Final Project - Website FIN

This is it. The finished project...

It looks nicer on the bigger screen than my tiny 21" across monitor at home. Yay~

Final Project: Website WIP 4

More screens of the website's progress. I feel better about it, I guess?

I mean, I'm trying to find more interview things with Scott in them. The earliest I could find in video was 2010... and that's 2 years old and doesn't exactly reflect him accurately for now. So I chose to go with the recording of him at PAX 2012 with the creators of Penny Arcade and Wil Wheaton playing a D&D campaign in front of everyone.

I mean, it has vulgarity in it... I sort of feel like it shouldn't be there, but at the same time it's really funny and it is part of him (and them) as a person (people) so... *shruggs*

I guess I should see it like I saw Martha Rostler in a sense: this is who these people are, and you can't just sensor the man and assume you're painting an accurate picture of him by doing so...

Final Project - Website WIP 3

Final Project - Website WIP 2

Eh. I don't know. I mean, this looks like a website, but it seems so plain to me in comparison to everyone else's I've seen. This is kind of his thing though, the crisp, clean structure of the comic. Maybe I need to change the banners or whatnot.

I'm technically almost done. All the info I wanted to present is right there, and the only thing I really need to do is create the banner buttons that link to his projects and insert his Twitter, FB and Tumblr links as well as some link-outs to some of the people and pages mentioned in his information.

Maybe I should somehow insert some of his character in the layout. There's all that space to the side, and if the banners don't take up too much room, I could totally do a floating image of one of the PVP characters coming out of the side of the column :T

Final Project - Website WIP1

Miiggghhhttt have forgotten about updating this thing when I started getting into the crunch of the last few weeks of the semester. Thankfully, I don't find this project hard, it's just a little constraining at times. But working within constraints is a good thing, shows your problem solving skills.

This is my current WIP for my simple website, which is on Scott Kurtz:

Mock Layout Ideas

My ideas. I have several.

Website Person Blurb

I forget what all this summary business is supposed to be about, so here's my stab i the dark at it. The person I chose was Scott Kurtz:

Scott Kurtz is a professional cartoonist born in Santa Cruz, California in March of 1971. He's well known for his online comic PvP (or Player versus Player) which he launched in May of 1998 working for a client. A little more than a year later in June of 1999, Kurtz reworked the comic PvP and relaunched it as version 2.0.

PvP (or Player versus Player) is a comic that chronicles the adventures of a fictitious video gaming magazine company and the employees who work there. The main cast is comprised of 5 characters and is accompanied by a supporting cast of over 20 re-occuring characters. By 2005, PvP had reached a readership of 100,000 unique readers a day. It now currently has a readership of about 150,000.

For his work on PvP, Scott Kurtz was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist in the Humor category in 2005, and received another nomination in 2006 for Best Digital Comic. In 2010 his work on PvP also gained him a nomination for a Harvey Award for Best Online Comic Work.

Magazine Cover FIN 2

Final, finished and done version of my magazine cover.

I got more feedback from the MUGID club, as well as some independent feedback from friends and other graphic design/art students I know and this is what became of my magazine cover. The biggest concern was the amount of space left over from the other design, and while I wanted to emphasize the "main article", I realized that the middle picture (while pretty) did not carry enough umph in order to hold its own as the entirety of the cover.

I've ended up happy with the design in the end.

Magazine Cover Design - FIN1

I think this is probably going to be my finished piece, unless I get some solid feedback from MUGID and a couple of my classmates. I'm satisfied with it, I guess?

I tried to go the route of "the main article also functions as the cover spread" angle and while I think I accomplished it, I can't help but feel that maybe I oversimplified it? I mean, when looking through other magazine covers with this layout it was generally very simplified. I don't know...

I also feel like I back-tracked and hit the sterile look I was attempting to avoid. Which is kind of not fun, but... Yeah. I don't know. I like how it turned out, but it didn't seem to be what I had initially envisioned  I guess visions change?

