L'iPad & Digital Magazines

Apple, you got me. I seriously want an iPad. For a long time I considered the iPad to be a large iPod Touch, which I own and am actually very happy with. So why do I want one now? Well obviously not because I want to spend long hours typing up emails and documents in iWorks on it. It's not a computer and I don't intend to use it like one. From what I've heard and have experienced so far, movies and photographs look pretty amazing on it but most of all it makes me read magazines the way I wanted to read magazines 10 years ago. These are simply things you can't really do well on an iPod Touch. I've found quite a few iPad apps for magazines that interest me so far, and they're really not as expensive as I though they would be, major plus. I can't wait to see what Conde Nast will come up with and what other, more niche and underground focussed magazines will do. Will I buy one now? I'm super tempted but I think I'm going to wait for the 2nd generation iPad. I don't really care about the highly anticipated camera everyone's banging on about, but I do want to be able to multitask and run flash on it. Also spending £429 on a mere 16 GB and NO 3G just isn't worth it.... or is it? Hmmm... Anyway, as for digital publications, digital magazine design is a whole different ballgame as opposed to printed magazine design. Typography, meta-data, photography, interactive elements; pretty much the whole lay-out needs to be reconsidered, it's simply a completely different way of story telling and I've recently come to the conclusion that digital magazine design&publication are fields I wouldn't mind working in either. In fact every time I find a new magazine/newsfeed related app my enthusiasm grows and makes me want to read more and more and more and etc. Am I turning my back on the good old running-to-the-bookshop-to-pick-up-THE-new-issue? Hell no, digital & print aren't comparing, in my opinion. But I'm a n00b and I only just jumped on the iPad fangirl bandwagon. I don't have the (technical) knowledge on it's possibilities, bugs and where this device fails to deliver (yet) and if there possibly is a product on the market that does a much better job but I'm learning and it's all very exciting. I've fallen in love. If you're interested in digital magazines (on/and) the iPad but can't be bothered to spend hours geeking out online doing research, then these clips might be of use to you: x    

Pentagram: 5 Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design

"This conceptual video is a corporate collaborative research project initiated by Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future, presented by our design partners at BERG (London)."

iPad magazine artdirection.


Digital magazine creation with Woodwing software.


The Guardian's Eyewitnessapp does a lovely job showing daily news photography. (And it's free.)


The Guardian's Eyewitnessapp explained.


Wired Magazine for iPad. I kinda fell in love with the iPad when I read this magazine on it.


Wired Magazine for iPad. Official trailer. Yumyum


iPad App Review - Zinio - Magazine reader


Time magazine for iPad.


Interview Magazine for iPad. Yay! Big fan of the printed version.


Letter to Jane Magazine for iPad. Hadn't heard of this magazine before, but it's looking sexy.

What type are you?

Answer 4 simple questions and you'll be told by Pentagram's What Type Are You what kind of type(face) you are. I turns out that I am Pistilli Roman... YES!

"Pistilli Roman

Co-designed by Lubalin and Pistilli in the 1950's; Pistilli Roman is a typeface that combines a disciplined form, notable in the ultra fine lines, carefully joining the bold ones with an emotional geometry notable in the curling circles. If you always demand that things be in order and then are always incredibly moved when they are, Pistilli Roman is your type."

Ha amazing, very true. It's funny though, I've loved this typeface for many a year and now to discover that I am this type(face).... how big of a narcissist am I huh?

Unfortunately it's not available digitally. However, Veer has released a digital revival of an old Didone style (in the style of 2 other super beautiful typefaces Bodoni and Didot) photo-typepositing face. It's called Eloquent and it's based on Pistilli Roman. "This new digital version evokes late 1960s magazine advertising, and includes the rarely seen swash variant, and features several newly created alternate swash caps (A, J, Q, Z, M, K,R) and one new alternate lowercase swash and several lowercase ligatures. The font contains both lining figures and old style figures." A very handsome typeface.

