Improvements for Museum Exhibition

Poster improvements

A few things noted:

have some bright yellow lines that mimic the website lines?

line weights are thick when it is too big

colors are dust and organic, need bold synthetic colors, change the bg to black

outline her name and see what i looks like, magentaaaaa?

maybe try wrapping the text like the top building image?

title messed up, fix it

bottom building drop a bit more

Time to get to work!

Three Directions

This is from wednesday! These are the three directions that I had for class.

PATTERN

The patterns are one of the directions that I am continuing with, although the need a lot of work. I need to work on all the the text, and on unifying the colors, keeping things ucluttered, etc etc.

PHOTO/QUOTE


These photo are something that I plan on working into the pattern series, making a hybrid of them!

JUST PHOTO
This is the direction that is getting left behind. Poor thing. That picture of Julia on the bus booth is terrifying! love it!

New Posters

DEMENTIIIOOONNNNNNNNNNNNN
woooosh. Ok, still adding a lot of dimension with these, but trying to clean them up a bit! No more photos, although you can still see the buildings in them, not too abstract. Now I gotta figure out the text! Gonna try doing it digitally and analog, seeing what works to get the dimension.

Julia Child Quotes

Just throwing some of the quotes I collected out there, keeping them in one spot!

“Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”

“I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.”

"I think every woman should have a blowtorch."

"Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need."

"A cookbook is only as good as its worst recipe."

"Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?"

"You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients."

"On what her longevity is attributed to, “Red meat and gin.”

"Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again."

“It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.”

Muriel Cooper Posters, Plus a Laugh

Here's my first shot at the Muriel Cooper lecture posters! For all of these, I tried to keep with the look and feel of her work with the Visible Language Workshop that she taught for twenty years, instead of her earlier, more concrete work.

I'll be continuing along the lines of the first and third versions, the versions with more dimensionality and spaaaaaace. Time to refine!

And now for the joke!

My first attempt at using the press! I think it's pretty clear from this that I need to pay more attention!

Museum Exhibition Title Ideaaas!

1. The Dinner Ritual
2. Recipes for Disaster
3. Instruments of the Trade
4. Aspiring Amateur
5. Yearly Tradition
6. Family Traditions
7. Playing with Fire: Cooking Mishaps
8. Cozy Cuisine
9. Recipe Relations
10. Producing the Final Product

EDIT :

I've been working on thumbnails this evening, and working through it, I've been thinking about the suggestion to make the exhibition theme about a particular chef. This seems like a fun idea, and Julia Childs is the chef I wanted to choose, so I've started brainstorming ideas that a relative to her career/life. I'm still keeping it in the mix with some other ideas, and I'll see how they shape up. I'll continue to think through the other directs, but might need to think of some new, more appropriate titles if this ends up being about Childs..

First Round of Patterns

To be honest, I'm not really sure where I'm going with these, I'm a bit confused on what's working and what's not. One thing I am proud of is that every single one of these are legit tiles, and could go onnn and onnnn forever. Learning how to make them seamless was a lot of fun, and it's something that I would like to try on my own, without having to use icons, if I ever have time.

Lupton: Pattern

This was a really informative article to look to while I was working on my first round of icons, since it was clear clear on how dots and line form grids. Dots can also form lines, that then go into a grid system. The pages with the many ways to implement the same shape in many different ways way cool too, although some of those relied on overlaying, which when I tried to do with my icons, looked TERRIBLE. :( BUT STILL, it was good to see how a simple shape can make so many patterns, both simple and more complex. Seeing the patterns with random repeats were interesting too, and it would be a cool challenge to try and create my own pattern with difficult-to-find- edges.

Final Statement : Book Covers

The final set of book covers are finished now, complete with their own little books to wrap around. From the last round of revisions, I changed may things, but most of them were tiny details meant to help unify them as a set of books.

Don't Try This at Home is a collection of short stories told by chefs about their mistakes made before they became successful. It relates to my icons and my story because of a the disaster aspect of the short stories. To convey the theme of the stories on the cover, I combined a stop sign with a rather unappetizing piece of food. This combination of normally unrelated objects makes a message of warning.
Good Housekeeping's Family First Aid is an instructional book focusing on first aid you should know for accidents that might happen around the home. Because of it's family-oriented theme, it seemed appropriate to show a children's toy patched up with a band-aid, an easily recognizable object related with the medical theme.
Food Preparation and Presentation is another instructional book, this time about the art of food presentation. Even though it's a pretty formal topic, I decided to go with a lighter kind of image, adding bow-ties to cooking utensils. I tried to keep away from actually showing food on this book cover, since it would have been redundant, both because of the title and also because of the food images in 2 of the other book covers in the set.
The Frantic Family Cookbook is a recipe book containing fast, healthy meals for busy families. Again, I wanted to avoid being too redundant with the title, so I avoided showing a family, or children, or recipes from inside. Instead, I used a clock to indicate the fast-paced theme of this book, but used it as a plate on which one of the meals is placed.
By juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images using a simple plain background, bold complementary colors, and clear imagery, these book covers are meant to represent their contents by hinting at their overall theme.

