Reading Week Update

I've been working on an infographic for a slang article!! So far it's not so much info as graphic but I am still waiting for some information so that is bound to change at some point. As of right now, designing a twerk pose and a food baby is consuming the majority of my free time! See you tomorrow!

Infographics!!!!

Last week was awesome! We finally got a good amount of design requests! Maybe I shouldn't be so excited to get lots of designs. I might be wishing for those days of patient waiting before too long. But for now, WOOHOO!

Although we are only two days into the new week, I have been looking over the info given to us in the requests and trying to figure out which is the best way to organize it. All of the requests so far are for infographics! Something that I have been dying to do! It's like visual journalism. Anyways, through my research of infographics I have determined that I am a fan of one's that are seemingly crowded with a very limited colour palette. This way they keep their quality. Here are some examples.

http://www.findingdrishti.com/.../sweat-the-big-picture.../
 http://visual.ly/bycatch
http://visualoop.tumblr.com/post/37391889762/specs-appeal

Because there are so many infographics to be done, our whole team has been researching various types that we like and starting to put our ideas together. We are still waiting for the editor in chief to pass along the exact info that will be appropriate for each graphic so until then we can't really work on actual designs,(which seems to be the biggest difficulty of the week) but we should be getting that info soon.

That said, by next week we hope to receive this info and at least have preliminary graphics ready to be approved by Sam and his team. We can't wait to get started!

Since the Meeting...

The meeting this past week seemed to bring all of the different teams together as it went over everything that has been done and really put pressure on everyone to get their heads in the game. This is definitely something that was super awesome for us because we were able to show off the graphic submissions form online and get everybody thinking about what sorts of graphics would work with each design.

Since last week I have reached out to various people in the journalist stream to discuss what sorts of graphics would work with specific stories. I am incredibly interested in making an info-graphic at some point during the course so really I am most interested in finding someone who is interested in adding one to their story. So far I have had no luck with infographics but people are definitely more interested in adding designs to their stories, especially after they have seen what we have to offer!

As a group, we talked to a variety of people about graphic ideas, in particular the editor in chief for the journalists who promised to have a handful of designs ready to discuss for this coming week.  We also met with Robin to discuss adding new graphics for some social media updates just to keep everything interesting.

Our biggest difficulty over the past week has been trying to stay creative and come up with various ideas even though we don't have any graphic requests coming in but since our request form is up and running it shouldn't be a problem.

For this coming week I hope to have a clear idea of all of the expectations from the visual team and hopefully some ideas to design!

Everybody's playing the waiting game...

As our graphic design team waits, ever so patiently for new and exciting challenges, we have decided to put our heads to work and brainstorm various creative designs that are basic, simple, and follow the discussed design recommendations. In doing this, I have been going through various design websites such as awwwards.com for web-based designs, and behance, muse, etc., for inspiration with various projects both print and web-based. I think the designs that most catch my eye are the ones that are simple and that use a large amount of negative space. I also think that for the EMERGE brand itself, it is important to incorporate various Canadian and "Torontonian" elements to signify its place of birth.  I have been looking at magazines as well to see how various graphics work into different page elements. I think that it is very important to incorporate design into every aspect of this project. We will definitely be using the large group meeting to let everyone know of our capabilities and get the ideas flowing for designs that would work well with each specific story.

Since last week, our entire team has been brainstorming, and we have also been working on a guideline for topics to present to the large group next week.

Our biggest difficulty has been trying to get our design submission form up and available to the other teams. This has proven to be a challenge based on the web design teams not having a location available for the forms to be put in place but hopefully this will be resolved by this coming week. Another challenge has been a lack of design work but that should also be resolved by this week when we discuss our availability with the larger group.

For next week, I am aiming to have gained a stronger understanding of Adobe Illustrator through my use of the program over the week on quick tutorial projects. I think that this will help me to be better prepared for the projects that I will be given within the EMERGE team.