Inspiration of the moment #1

I believe this blog is both one part news industry and one part graphic design. I find that most graphic design blogs do not cover news design and news design blogs do not cover the outside world of traditional graphic design.

With these blog posts, I hope to inspire both sides of the design community. There will be news pages with tons of beautifully executed text, and in the next post I may feature a vector line art drawing with nothing but a title off in the expansive white space. Whatever I find inspires me. I will then describe why I like the work so much. The work may not be current — in fact, it may be from years ago — but it will be nonetheless inspirational.

Here’s the first:

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Why is this inspirational?

This inside spread from Excelsior, a mexican newspaper, blows me away everytime I see it. There is so much liveliness to the page and yet it follows an extremely rigid grid. The designer knew how to break to grid (the smoking pipe), and make it stand out.

I have to admit that I really don’t know what the page is about, so much of the context is lost on me. However, it can be assumed that the information within all of those break out boxes and that lead in isn’t garbage. Using that assumption, this is a knock out page. Style, grace, grid. Fantastic.

It’s very European in its use of white space (thick pieces of white and gray rather than a fluid mix that most American designers abide by), and admittedly I have a weakness for that modernist look. What I admire most about this look is its elegance and ability to look sophisticated while maintaining the the beauty and grace that lots of white space gives off. Its a nearly perfect meld. The story must be over 1000 words and there are plenty of additional pieces of information given. Who isn’t satisfied by that concept?

My final point about this design: What I admire most about this style is how grid-centric it is. And while most American designers are still in their honeymoon with post modernism, news design needs grids. Not only does it create an almost automatic beauty, but it saves ubelievable amounts of time. A copy editor could easily fill in a template that adheres to a strict grid. The difference between this and American pages is that the generic pages set up by the swedish, modernist design philosophy look completely coherent with the rest of the paper. This is a struggle American newspapers have faced since they have existed. USA today is about the only design that doesn’t have this problem.

If you are the author of this page, please contact me so I can give proper credit.

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Other inspiration sources

• FFFOUND!
• Design You Trust
  Similar to delicious, but only for images and oriented toward designers. Registration and approval required in order to create an extremely well moderated dose of inspiration.
• Abduzeedo
  Daily updates on great pieces of design inspiration
• Newseum
  A site dedicated to news design. Based on a real museum located in Washington D.C., the Newseum’s goal is to archive news pages throughout the ages. The inspiration comes from their daily feed on daily newspapers from around the world who upload their pages to the site.
• News Page Designer
• Visual Editors
  Both sites allow users to upload their own news and editorial design portfolios, creating communities of critique and idea exchange.

Filed under: Graphic, Inspiration, Newspapers , Beauty, Inspire, Newspapers

Logos and Podcasts

Read between the Leading, a fairly new graphic design podcast recently brought up a subject of concern to me: Logos and color.

The issue being whether it should be used as a fundamental piece within a logo and whether or not we should ditch the pure black and white logo. The logic being that technology has advanced so far that the B&W logo is obsolete and just an artifact of old graphic design standards.

Personally, I call shenanigans. As Aaron Heth, one of the show’s co-hosts, points out, it is less about color than it is about creating a good mark and a strong shape.

A good mark should be maliable and infinitely resizeable, meanwhile still retaining its dignity and identity.

Filed under: Graphic, Identity

Great site worth looking at (edit)

(Edit: From my understanding, the difference between Blurb and Lulu is their focus. Blurb mostly focuses on photography and Lulu focuses mostly on text-based books. They can both do either, though.)

Blurb is an on-demand self-publishing tool and website. Similar to others, but with the exception of its great desktop program available.

I’ve used Lulu to create a book of my political cartoons, but what bothered me, as a designer, was the lack of layout functionality. There was no real way to move text or images around as I saw fit. Blurb’s Booksmart appears to allow that. With its slick and intuitive interface, your mom would even feel at home here.

I really think this is a service worth using and supporting. If you’re applying for a job or just want a professional print of your portfolio, this seems to be perfect. I’d hate to see a start up with this much effort behind it lose out to something else just because it was there first.

Filed under: Web