Last class on Tuesday – we had a presentation by Chris Brand (pretty awesome stuff) and turned in our final portfolios. No in-class crits.
I’ve gotta say…I have a new appreciation for art school students. Although I took a single class for a semester… I was pretty wiped out. I can’t imagine the workload of having 4 other classes as well. props guys…
And as for my final portfolio.. lets just say it left a lot to be desired. I was a bit disappointed that my method of pasting my covers into a paper pad was not the greatest idea… pages falling out and covers getting crumpled. Not exactly my proudest moment. But here they are.
Re-did the cover title lettering to be smaller and more subdued. I think this works a little better and the colors came out a bit better than the comps.
Had a really hard time with cover. I’m still not satisfied. The magenta is really hard on the eyes and I don’t think the scale is quite right yet.
zzzzz…
Ended up doing 2 comps for Nine Stories – I do like the top one better but I’m not sure if the torn pages read as something else.
So all in all, a great class. Learned a lot and met some great people. I’m planning to take a break from classes this summer but hope to restart in the fall semester.
Summer time – back to lazy weekends!
Almost done…
Went over our revised Nine Stories covers. I’ve still got a little tweeking to do.
The cutout of the boy is not working for anyone…they suggested drawing a boy and erasing part of him. Or just leaving the back blank with quotes and just incorporate the handwriting. The white spine was voted out…2 pages side by side slightly apart, perhaps torn, was suggested.
Flap type needs to be larger and have more generous margins.
Final assignment will be a presentation of our 4 final covers, mounted along with comps (or bound into a book) to give to Kevin for grading.
We will have a final guest speaker next class… and then we are DONE… yowzers.
This was an attempt to make a tunnel of the cut outs. I tried with actual paper cutouts but it was pretty impossible to make it look like anything. I tried photoshop and this is the mess I made. Kevin says it looks like aliens. spooky.
This week we worked on covers for one of my most favorite collections of short stories, Nine Stories by JD Salinger.
Covers for short story collections can be difficult since you can’t use specific imagery from an individual story…you would have to either find an overarching / underlying theme for all the stories that you could illustrate; elevate the fact that is a ‘collection’ or multiplicity; or highlight the author themselves.
Really well received. yippee! Class agreed this cover is pretty much done. Feedback on the white spine..perhaps in black or maybe it becomes a gutter for the 2 pages? not sure about that..but will try. Overall they liked the handwritten type … nice mood and setting was appropriate. Kevin thought it went well with the Archer type on the spine but maybe use American Typewriter instead?
The back cutout of the boy was tossed up as being a little confusing…is the boy missing? I kinda liked it as a image of childhood innocence and intelligence being lost as we grow up into adults…which I believed is the main theme of most of Salinger’s works. This ones a keeper.
This was a second attempt…was trying to go for the duality of people and perhaps the light and dark of the stories.. but it doesn’t work.
This one was also well received…however Kevin felt it may look too children’s booky. Nice imagery with the jaunty cutouts but cauliflower head girl on the middle right was bugging him. huh.
Similar to the idea above..except in the less abrasive, soothing color, blue. back cover looks like a hoard of zombies. creeps me out everytime.
So next week are finals with flap type. This will be good.
Final covers for this week. I tried to redo the cover for The Accident…but I don’t think I’ve solved it. The type feels too big. Clunky. And I’m having a hard time figuring out how to place the quotes and flap texts.
Went over only the Mozart covers tonight -
This was attempt number 1. Too large, too clunky. The angle/shot of the harpsichord doesn’t fit…feels like it’s falling.
Instead the second version was better received. The scale could be reduced even more and the title/author needs to rag… not too much, not too little.. its a delicate balance. The back quotes should be centered and the script M needs to go away.
Next assignment: Cover comps for Nine Stories by JD Salinger.
4 more weeks to go. whew.
So trying to play off Mozart’s playfulness and the fact that he was a child prodigy…I went for toy piano.
Yes, toy piano. In pink. Just because.
Not a total success…First it was too hard to identify it as a toy piano – the scale was a problem. It also wasn’t authentic. No toy piano were available in the 18th century. Also child prodigies actually play on toys, they play on the real thing.
Piano wrapped around the cover. Can’t really see all the keys at once, so tried this..
They thought the piano looked like it was falling.
Last resort. Just got sick of pink so went for another ‘toyish’ color. tried to scale it to look puny. it just ended up looking weird. Bad stacking on the title and scale changes with the author. fix fix fix.
Final decision was to use a real adult harpsichord, make it bright pink and type sandwich it.
Next week – we pick a previous cover, revise, typeset flap copy and bring it in for review.
Amadeus is one of my most favorite movies so thought I would choose Mozart for my biography assignment. It was fun researching his life and listening his music for 2 weeks straight. Unfortunately, the outcome wasn’t as successful as I hoped.
Mozart is known for his genius, his flamboyant lifestyle and subsequent debt and of course his superbly complex and distinctly playful music… basically the rockstar of his generation.
Magenta harpsichord with modern type = rockstar?…piano the magic maker?….Sounds good but maybe not the right solution.
most found the type distracting – too expo posterish. The concept was well received, but I need to explore more visuals to convey playfulness. Toys? Deconstruction?
This was my approach to embrace the classical elements of the time period….while avoiding a “portrait” cover. Iconic coat color red/orange and his wig. This was an OKAY solution but Kevin made the important point that this image could fit MANY a different people.. Washington…every other composer of the era?
So I need to continue to explore a visual for my rockstar concept.
Another student who admitted to watching the movie and starting her cover this morning came up with a great solution of defacing Mozart’s image with sharpie squiggles…she’s basically done. damn it.
