Tuesday, November 11, 2008

art director's club meeting it may b 2 late for extra credit

It may be too late for extra credit on this but here it goes any way and yes I did go you can ask Victor as sure as God lives he knows. It's starting to become a lot easier to type without my left index finger. I sliced it open while cutting mat board the other day, a story I got to share with our speaker Friday an hour before the meeting started. This little story led to many similar stories told by members that had the same experiences with the dreaded exacto knife. So, as I type on with lack of a finger let me continue to tell the things I learned and enjoyed during this meeting. I enjoyed the fact that this designer from the Pentagram design firm was from Texas. This was nice because for some reason I believe this allowed me to understand him better. Plus, there were fewer strange apologies about things because he was afraid he would offend us. The last set of speakers were from California and for some reason they felt they had to apologize for everything because they believed our culture to be so much different from theirs. So, in turn there was more time to talk about design. The thing he wanted to talk about most was magazine layout which I felt was handy because currently we are learning about that Victor's class. I really liked the designs and covers from a magazine he worked on called "Texas Monthly." Ironically he also had the chance to work a magazine called "Yankee." But my favorite was the cover pages for a magazine called "Dairy Today." This magazine didn't have much money but they were willing to go with any idea that he had in mind. So, in a one day photo shoot they took enough pictures so the magazine would have covers for two years. Each issue would have a cow's picture done close up against a solid color background. It was cheap and he got paid cheap but he explained it was one of this favorite projects because he got creative freedom. He said also that he had to do a lot of work he didn't like and fight with a lot of magazines about there identity and how to change it but over all the work was awarding and sometimes you just have to yield to the client and make that horrible logo type they love so much as big as you possibly can. Which is what he did for the design magazine "HOW." I thought when he said that it was really funny. Instead of getting angry with the client he gave them what they wanted and in a big way (likely because he's from Texas). So, I really enjoyed his talk about design. He made feel comfortable and excited about magazine layout which is what I need to be for this assignment in Victor's class.

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