RESPONSE

First of all, I just want to say that I was absolutely amazed at what everyone produced, and like Kirby said, it was all so wonderfully different. Jenn, I looked at your layout for the Centro Latino feature and I couldn't get over how beautiful it was! After seeing that, I can't wait to begin trying to incorporate more white space into my own designs.
The Graphic Design reading for class was also pretty inspiring. I loved the Art Deco pages because of what the book called, its "effeciency and elegance." That's how I would describe Jenn's design, efficient and elegant.

Also, I just got my latest copy of NYLON in the mail. With my eyes opened to the prospect of white space, I really enjoyed seeing how their pages were clean and fresh, but still super edgy. (especially when you compare other magazines kind of known for their white space, like Real Simple or something like that.) NYLON also takes some chances with the design of their typography, which, in a lot of places, is similar to what Andrea used for her Red Tape cover design. I really liked her use of it though because it reiterated the kind of hard cut lines of scissors by omitting the curves and roundness of the central part of the letters (I forget what that is called right now! I'll edit once I find out!)

You Can't Miss

http://www.panopticist.com/archives/the_magazine_covers.html
I thought this was really interesting. (And kind of funny.) These are mock covers of magazines that already exist, but the design formats are cover designs for popular existing magazine's as well. They are just sort of superimposed on each other in some pretty clever ways. What I found to be most striking about this is how much I (STILL!) take design forgranted. I mean, of course I think about it, but I guess never really understood just how much the design of some of my favorite magazines really add to the character of the content. This just really made it hit home ... while making me laugh. Also, I went on to youtube and searched "Typography," and some of them were just amazing. I couldn't pick a single favorite to post here, but it would definitely be worth your while if you were to check it out!

CRITIQUE

COVER: Ok, so after seeing the capabilities of the class, I just felt as though my cover design was a bit shoddy ... I was just disappointed with it, I think. Like Jan said, it was kind of hard to see certain elements of the image (basically Liberty's hand just kind of disappears). Also, I'm not sure why I had used the gradient on the background. It was an awful last minute decision, but I think it was a good lesson for me. It kind of goes back to what we talked about in Magazine Design last semester in that it was just decorative and not really useful - an effect for effect's sake. (Confession: It was so hideous and so yellow and I hated it so much that I took it out as I was converting the pdf to a jpeg. Anyway, the gradient is no longer there, but I still felt like I should kind of explain/share.) Also, putting an actual title on my cover probably would have helped ... just a thought.

FEATURE: I spent more time on this than the cover, and, while that's not necessarily a good thing, I hope it shows ... at least a little. My concept for the feature was to use a maze to show the difficulties that both the immigrants and the people such as Eduardo face when it comes to navigating the law. I would assume there are a lot of dead-ends and frustrations. At the same time, I felt as though the image of the maze I ended up with was kind of reminiscent of the layout of Machu Picchu, which is used as an anecdote in the opening of the story. The red and yellow colors I used were pulled from the various images, so I was hoping they could be an element that ties the pages together. I used the Image of Eduardo and Carrie (I think that's who that was) in the opening because I felt like that photo appropriately coincided with the opening of Besa's story. The other one's kind of made Centro Latino seem like a tutoring center, which it may very well be, but I didn't think she had said anything about that in the story ... did she? I went ahead and used them on the second spread though because I felt like the captions would probably explain their siginificance. Ok, and finally, my idea for the sidebar was to continue the maze motif.