We had a wonderful presentation by Barbara DeWilde for our class this week. Went over her covers – discussing concepts and designs that were so ahead of her time. Very inspirational. Her tricks to conceptual solutions? Collect found objects, build parallel narratives and ask for solutions in your dreams.
After her talk, Kevin asked her to go through the comps we did for THE ACCIDENT in class briefly…and she went through and picked out the few that she felt really jumped out to her. Quick summary of THE ACCIDENT: an extremely detailed eyewitness account of a man on a bike with a child getting run over by a trolley.
Luckily she pointed out one of my comps…saying the concept was strong…the abstraction of the bike spokes, making you look twice..the calm, tight circle exploding into chaos..nice tension…also she mentioned the geometric shapes made a nice asian feel…All very nice things to hear. Of course there is a lot more tightening and tweeking to be done but definitely a good start. Highlight of my night.
Poorly executed handwriting with finger and keypad. Will need to use a Wiacom tablet.
Barbara also recommends more chaos, more tension and more colors perhaps.
Not so much this one.
This one kind of lead to the ones above. Asian. Bike. Bing! I get it. Blah.
Trying convey the intensity of an accident and the fact that the importance slowly disappears as the day continues. I don’t think this works at all.
I tried it with chalk..kinda of the idea of a chalk outline in crime scenes…slowing blurring out… but it also came out horrible.
Thinking newspaper…selective viewpoints…uhhh.. actually I don’t remember why this made sense.
It must have been late at night.
aaannnnnd. done. end scene.
Instead of regular class, Kevin set up some great presentations for us this week.
Monday we went to Paul Sahre’s studio for a visit and discussed his book covers. Pretty awesome experience. He talked mostly of the industry…the future of books and how his relationships with art directors and publishers make a huge impact to his final product.
Random things I learned.
1. In house designing is somewhat like being in the bottom hull of a ship. Barefoot with oars…and whips.
2. Plastic acetate is expensive and gets scratched.
3. Everyone should have a piece of a rocket in their workspace
Tuesday we visited the Collins design studio – where Kevin works.
Brian Collins and Leland Maschmeyer gave an amazing presentation on the impact of design in society.
Let’s just say that violin + slow mo rocket launch + talk of hope = shivers
It was inspiring to hear how important a good story is to your design. Things that truly resonate with you will come out in your design and hopefully the energy/passion will be passed on to your audience. A design without that just seems like a waste of time. Design is meant to be experienced, to add value and to change lives…
whew.
so. much. pressure.
Elements that I thought would solve my ROADS OF HOME cover:
1. grey
2. paper cut outs
3. farm-ish landscapes
4. little simple shaped houses that might reflect childhood nostalgia
And although the individual elements might convey home and moodiness, it didn’t add much more than that…Without a concept to work towards…it just kinda fell apart. Too thin.
I kept on wanting to incorporate this cool image of paper cutouts into my design that I tried to force a concept around it…and ended up wasting a lot of time.
sigh.
Generally this comp was better liked. Type treatment was weak. Archer was too playful and not sophisticated enough – especially with my bouncy baseline.
Kevin like this front cover type the best. Thought it was the most interesting.. Advised to find a way to incorporate the blocks of type into the 1st layout…
John Updike was too crammed on the edge. I have to admit laziness (or pure exhaustion) did have a part in my design decisions. After you spent 3 painful hours cutting out tiny letters w/ an exacto knife, you don’t really feel like doing it again to achieve a type size just a tad be smaller or tighter.
At least they thought the type treatment for the quote on the back were nice. thats good.
Next time, I just need to be smarter, wittier and more focused. thats all. Josh recommends to condense the story to one main sentence. pick 2 separate aspects of that sentence and come up with visuals to represent each. Then put them together. and voila.. concept.
Our next story is called THE ACCIDENT. Man + Bike + Trolley = death…which then results in a bunch of rubbernecking and nonchalant reporting. Pretty nice story. I haven’t gotten a good idea yet. Played around with bike spokes and newpapers but need to dig a bit deeper.
Next class will be a visit to Paul Sahre’s studio (gasp) and the next day a presentation at Collins -
Just returned from the second class as Kevin’s TA at Parsons-Book cover design class.
Our first assignment was on John Updike’s short story called The Roads of Home.
Quick synopsis: Old man returns to farm town where he grew up and finds himself lost amongst the vaguely familiar landmarks and streets. Nostalgia and frustration of being lost where you feel like you shouldn’t be are the main points of the story.
The class was refreshing engaged and I thought a few students really stood out.
Mostly the designs were a bit too literal, mine including…and some were completely off the mark…
I did 4 sketches – using the idea of childhood nostalgia being a little bittersweet and that your memories are never exactly what it is in real life.
Kevin found this too literal. I tried to make a pretty predictable picture dynamic by reflecting it..but I’m not sure what value that added. tried another version to the left, but that was disregarded entirely…Need to give it a quick kick in the pants to mean something specific about the book.
Used an painting from Esther Pearl Watson to convey childhood nostalgia….but although the image is beautiful – it’s a bit to generic for this story. need to take this to the next level. Also.. I don’t think the type is successful at all.
Again, another image that is beautiful, by Grady McFerrin, but doesn’t make any sense to the story. I was trying to use homes, in wrong perspectives, upside down as a kind of a distorted memory…being lost/confused…but it didn’t fly… and the type is pretty horrid.
and this is my last ditch attempt…using the soil/dirt imagery from the story of the farm and his roots… didn’t work. Mostly due to the way i shot it. Looks like a horror film – someone being kidnapped, ransomed and buried alive in the woods.. feedback: save for the next SAW movie.
Overall the class was great. Pumped about starting up again. It’s really nice being able to meet with Kevin before and after the class too – I totally lucked out.
