JOHN CAGE: SOME RULES FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

These were given to me by my 2D Design professor when I was a sophomore. They are still relevant.

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student – pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher – pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: be self-disciplined – this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything—it might come in handy later.

Thinking About Logo Design

Video of speed-logo-design.

Body Copy aka Text Type

Here’s an article from Ilene Strizver with some useful tips on font choices for body copy: serif vs sans.

For Class April 17

The final assignment of the semester will be a double page spread (two facing pages) for a magazine feature article. You can look through your existing body of work to find an editorial illustration that would fit into a magazine article. Use 8.5 x 11″ for starters for your page size. Most magazines are slightly different than that; feel free to measure and adopt another size as long as it has a basis in publishing reality. You can cut and paste text for your body copy if you have the right article; otherwise you can use placeholder text. For all other text on the page, use real language, even if you have to write your own headlines. You can use any medium you like for the illustration, but you must use Adobe InDesign for your page layout; set up a single document to be two facing pages. Most importantly, your illustration and design will be appropriate in tone and appearance for the subject matter and audience for the topic.

See above a double page layout with call-outs for the features you must incorporate into your design. In addition, you might consider including such elements as a dropcap, pull quote or spot illustration. Underlying your design will be a grid to give it structure. Note that the green bars defining the gutter and margins are simply indicating spaces, they aren’t part of the design.

For class, be ready with your proposed story idea, illustration and thumbnail sketches of your page layout. You’ll work on your designs for the duration of class.

For Class April 10

This week is Book Jacket Crit. When you print out your jackets, make sure you don’t select “scale to page size” in the print dialogue box; this would make your book jacket look bizarrely large. Do print proofs before the final version to make sure your color is what you want it to be. We can meet up in the Computer Cluster at first, make sure everyone is all set, then go to Room 215C for crit as per usual.

As clearly stated in the previous blog post, you should create at least the front of the jacket. I’d rather see a beautifully done, complete front jacket than an unfinished, poorly done wrap. Don’t forget to include not just the book title but also the author’s name. Very often for fiction it will state “A Novel” or “Short Stories”; for non-fiction, quite often there is a subtitle. If you’re doing the wrap, follow the conventions as so many of you did so well on the bottle labels. The spine will have the title, author, and publisher name and logo. The backad will have all those as well as some reviewers’ comments and a UPC code.

You will be graded on creativity, originality, typography, illustration, layout and informational hierarchy as well as integration of type and illustration.

Book Jacket Assignment

The next assignment will be to design and illustrate a book jacket. This will be a chance to integrate display type and image. Be sure to choose a book you know well, so you know what it is you are trying to communicate to the public about the text.

At the very minimum, design the front cover. By default, use the standard hardcover size: 6.375 x 9.5″. If you make your jacket another size, model it on an existing book so your design will have the appearance of the Real Deal. If your professional goal is to work in children’s publishing on picture books, you can do a children’s book jacket, just use that industry’s standards for your size and design. At the very minimum, design and illustrate the front cover. For extra Brownie Points, you can do the spine (1.25-1.75″ would be a good size) and the “back ad” as it’s called. If you want to really impress, you can design the flaps as well.

For class this week, April 3rd, have sketches and work in progress. You may use any media to create your illustration. Use either Adobe Illustrator or InDesign to set your type, unless you have special effects that can only be done in Photoshop. As ever, for final crit on April 10, you’ll hand in your artwork and sketches and archive the digital files, as well as a pdf, to your Dropbox folder. Your art work must read well from a bit of a distance, so manage contrast for legibility. Print out proofs as you work, so you can see how it’s looking. Make necessary adjustments for the clarity of the print.

While working on this, study existing book jackets. What makes a book look compelling? How is the story or subject suggested in an enticing way? How does the typography interact with the illustration? What is in the backad (back cover)? Note in the sidebar on this blog there are links to great book jacket design sites. Have fun exploring them.

Book jacket by The Book Designers

For Class March 27

Crit time for bottle labels. Come prepared: see below to read the previous posting. If you need help before then, I’ll be in the computer cluster Tuesday 3.25 from about 3:15-4:45, Wednesday for office hours 11am—12:30pm.

After crit and a quick break, we’ll meet in the lab to discuss the next project: book jacket art.

For Class March 27

Bottle Label Art Crit
For crit, Photoshop the labels onto photos of the right kind of bottles. (You can use Free Transform > Warp to get the label to wrap around the bottles’ curves.) You will also design an 8.5 x 11″ page showing the 3 labels flat. Include, as ever, your sketches with your work handed in. Save your digital files of the original artwork to your Dropbox folder as well.
To be clear:
On crit day (or with any redo):
1. Hand in the printed piece
2. Hand in sketches (or copies of sketches)(or scans of sketches uploaded to Dropbox)
3a. Archive the original work, in layers, in Dropbox (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign)
3b. Include in your Dropbox folder a jpg or, preferably, a pdf file so that all the fonts will be preserved.

For Class March 20

Work on bottle labels during class. Use any media you like to create the illustrations: traditional then scanned, Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop (but don’t use InDesign to make your illustrations, D!). Once your illustrations are done, place them in Adobe InDesign to set your type. If your doing special effects for your display type or if it’s integrated with the illustration, it can be part of the Photoshop document. If you’re using Adobe Illustrator, you can create the illustration as well as typesetting there, since it’s a vector program and your type will be crisp and legible. Adobe Photoshop is a raster program and will make your type, especially the small body copy, bitmappy and hard to read.

Bottle Label Assignment

You’ll design and illustrate bottle labels, a series of at least three. You can choose fruit drinks, flavored water, iced tea, wine, beer — your choice. Whatever you choose, find bottles of the size, shape and material that your labels would go onto. You can make your labels any size or shape that will fit that bottle, so long as the customer can read the front of the label clearly to see what is inside. Bear in mind, if you choose wine and want to do a Pinot Noir, a Chardonnay and a Sauvignon Blanc, these bottles typically have different shapes depending on the wine inside.

Design and illustrate not only the front label but also the informational label at the side or back. Study labels of the type that you are doing. It’s your job as a visual communicator to express the contents of the product to the intended client. You can copy existing text or write original copy for your own labels, but your goal is to make it look utterly authentic. For example, there will be a UPC code, alcoholic beverages will need a warning label and there will be a list of ingredients if its fruit juice. 

For crit, Photoshop the labels onto photos of the right kind of bottles. (You can use Free Transform > Warp to get the label to wrap around the bottles’ curves.) You will also design a page showing the 3 labels flat. Include, as ever, your sketches with your work handed in. Save your digital files of the original artwork to your Dropbox folder as well. This assignment’s critique will be on March 27.