More Hanking

I found some really beautiful typography in an old issue of Harper's Bazaar (I'm now also totally hooked on magazine typography) and did this typo drawing based on it. (This is actually more of a sketch, it's hand drawn, scanned and I still need to trace and tweak it. Which I probably won't do because it's really just practice. And I shipped my tablet off to the Netherlands. And seriously, fuck digital enhancing with a mouse.) Can't decide wether to go with the original black on white or vice versa. You choose. x

The Box

In high school I struggled my way through Sartre's Huis Clos (No Exit) as part of French class. Last year when I was doing some personal research I was reminded of the play again and then stumbled upon a sci-fi/thriller/horror flick called "The Box", Richard Kelly's (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales) adaptation of "Button Button", a short novel written by Richard Matheson. (What Dream May Come, I Am Legend) Now wether the references to Sartre's ideas in this film do his philosophies justice I'm not quite sure of, there are some clever and subtle visual references, but the film kinda ends up being a melodramatic blockbuster with stories left untold. But at the time I was watching it I found it super enjoyable. It's one of those films that I can just watch over and over again just for it's aesthetics. Anyway, since getting familiar with Eric Rosenberg's work for the movie and television industry I've been more consciously looking at graphic design and composition in films and tv-series than I have before. I did this post to show some stills of The Box, which I think I watched over 3 times now. I love the visuals and cinematography, highly inspirational. Much love to cinematographer Steven Poster (who was also 2nd Unit Director of Photography on Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) for making this film so visually scrumptious.

Buy my stuff!

For the past 2 months I've been designing and producing 21 products that will hopefully all be sold at the pop-up shop that we've set up to raise money for next year's graduation show. This pop-up shop isn't just a fundraiser but it's also our end of the year project. It was all about 'the designer as producer.' It's been hella intense at times but it was fun and I learn a lot too this term. We all had to keep blog-diaries and having the opportunity of following the work-processes of a 100-something other students, step-by-step, was so helpful. I wanted to get away from the magazine/book/poster design niche for a bit so I thought I'd get crafty again and designed a herbal pillow that functions as a natural sleeping aid. (This involved a lot of Laura Ashley-ing; buying and testing textiles and herbs, -pastel- color matching, sewing, excuses for trips to Liberty's...;) For this project I've played with the concept of worrying about environmental damage and not being able to sleep because of it. I've always been a fan of pandas, so I took this occasion to create a product dedicated to one of the most endangered species out there. The Giant Panda is also the international symbol of conservation, £0.50 of every herbal pillow sold will be donated to the WWF. So yesterday we had to hand-in 1 boxed item with a step-by-step instruction sheet and a product photograph for evaluation and 1.5 kg. lavender, 1 kg. lentils, 500 gr. cloves, 4m2 satin, 1m2 cotton, 1m2 felt, 80 m cotton thread,  5 sheets transfer-paper, 30 sheets sugar paper, 35 brown paper bags, 5 hours image research, 10 hours silkscreen printing, 25 hours hand stitching, 8 prototypes, 1 Martha Steward bitch fit, 2 lovely tension-releasing dates and about 100 change-of-plans later, it may as well be called official; my 2nd year is over! I'll be a 3rd year student for the first time ever and if all goes well I'll be graduate next year, which is a big first for me too. In other news, my previous boss (the creative director at the Jewish Chronicle) thought I was graduating coming June and offered me a job for a year as one of their art directors was going on maternity leave! How great is that? I'm soso thankful for these people. But I'm not graduating this year, let's just hope that next year job offers will come at me just as easily :)

Here they are; my 21 herbal pillows, lined up as proud little environmental activists . The bags, notes and pillows are all hand cut, hand silkscreen printed and hand stitched and go for £10 a pop. So buy my herbal pillows; help the Giant Panda and help me graduate.

Product prepared for final hand-in

And here's a bit of my workprocess.

An editorial/graphic design internship in the heart of Amsterdam during the summer?

Sorted. 
x


(p.s. Yup, due to volcanic panic I'm still stuck in the motherland, I should be back next week. Thanks everyone for making my extended holiday in the Netherlands so much fun and eyeopening :)

Surprise! The subject of my dissertation will be the color black.

Identity experiment 1

For a while I've been trying to design an identity for myself. It's hard and I haven't been able to make my mind up yet so I've decided to post some experiments up on here.