Infographics Linear Progression

The Research

For this infograph, I took the information from a magazine article. It was a very useful article, with lots of factoids about food, and then a timeline of food that a person ate over the period of two days. On one day she snacked all day, and on the other she planned out her meals. The purpose of the information is to convey the importance of forethought when it comes to eating.

Round 1
For the first step of the graph, I needed to just get the information down on paper, and give it some organization. The idea of meals around the clock is formed, but at this point there's no hierarchy or real system to it.

Round 2

These two versions play with a more refined version of the clock (although that clock is not a good clock to use). The icons are used as a coding system instead of just standing with random blurbs of information. The pizza box is used for poor choices, and the carrots are used for good choices. There is color coding in this stage, as well.

Round 3

In the first round of digital translations, it was a challenge fitting all the information into the space a page-sized document, and the infographs became rather cluttered and confusing. I removed the icons next to each food item, and just used them at the top as a key. This cleared up some of the mess, but not much. I also tried to clarify the clock, and the beginning point of the information listed in it. Everything is these are very messy, and the type is all different and hard to read. From this point, I needed to cut down my information, de-clutter everything, and try to unify the elements of my infographs with the magazine article they're to be inserted in.

Round 4

Lots of cleaning up! This is a BIG change from what I had before, but it's a lot more clear than it previously was. In this version, I changed the type and the font sizes so that all matched with the article. I also set it up in a 3-line grid, just like the article. In this though, there are some informations (like the ket at the top and the information at the bottom of the clock) that needed to be presented differently, since they are not the same information as the other boxed elements.

Final

Ta-da! This is the final that was added to the magazine. It is a gate-fold that flips out from the second spread. In this version, I attempted to resolve the issue of the information divide by added bars to the top and bottom, that echo the shape of a recipe card. The bottom portion still needs some resolution, but it's gotten a lot better!

Book Covers 2nd round

SO. From last time, I have made some changes to the book covers and added some elements as well! :

I found some more suitable band-aids to paste onto the teddy-bear, and instead of only having one color in each element, I added some of the pantone red to the bandaid to give it a bit more dimensionality.

Ew gross! So for this one, I changed the food in the middle and added a little red in the shadows. I also added a bar across the food to make it look more like a warning sign!
Again, I added mixed the colors in both the clock and the food. I'm getting more confident when it comes to mixing the colors, and figuring out how mixing them can add more depth.

In this book cover I changed the contrast of the bows so they stood out against the background more. But they need some more work. :)

These are some backs that I'm playing around with as an alternative to the recipe card backs. Not sure which I prefer yet, but I wanted to mess around with it.

More Butcher Paper Mock-ups

More Process work for the infographs!

KITCHEN MAP

This one is a map of a kitchen with clean-up and safety tips. It is color coded, with the icons being used as the key. I'm not going to be using a drawing though! I was also playing around with using a montage of photos all placed together, buuuuut that's not looking to good. Here's the digital translations:

V1

From this version, I like the organization of the information at the top of the image, although I need to put the information in a 3-column grid like it is in my article.

V2

From this version, I am going to take the placement of the icons. Instead of being under the text, which just makes both elements difficult to read, they'll be chillin next to the information that they are categorizing. Also, the line weights in the infographs need to match the lines that I have in my article. There needs to be lot more cohesion between the images and the article they're in!

TIMELINES

Here are the butcher-paper iterations that I made for my Food Trends timeline. From these, I found that the cookie one was too specific, and that it was too busy with other information too. I chose to continue to go with the recipe box version, as it was one of my icons, and it seemed more appropriate.

V1

This was the first iteration of the timeline that I did. In this I finally got the linear nature of a timeline pinned down, but that's about it. The next one is much more successful!

V2

In this version of the recipe-box timeline, I inserted the information into the actual icons. I've also started editing out information, to make the facts more concise and fit into the cards. Everything I've done digitally is messy, so I'm trying to clean things up! Everything needs more space in this, and I need to make the type in the tab portion of the card look like part of the card rather than the text.

Clock Time-Based/Comparative

From these butcher-paper explorations, I decided that I wanted to have only one clock, instead of two. This chart is showing a day of bad eating (or snacking) versus a day of planned meals. The time base is, of course, the time of the day, and then the comparative is the calories in the food that the people ate. Pulled out from the these bits of information are addition facts about healthy eating choices (suggestions, nutritional info, etc.).

V1

Once again, I need to pay more attention to the infographs and article as ONE unit instead of separate projects. This information is SO MESSY! I will be cutting down the information in this graph, changing the colors to match the icon colors, and changing the text so that it is unified with the text in the article. Also, the text needs to be in grids that will match the article. This particular infograph might become a gate-fold page, or a fourth spread. I'm not sure which at this very moment, we'll see how the day treats us, but I'm hoping for the gate-fold. This graph has enough information in it that it could be an article of its own.

V2

From this iteration of the clock, I will be taking the title/key (so that there are not any paragraphs of information like in the first version). I'll also be taking the arrow from this version and altering the clock so that the beginning and ending of the graph will be more apparent!

Altogether, I need to work on making the infographs and article work together, and I've got a lot of work to get to that spot! Gonna unify text, unify color, and unify the layouts.