Magazine Covers

This semester I've been taking a pretty intense class in Magazine Design.  This specific class is what attracted me to the Pub. Design program in the first place--when I was looking at the course catalog a while back I saw this class and had the epiphany-"Yes! That's what I want to do! I want to design magazines!"  I have since learned that the correct term for this is "art direction" and needless to say, I have been super excited about taking this class...that is until it started.

If I've learned one thing this semester it is that art direction is hard. *Super* hard. It looks like it's easy because magazines have a tendency to look effortless--that's because they're designed really, really well.  At first I was really discouraged and this also ties into why I haven't been posting that much this semester.  However, I have recently had a change of heart and decided that instead of sulking about what a bad designer I am, I'm going to just go ahead and work really hard to become a good designer!

With that being sad, my biggest struggle within magazine design has been covers.  I've been having typography issues, photography issues, color issues, you name it--my covers have more issues than the Judds.  Today I finally completed one of the covers for my Bust magazine redesign--this so far has become the most effortless-looking covers I've done to date.  Tell me what you think!

Here's the original cover as well for a reference:

Carrot Love

I made this graphic for my website today and couldn't resist sharing it with the blogosphere.

Inspired by overhearing  an argument  on "The Real Housewives of..." reunion and thinking to myself "Wow these women even fight about *carrots*??" when they were actually fighting about carats of a rock, not the root, I decided to veganize our beloved Baltimore heros:

A work in progress...

For my "Writing and Design for the Digital Environment" class we've been working on creating content-rich websites.  Inspired by my 30-day vegan challenge I decided to make a vegan related website entitled "Charm City Vegan".  This website is a forum for the local vegan community including vegan-friendly businesses and organizations that has some useful information and resources for the novice vegan.  Today I created a mock up of what the home page is going to look like.  I was excited about it at first (who doesn't like construction paper cut-outs??) but now realize it needs some work.  Tell me what you think (if you can see it, that is--the jpg looks a little tiny).

Charm City Vegan Logo!

Just made this logo for a website I'm working on for my digital design class.  Took a lot of trial and error but I'm pretty happy with the end result:

To make this I scanned in construction paper and cut it out in photoshop, and added some masks to my type.  I think it gives it a playful yet earthy feel.  Maybe I should get rid of that cat hair stuck in there though!