Author: gwill

Once again, the paper engineering brief rears its ugly head! A test of creative thinking beyond the two dimensional realms of editorial design, and a competition to see who can reach the deadline without needing to visit ER with a sliced finger from trying to construct the pages!

The subject for this coffee table style book this time was ‘The Circus’. The audience was adult (not kids), and content could be anything from facts, poems, quotes etc.

Here are just a few:

 

So already up to the final assignment for the Fall 2014 semester! Essentially a pre press guide in a format of choice. As with all the projects from the syllabus – the emphasis should be on clarity of information, however, it should be packaged in a unique, interesting but useable way.

First things first though. You can hardly talk about pre press and the printing process without some first hand knowledge from the experts. Time for a road trip to our friends at Wayne Printing in Kickapoo. Thank you Ken and Keith for your time giving us the  walk n talk.

 

Really fun Information Design brief.

Each student documented their social media usage over a period of several days. Qualitative and quantitative data was documented, including what time of day, duration, what activities they were doing while on social media etc. From this they were expected to visually and accurately present their information over a refined time frame (24 hours, two days etc.) in the form of a wallchart.

Here are the results

Continue reading “Social Media Junkie”

Always love working on the Theatre Departments production pieces. This is the second in the 2014-15 season; PROOF.

As with ‘Spring Awakening’ another difficult play to interpret visually.

Continue reading “PROOF – BU Theatre”

Nice brief to introduce the students to Editorial Design and in particular, the use of grids. Basically, a direct mail piece to encourage the local community to consider riding a bike either for leisure or to work. Priorities: A strong call to action and focus on ‘local’ rather than generic bike riding.

 

 

 

Here are a few nice outcomes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love the process of creativity. Here’s an example of an idea developing and refining as the tone of voice and audience is gradually interpreted through conversations and collaborations with the designer and the client:

Client: I’d like to rethink our approach to this design. This is no refection on what you sent; your response to my initial thoughts was great. but I’m thinking that to have impact on our audience  we’ll need to do a real in-your-face, rock and roll poster.

On reflection I’m less concerned with evoking the intimacy of our young lovers than I am with the explosive head-banging angst (and music) that fuels much of the show. There’s a lot of leaping, flailing, and climbing going on; the dancing is often stylized and spasmodic.  The ad design for original B’way production employed a variety of looks,almost all photography-based, including frenzied rock-star-flailing and tortured close-ups of howling faces– all that sort of thing. I’m not wedded to photography by any stretch, though.

Continue reading “Creative Thought Process”