 Snatch and #40 The Shining.



The Snatch titles are energetic and playful, which parallels the frenetic pace of the movie and the humor of the script. Furthermore, the bold colorizations of each characters, and the interweaving scenes foreground the plot machinations of the movie and the cartoonishness of the characters.



On the other hand, the titles for The Shining are much more subdued. They're beautiful, and the score tells us we should be worried, yes, but they are not as frenzied as the Snatch titles. The storytelling and general insanity in The Shining makes a much more subtle entrance. Don't get me wrong, The Shining is not a subtle movie, but the progression is. For as much terror as we are led to expect, Jack doesn't exhibit anything more than a foul temper until his final rampage.

Incidentally, I do feel they left off the Rosemary's Baby titles, which are just as brilliant for their use of sound as they are for their visuals. Unfortunately, YouTube is coming up bare, so you'll just have to borrow it from me or rent it and see for yourself.

Response - week 5

This week, we watched The September Issue, which, along with The Devil Wears Prada, is one of the two movies Magazine graduates of the University of Missouri School of Journalism need to have seen. Somehow I managed to get my degree without seeing either.

Having now seen the former, I suppose I should first admit (and be embarrassed, apparently) that I had no idea the September issue of Vogue was culturally significant. As someone who would one day (sooner rather than later, employers) work for a major consumer magazine, this seems like something I'm just supposed to know. But as a man who cares more about every other facet of culture before fashion (consciously, at least), you'll have to cut me some slack.

In any case, I suppose I found the relationship between Anna Wintour and the creative director, Grace, to be the most fascinating because it was the most relatable. Obviously Vox is not Vogue, and our editor is not Anna Wintour, but it seems that Editorial as an entity has undue control over design elements of the magazine, whereas Design as an entity has little to no input on the editorial content. There is a comic that I saw a few years ago, but I couldn't find an image online, so my words will have to suffice. Essentially, it's a single frame of a man being executed in a guillotine, and as he pulls the cord to release the blade, the executioner says, "We prefer to call it editing." This was certainly evident in the production of the September issue of Vogue as it was evident when I was a reporter for Vox and now a designer. Of course when I was a department editor, I felt differently.

From a film perspective, the editing is troubling. As many times as it has been said, it bears repeating: a documentary is as much a product of the director as a fiction film. The content is shot and ultimately edited to tell the story the filmmakers want to be told, which is not necessarily the true story 100 percent of the time. This holds true for The September Issue, however the fictional effect is doubled when you consider the subjects. Every member of the Vogue staff, especially Anna Wintour, are media-savvy. After all, they're members of the media. And, after all, documentary is journalism. Wintour et al know what makes a juicy story, and they know how they want to be portrayed and perceived. It's difficult to say how much of the subjective material of the documentary is truly business-as-usual with this understanding.

All that said, there are also moments where the documentarians clearly embellish events through subtle filmmaking techniques. Three-quarters through the film, they weave the narrative of decline for both Anna and Grace together and suggest that both of them are tired of the monotony and constant struggle of their work. These interviews, of course, were recorded separately from the actual events, and their answers are answers to intentional questions. The implied simultaneity of these moments is entirely fabricated. Furthermore, when Wintour listens to one of the staff member's story pitches, the audience is led to believe that Anna is disinterested and tired, when in fact there is nothing to support this. The effect is created entirely by cross-fading the diegetic sound of the meeting room with the non-diegetic sound of depressing music.

Because of all this, it is difficult to decipher what is and isn't true about Anna Wintour's grip on Vogue. We understand that she is very powerful, but we gain little insight on her personality.

Critique - Week 4

My publishers and I are getting started working on our new prototype, Thrifty Cook AKA Cupboard, or, as I like to call it, whisk + pantry. It's a play off Town & Country, which is a lighthearted jab that people in our target age group would appreciate. It also incorporates the two key elements of the magazine: saving money and cooking. In any case, here are my first drafts of the cover, a department, a feature spread and the color palette. Have at it.

This is the cover, which I liked a lot more when it was just the photo and the logo. I initially had tilted boxes behind the sell lines (like the box behind the logo, more or less), but they were clunky, so I eliminated them. Unfortunately, this required using outer glows on the sell lines for legibility, which I think detracts from the flat aesthetic of the logo. As I'm sure you know by now, I really like flat. My biggest struggle with this project has been picking typefaces that reflect the purpose of the magazine, which is essentially to save money on food by making it at home and making less. As such, I tried to go with a handmade feel without being overt. The tagline is handwritten, but the title of the magazine is just a blocky, slightly rounded serif. The initial type I chose for the sell lines was basically the same used in Real Simple's logo, but there was a disconnect between the logo and the sell line style. The new type isn't a dramatic departure from the original, but I do feel that it's a bit friendlier and less modern.

For my department page, I tried to carry over some of the paper-scrap aesthetic from the logo with the tilted color elements as well as the icon-style department header. Because the magazine is an offshoot from a cookbook and is meant to teach readers how to cook for one or two people rather than eight, I felt sections such as "Resized" would be helpful and easy content to produce. The notion is simple: Take an item from the original cookbook and cut down the portions and ingredient count. Instead of feeding 10, it will feed two, and instead of requiring eight ingredients it will only require five, or something like that.

