In honor of today

Best front page ever.

Shouting & Whispering

This is Adam's Moss' take on New York magazine covers. It's interesting that they feel like they can be more creative, since they don't rely on newsstand sales. I like that they're trying to experiment.

Loose Change

I had to design a book cover for a group project in my Book Publishing class. I took the photograph, original is found here.

Out of Sorts

During finals week last December, I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. At one point of the movie, Clementine says to Joel, "I'm all out of sorts." This made me giddy because I knew the true meaning behind the phrase, which I learned in Magazine Design class. So it turns out, back in the olden days, printers used metal sticks engraved with letters to print things with. Those metal sticks were called sorts. So if you were out of a certain letter, you'd say you were out of sorts. Hence the saying.

Front Page Obamas

I love front page newspaper design critiques. It makes me miss the rush of designing front pages.

I Love You, Helvetica

In my Magazine Design class, we watched Helvetica, a documentary on said-font, and typography in the world today. In it, Massimo Vignelli, a typographer and designer who was behind the 1970s original New York City subway map and the American Airlines logo, said the following:

"You can say, 'I love you,' in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you could say it with the Extra Bold if it's really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work."

which made me smile a lot.

Bits: MTA Fare Hike, Kayaking to New Zealand, Night-time Appalachian Trail and old-school NY Mag.

1.

"Don't Rush to a Fare Hike," Editorial by the New York Times

All this talk about yet again another fare hike makes me think back on the holiday discount program where discounted rides were given over the holiday weekends and extended 30-Metrocards by ten days from Thanksgiving to New Year's. If the MTA was so hard-pressed for money, why in the world did they do that?

2.

"Kayakers begin Tasman Sea attempt" by Phil Mercer, from the BBC

So these guys, Justin Jones and James Castrission, are kayaking (in a custom-built kayak) from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand. They're setting off now and hope to reach New Zealand by Christmas.

The article makes no mentions of where they plan to stop, though they expect to paddle for 14 hours a day.

Jones said,

"First and foremost [the trip] is for the pure adventure of it all. I mean, everybody, inside anyone has got a little bit of adventure in them and we've just got to go out and follow that. It would be a crime not to."

He might be my new boyfriend now. Oh, adventures...

3.

"What's Lurking in the Dark?" by David A. Fahrenthold, from the Washington Post

Over the summer, Hannah and I stayed up late, enjoying ourselves and talking about things we wanted to do.

"Let's go hiking!" Hannah said. "Let's walk the Appalachian Trail!"

After looking at pictures on her laptop, we sent Rob an email about it. We never did it, though, due to scheduling. But this article reminds me about it.

So they set up cameras along the trail in Virginia to check out night-time critters (which I now know includes deer, thank you, Josh). The Appalachian is home to those deer, bears, bobcats and a flying squirrel.

Volunteer Trish Bartholomew said of bears backing into the cameras:

"I don't know of anything else that's that black and furry."

4.

"Mailer-Breslin Seriously?" [May 5, 1969] from New York Magazine

Check out the old-school layout (in pdf form).

Design & The New York Times Magazine

[Disclaimer: I don't know many technical typography terms, so if I mess it up, sorry.]

I've always respected the New York Times—they usually have great coverage (they could do a better job with their Metro section, and don't get me started on the Style section...) and their design is normally great. Sure, they make mistakes (I get a sick pleasure looking for unintended whitespace and mistakes in paragraph forms), but they know what they're doing with their front pages, like on August 28th:



Look at the positioning of the main photo and the matching colors of both the Gonzales and the Greek fires pictures. Though I think they could've done better with white space in terms of the Greek fires article and the placement of the pear, it still looks amazing.

Then, there's the New York Times magazine. Magazine design differs greatly from newspaper design. With newspaper design, you have to take several stories and their interplay into consideration. Which story is the dominant story? Which is the related story? So many things go into designing news pages: grouping similar stories, making the photos play off each other, color schemes, making sure jumps aren't unnecessary, etc. Transitioning from my work on Inprint to the Brooklyn Rail, though, was simpler, because the Rail is more of a news magazine. Stories are laid out as feature stories, with their own pages and spaces. There is more use of white space and photos. I can make spreads, which I try my best to do, though I do show special preference for all things water-related, like that article on Jamaica Bay, my own article and the article on the boatyard in Staten Island...

There is more freedom with magazines and news magazines.

Usually, the NYT Magazine is simple with their design elements, especially within their feature stories. Their pull-out quotes and intro paragraphs tend to be just their regular font enlarged and bold in a different color.

But lately, they've tried to mix things up a little, but not in a good way.

Take Arthur Lubow's "Conductor of the People," in the October 28th issue, about conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The photos are great, but look at the title page for the article:



Why the need for superscript? It doesn't add anything special. And why even choose those letters? It is so pointless. It just makes it harder to read. The same applies to the pull quote. There isn't anything clever about using superscript and subscript, especially within a large chunk of text. The font choice itself is nice, it reminds me of the New York Magazine font, especially with its italics. Maybe if they stuck to just the title, it could've worked, but they went too far.

They didn't try anything too extravagant in last week's issue, besides oil-covered drop-caps in an article about Venezuelan oil, which was a bit too clip art for me.

Then comes this week's issue, their film issue. Normally, the NYT Magazine covers are simple—an amazing photo (like the cover of the October 21st issue's photograph of water sources depleting in the West for the article "The Future is Drying Up") and simple text that isn't obtrusive at all.



With this cover, we are smacked in the faces with the theme of the issue: the old West, written in, of course, a western-styled font, with heavy feet Right from the cover, we know what the theme of the issue is: the old West, with heavy, heavy base and mean lines and pencil-line thin serifs and body-lines [I made up that term..]. It's kind of hard to read, so as a headline font, it's alright. The image and the grayscaled images (was it necessary to leave the "(Again!)" in yellow?) make up for it.

Then you reach the inside of the film specials and this font takes over everything. Everything. The title pages for the articles, the intro paragraphs and the drop-caps. And it's impossible to read. Just look:



Your eyes strain, trying to make sense of the black lines. I will give this to them: as a drop-cap, the font works well. One letter doesn't make a difference.

I wonder what they thought when they designed this issue. One of the first things I think about after I design a page is readability. Sometimes, I'm too tired and stressed to care if it's that readable, but I do try my best, especially with covers. I hope the NYT Magazine design team got this out of their system and will stick to more readable, while being creative, design.

Working at The Brooklyn Rail

Inside the Brooklyn Rail office.

Officially, I am now a (working) member of The Brooklyn Rail, complete with press pass and title (Layout Editor soon to be Art Director). Prompted by my graduation anxiety in May, I sent out my resume in a flurry to a list of contacts provided to me by a wonderful adviser at Lang. The editor of the Rail responded and I met up with him. We got along well and that's how I came to assist at the Brooklyn Rail. This was without pay because no one really gets paid but I wanted to stay involved with a publication. The environment is fun and lax, everyone is chill and interesting and it was perfect. My first day there (I proofread printouts), one of the designers mentioned how they needed to find more designers, since they were going to leave soon. Being in the right place at the right time, I mentioned I designed for my college newspaper and I knew InDesign pretty well. And from that, I became a layout editor. You can see my handy work in this month's issue of the Brooklyn Rail, adorned with either a Jesus toy figure on a fighter jet or a photograph of a Richard Serra piece on the covers, within the Local, Express and Streets sections.