Magazine Cover Progress

Because I was sick and wasn't all that sure in regards to what I was looking at on the screen, I had to continuously print things out from my home printer to see what things actually looked like off the screen and in its proper format.

These are my progression images from my cover design. The colors are off since they were printed on my crappy home printer, but this was the process for it.

Cover Image Graphic

Finally finished the cover image composite. I won't get to have much feedback on it because I was ill today and couldn't make it to class. Hopefully it's up to par though. I mean, I feel pretty good about how it turned out. It was relatively simple in its execution, but came together relatively seamlessly.

Masthead Samples

I picked out my favorite Masthead sample of the bunch from my previous post and put them in the different fonts I had been eyeing. I immediately struck out CODE as a possible font when I saw how it'd look in this format. It's too imposing.

Here are each of the examples and their font name.

^ Glasket ^

^ Ambrosia ^

^ Limousines & Champagne ^

Masthead Ideas

These are my ideas for my Masthead for the magazine cover. I'm using Limousines & Champagne for the font at the moment, but I'm going to try each orientation in each of the fonts and see what they all look like and go from there.

At this moment I tend to be leaning hardest towards the 4th design. My 2nd pick would probably have to be the 2nd design, my 3rd being the 3rd design and I want to throw the 1st design into a shredder on the internet somewhere.

Someone should program that. A little flash space where you can upload documents you wish to physically shred and watch the little flash program shred them symbolically for you.

Font Test - 1

Testing out my preferred of the fonts from my first group of chosen fonts. You don't really know what it'll look like until it's composed with the rest of the magazine cover, but there's nothing wrong with getting a feel of what my title will look like in the different fonts.

^ Ambrosia ^

^ Champagne & Limousines ^

^ Code ^

^ Code Light ^

^ Glasket ^

I'll probably look for and test more of them later on over the weekend. Especially considering I actually like the fonts and can use them in personal projects.

My main concern is how to incorporate the word Diabetes into the selections. Do I want it to be offset like I sketched out, or should it flow with the rest of the masthead?

Also need to think of sell lines since I'm going with the whole "giant picture cover story" thing.

Magazine Cover Fonts

My collection of font ideas so far for my masthead.

I think with the direction I have in mind a simple font masthead in a clean cut sans serif or very understated serif would work best. Especially considering that I want the magazine to look on the cutting edge without the sterility of a hospital. And I definitely want to stay away from the idea of it being a homey cook book/ food magazine.

After reviewing the idea with my professor, I decided that his assessment of it being a purely diabetic nutritional and informative magazine aside from something niched into a series worked out better. Especially with the point of it being a large concern in the country and such a prevalent disease.

I only have one Serif and one Handwritten font in the mix, mostly for the tone they provided, but I doubt I'll use them.

I'm really leaning heavily towards CODE, Champagne & Limousines, Ambrosia and Glasket.

We'll see what else I can find.

Magazine Cover Sketches

These are the sketched cover ideas for my magazine entitled Food Beyond. 

They're very basic as I don't like investing too much time into something I may not use. If I choose to use one of these, I'll supply a more detailed sketch.

The title for the magazine cover is a play on the words "Life Beyond", like where there are magazines and informational pamphlets for "Life Beyond Cancer" or "Life Beyond Parkinson's". I figured why not have one related to diseases that effect what you eat.

It's a pretty simple idea. Your ability to indulge in all sorts of foods doesn't end just because you have diabetes or celiacs or whatnot.

These were sketches I did last class in relation to cover images. Everyone was using the tablets and there wasn't enough for us all, so since I have a lot of experience using one I just decided to let everyone else play around with them.

Magazine Cover Layout v.0

This is a mock-up of my idea for my nutritional food magazine cover. This is only a placement mock-up. Item indicators are subject to change along the way and the fonts used in this mock-up are not what I will be using in future drafts. 

Magazine Cover Mood Board

This is the mood board for my magazine cove project. It's mostly food, statistics, medication and colors for the piece. I'm still torn on what I'm going to use in terms of fonts. I really need to look for some.