All done!

Ok, never mind, it's printed now. I had no idea that I could just print from Preview and it would come out the right size. Whew!

Marceline Pamphlet

I finished my pamphlet!

But it's not printed. It's actually sitting in the print drawer right now, waiting to come to life so it can tell the story of its creation....which is not that exciting, really, but I'll tell it anyway.

First, I drew Steamboat Willie in Illustrator. This took about two hours. Then, I started on the map. The image I worked with was a Google map of Marceline, which is hardly fun to look at, so I decided to trace it in Illustrator. I don't know how long that part took, but it was way too long for the result I ended up with. And of course I had several pictures to tweak in Photoshop so they were all CMYK, 300 ppi, and the right proportions for my layout. Then came the text (11 point Baskerville font), and I didn't have too much trouble with it. Apparently my copyfitting was up to snuff, and I just needed to correct a few typos from the original copy. In any case, this was all done at about 10:00 last night. I won't go into the details of printing because they mostly make me look like an idiot, but I will say that I was in the lab until 10:50 and I still have no idea how to print a legal sized color document on the laser printer in the alpha lab. So there you go; el fin, y necesito pensar antes de trabajo.

Marceline Pamphlet Marker Comp

My marker comp for the Marceline brochure is a four panel, roll-fold, 8.5"x14" pamphlet. PamPHLET, excuse me. I am happy with the way I comped it - I think it's clean and the copy fitting is very tight - but I don't think my design is particularly original. There's too much white space, everything is square, and it's boring. I think I had a hard time thinking of the brochure as a whole, and I designed the panels individually. I guess the challenge with designing by hand is still remembering all the options a computer program gives you with regards to design. But (to focus on the bright side) my marker comp is pretty detailed, right down to the tiny hand-lettered street names on the map. I'm most happy with the rendering of the Walt Disney Hometown Museum, because it looks exactly like the photograph. Another note - I outlined Mickey with a thicker stroke around the edge, and it does make him pop out - voila! I was surprised. Anyway, here are the pictures, title side first:

Fishing Magazine Thumbnail

Here is the thumbnail of my fishing article layout. I like this one because it has a large picture and three columns of type on each page. I think I'll end up increasing the size of the title by quite a bit, and of course I'll have to make changes if it turns out that I've grossly overestimated the amount of text (which I suspect I might have done....bigger pictures, then?) Anyway, my marker drawings are not as tight as they should be in this thumbnail - the big picture is a stream bed, with rocks and water, if you can't tell from looking at it. The other two pictures are of people holding fish. In the small picture on the first page, a man is holding up a giant fish and giving a thumbs-up sign with a cheesy grin on his face. I think he's hilarious.

Final VW Poster

Here's what I printed out for my final poster. I rearranged the text, wrapping it around the van, and redrew the graphics to include a border. I'm still not entirely happy with the text layout, and I probably should have kept the bleed, but I think it's better than my marker comp overall.

Half-sized VW Promotion Poster Comp

This is my marker comp of my VW camping trip ad. I couldn't scan all of it because I made it too big (I assumed that 50% meant area, not scale...oops). I like most of my design, but I'm not so happy with the text in a few places. I think in my final poster I'll move the heading so it doesn't overlap quite so much with the windshield, and I'll also fix the block of text so it's more square. I need to establish a grid before I do all of that, though, and hopefully the end result won't look too drastically different from the comp.

Thumbnaaaiiiiill!!!!!!

Just for kicks, here's my original thumbnail of the chili cook-off poster.

Final Chili Cook-Off poster

Here is my final chili cook-off poster, done in InDesign. I'm pretty happy with it - I think everything translated from marker comp to printing very well. I didn't change much at all; I did make the black box in the background align with both side margins, and I increased the stroke on the word "chili." And of course when I mounted the printed version on foam core, I forgot to leave a border. Go figure. Last night was a late night in the print shop, and I was a little preoccupied with getting the litho ink off my hands so it wouldn't smudge my poster. Anyway, I think if I had to change anything I would move "march 16th on the quad" to below the title and then somehow fix "in honor of national ag week" so it's not floating around on the top. I'd also add one or two more shades to the gray part of the pepper to give it some more depth (these were all suggestions from my professor...so not my own ideas, but I do happen to agree).