The second story on the page, "Leftover Redux: The Virtues of the Baked Potato," displays a recurring visual style in the magazine. Again, the premise is that the readers will be cooking for one or two. The potato here is blown up much larger than it would typically be with the idea in mind that just because you're cooking small doesn't mean you have to eat small. That is to say, the quantity is smaller, but the taste is not.

This is a sample feature, and, shall we say, it's a very, very rough draft. I was rushing to complete this element, and it shows. The story would be about how cutting coupons is a thing of the past, and coupons have all gone digital. I actually do like the concept behind the illustration. It's clean, and it reads pretty well. That said, the spread is pretty underwhelming, and I'll have to put more work into a revision. In short, I like the illustration concept and the headline type treatment, but I don't think I'd read the story based on this design.

Last but not least, here is the color palette for whisk + pantry. I wanted to go with a muted set of colors because the magazine is targeted toward young people who live alone or with one other person and have limited funds. Let me explain (or sum up, whichever you prefer). This isn't to suggest that these people live dreary, drab and depressing lives. It is my assumption that many of the readers live in old apartments in big cities, and their living space would not be as opulent and luxurious as those readers who don't have to worry about what they spend on food (or cooking at home, if at all. They probably have butlers, right?).

Again, feel free to tear this apart. I think it's a good starting point, but it's far from a finished product.

Response - Week 4

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This week, Mike Haney spoke to the Vox staff via Skype about a relatively new product, Mag+, that can be used to export designs from InDesign to the iPad. I don't have an iPad (read: $499 floating around), and I haven't extensively used any loaners to this point, so I'm not particularly well versed in what a magazine on the iPad should be able to do. That said, I was very impressed with the InDesign plug-in, and I look forward to learning how to create interactive designs with it. Based on what I took from his presentation, Mag+ essentially eliminates the need to know how to program an iPad app with pretty extensive functionality. That's not to say it cuts out the middle man entirely — I'm sure further customization is ideal for any publication — but it's certainly comforting to know that a designer is creating their issues, not a programmer. It seems like Mag+ democratizes iPad use and allows great design to flow directly from print to digital.

What Mr. Haney explained was that Mag+ functions in many of the same ways as print designing; you work from an InDesign template and determine which visual elements should compliment which parts of the text. The added freedom of interactivity, video and a fluid space is, of course, also an added challenge. But it's a challenge that I cannot wait to undertake. As the designer, this feels to me like it must have felt to directors in the late 20s/early 30s who used sound for the first time. It's an entirely new dimension of the reader experience that requires exponentially more planning and thought.

I'm very eager to start.

Can't Miss This vol. 4

As much as I would love to regale you all with my love of Saul Bass once again (in response to Eye's latest post about his work), I wouldn't want to bore you all too much. Instead, I'll be discussing their interview with Nick Felton, author/designer/subject of the Feltron Annual Report. (aside: why the R? That's just confusing)

The popularity (relatively speaking) of the Feltron Report is indicative of how much people prefer visual storytelling and the need for great design work. Many people, myself included, jump at the opportunity to read an intelligently made, witty infographic before a story told in a traditional words-first format. It is abundantly clear that charts, graphs, etc. (at least opposed to a narrative) are the only way to relate the information in the report without boring readers. For those unfamiliar, first let me apologize for making you wade through this paragraph with no idea of what I'm talking about. The report is Felton's statistical representation of everything that has happened to him in the past year, and it includes tons of small, fun details that would be dreadful to read were they simply written out. At the risk of sounding illiterate, may I just say that pictures really do matter. In any case, infographics can be one of the best, most accessible ways of telling stories because they use a good economy of storytelling techniques.

As an example, when I worked infographics for The Missourian, we created our own Feltron reports. At the same time, I was a department editor for Vox, so I essentially lived in the building (which was good because my house did not have air conditioning, and it was a typical Missouri summer). As such, my two-week report was dictated by Vox. Enjoy:

It's not quite as polished as I'd like, but, in my defense, I was a words person at the time. As you can see, this is a much more entertaining (I hope) and horrifying representation of my life at the time. Certainly you'd rather look at this than read a journal in which I catalogued my sandwich consumption habits on a given day.

But wait, there's more!

While facebooking this afternoon, I stumbled across Eric Skillman's design blog. Specifically, I came across his walkthrough of the creative process behind developing DVD case and menu screen art for the Criterion Collection. The draft process behind arriving at a final product totally fascinates me, because at Vox, our schedule is so tight that we typically cannot completely overhaul the concept, type and layout of a feature design. Here he discusses the changes behind the DVD art for Broadcast News and how each design variation moves toward or away from the content of the movie. He has designed several of my favorite Criterion covers, including Divorce, Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned (both commedie all'italiana, dir. Pietro Germi).

In an earlier blog post, he also discusses the design process for another favorite, Sweet Smell of Success. In this case, he collaborated with an artist rather than using photographic art from the film (as with Broadcast News). This post is fascinating because he talks about design that is both content-driven while also limited by requirements placed on the design. What results is a beautiful, brilliant cover. I'm so glad the cover employs the primary color palette of the movies at the time both because the movie posters of the mid-20th century are my favorite, but also because it suits the movie so well.

Also because it's a dramatic improvement over the current offering, which reminds me another reason why I like Criterion so much. Much like Polish movie posters, Criterion's designers frequently make film art that is not directly associated with previous promotional materials for the movie and instead are a much better, content-driven representation of the film.