GPO: Modernism & Design - Paul Rennie - 18th November - 4.30 pm G12 - Southampton Row

I picked up the lecture postcards/invitations from the letterpress studio. They turned out so beautiful and precious, these photos are not doing them any justice. I had a hard time distributing them as I just wanted to carry the stacks around all day long and secretly reach into my bag during crits and feel the texture of the rich manilla clothy card and the relief of the letters. Only slightly geekily obsessed. x

Mine:




Magdalena Sobczynska's:

Letterpress.

Together with a 3rd year graphics student I've been designing the announcement poster/cards for next weeks lecture - The General Post Office: Modernism & Design, 18 November, 4.30 pm - G12 by Paul Rennie. The use of letterpress fits perfectly in the process of my search for analogue peace. I have come to the conclusion that manual typesetting is the bee's knees. And so is rugged grumpy letterpress veteran/instructor Nick. He wears a derelict sweater with a hole in it, has fat stained sausage fingers, a missing front tooth, endless typographic knowledge and posesses the master ability to crack down juggernaut style on everyone who doesn't do what he says / shows up too late or unprepared. He will make you cry for yo mama, in his eyes you are a maggot. As I hung out with him for the past couple of days he showed me the ropes as long as I promised to pay attention and not do anything stupid. I went in humble-mode and all went well. He even let me take some pictures. So here's a semi-documentary style series on the Southampton Row Letterpress Studio, shot with a Blackberry Curve 8900 (I know, shame.) x

Live Brief 2 - Duke Street

I also did another brief. The client this time is Duke Street, an industry leading private equity group, with offices in London and Paris. They recently moved to modern refined offices and require inspirational artwork to adorn the walls of their meeting rooms.  The aim of the project is to complete photographic images or illustrations based around the theme of London. Duke Street would choose students whose work they think best represents their brand.

I undertook this mission with Emmanouil Zahariades, a greek fella in my year, who taught me some nifty Photoshop tricks and delivered some brilliant photographs used for the project. We came up with the idea to create multi exposure images consisting out of photographs of well known and less familiar sites of London and tried to merge the contemporary with the past, putting the emphasis of Londons colorfull, hectique, energetic and intricate vibe, keeping in mind that these images need to work as decorations in a professional environment as well as making a creative statement. We wanted to have the final results displayed as Duratrans. We submitted a variety of work; 1 panoramic image, 6 square images and 2 single wall filling images of London skylines.

The final hand in was yesterday as was the prizegiving supposed to be. But the jury decided to postpone the prizegiving and instead shortlisted a handfull of winners of who they're almost 100% sure that they want their work displayed in the London W1 office... and we're two of them, yeahboy! 4 of our 6 square images were selected for display. Unfortunately the lightbox idea isn't gonna to fly due to Health&Safety Hazards ( meh booh!), but they loved our images and would like to see them printed on proper photographic paper. If that's going to work, which I'm sure it will then our work is guaranteed a place on the walls in 2 of their meeting rooms.

Unfortunately I'm not yet in the position of showing you these 4 selected works but here are 2 of the squares and the panorama that didn't get selected for you to get a feel of what we've done. Once the project is finalised I'll show you the chose images.

Rule Brittania! Vivat Londonium! Bigups to Manolito, well done homeboy!

Live Brief 1 - Hugo Boss

Remember the Hugo Boss competition? the brief was to design a Christmas concept which included a window display, mailing material, give-aways and packaging. Due to circumstances (having to find a new flat, moving, other briefs, coursework, eating, sleeping, wanting to stay sane, etc.) I decided that it was best to leave this brief for what it was and dropped out. I did manage to make it to round 2! It was a good experience, but it hurt, dropping out was necessary but a difficult decision to make. 

My initial concept evolved around unity through the use of geometry and light, taking into concideration German Design and Hugo Boss' clean and modern appearance. Here's a sketch for a window display, the idea was to have translucent panels hanging from the ceiling that could be backlit from behind. (Yeah, the idea is obviously more elaborate) and 2 prototype mailing design considerations which are basically thin cardboard fold out cards. Everything was done with good 'ol grid/tracing paper, scissors, ruler, and pencil. Goodluck to all you remaining competitors!