T/F

YOU CAN'T MISS: TRUE: Photoshop can work miracles.



The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

The beginning of the video is unimpressive, but the second half shows how Photoshop can be used to turn the girl next door into a total Playboy hottie. We saw the beginning and end of things like this in design intro, but it was cool to see how the actual tools are used to "fix" someone. If you ask me, this girl is pretty good-looking. She already has pretty good bone structure, but it was really interesting (not to mention utterly disturbing) to see all the graphic enhancements.


CRITIQUE: FALSE: designing in a group is impossible.






This is the first draft for next week's feature well. I like the overall look of both spreads, but they feel a little empty to me. Not in a 'wow all this white space looks so clean' kind of way, either. I want to make the film on top a little darker, I don't think that it's reading as film right now. I do really like the type for "REEL" (thanks for the lessons in creating brushes, Kate L.!) and the different sized numbers in the sidebar, which is actually a topbar right now (...?). I'm struggling with reasons to make some figures larger than others. I don't want them to be uniformly sized, but I also want the sizing to be meaningful.

The second spread will bump down to a single page and drop the sidebar, which is perfect. I think as it is here the spread is overly heavy on the theme. I'd also like to do something fun with the stroke coming off the drop cap - something mapp-ish, perhaps.

The new page will be a splash for the t/f well. Right now I'm planning on playing off a lie dector, but I haven't come up with anything that's immediately recognizable as one. Perhaps because a polygraph isn't especially recognizable.

Hannah and I are working on this together, and we've agreed to keep it light. We're also planning to use the same red in order to unify the spreads better and going with an overall theme of "testing" although we've taken it will probably be taken to some pretty abstract levels.

Overall I like how things are looking. The festival is modern and hip (although actually saying "hip" may not be), and I hope by the end the designs will be, too.

RESPONSE: FALSE: weekly class polls are wack!
I was so impressed by all the other work that people had done outside of class. However, I felt like there was a huge divide between level of experience with the programs.

It's true that
1) there's no way to have good design without good ideas, and
2) while you can always learn more about programs, you can't teach creativity

and the poll:
But in the end which is better: (A) a poorly executed design with a great concept or (B) a so-so idea that looks incredible?

VOTE!
I choose B. Maybe I've learned nothing in the semester and a half here, but I think that it's really important to be able to use the programs. The designs that effectively garner interest (both within the class and in publications in general) are those that have been competently completed. Bonus points if the nice-looking designs are smart, too.