An International Interview

The last project for the Visual Journalism class at Columbia College is to interview an international Columbia professor, Marcelo Caplan, and create a magazine layout through a prepared InDesign template.

The design is to include at least one picture of Caplan, a main story, a sidebar story, a map where Caplan is from and a good headline, deck and captions.

 

First I went to Caplan's office in the South Loop to interview him. After an hour interview, I came away with a ton of information and photos for the design.

Then I sketched out a design and decided to have a regular grid type. For the main story I decided to use pastel background because it complimented the photos well. I chose a white background for the sidebar because the Israelian flag is half white.

Next I created a map of Argentina in InDesign and copy it to the magazine InDesign project.

Finally I changed the pictures to tif files, 300 dpi and CMYK inks in Photoshop so the photos are visible in print. Then I placed the pictures in the layout.

Last I wrote the stories, headline, deck and captions, and Visual Journalism Spring 2011 was over.

A Cool Community Site Design

The mid-term for Visual Journalism at Columbia College Chicago is to create a website design with all original pieces.

The design started as just a sketch for a community photography website. The design called for eight original photos and one ad. The nine items were cropped and toned in Photoshop. Before that the photos were changed to 72 dpi, RGB color and jpeg because it's for online.

  

Now it is time to start the design in the program InDesign. The mock-up called for nine rectangles to shape the photos, sidebar, navigation buttons and the search boxes.

In the most complicated project, the typography was the most difficult part with seven fonts, numerous sizes and four colors.

Red was chosen to be the primary because it is a warm color and home reminds viewers of a warm place.

Cropped and Toned to Perfection

During a Photoshop CS4 exercise for the Columbia College course, Visual Journalism, the students were asked to crop and tone photos for their mid-term website design.

The original photo is just average, it is too far away and the color is dull. I used the crop tool to cut out the road and bring the focal point of the photo forward. Next adjust the contrast and brightness on the photo to show the texture of the clouds.

 

Bringing Life Back to Art

In a restoration project, Columbia College students had to fix a ruined, old piece of art in Photoshop CS4. The original photo was messed-up, it had many holes and smudges from wear and tear. The colors in the photo had faded and it took away from the art.

The first step is to use the clone stamp tool to plug up those holes, smudges, and stains. To make sure the texture of the picture look untouched, use the healing brush tool to have a perfect transition between the new and old parts of the restoration.

Then add a new adjustment layer. From there select the levels option, you'll see a histogram. Continue by adjusting each channel until the picture looks acceptable. Last I slightly adjusted the contrast and brightness of the picture to make it pop.

An Infographic is Worth a Thousand Words

An Infographic is a graphic used in print and online publications that visually represents information. At the top  of this design is two drawings of a house and a car, which is appropriate for the infographic theme.

There is tan border behind a white sheet that runs throughout the design. The white sheet acts as the lines between each information box and as the background for the heading to unity.

The 10 house and car comparisons were placed in 10 rows, in 10 different colors so the reader can easily focus on each comparisons without negative space and without disturbing the harmony of the design. The colors are all pretty much bright and from both warm and cool color groups.

The house price and car price were put together because that is purpose of the graphic. The font is the same except for the size and boldface.

Besides resizing the photos there is only one modification. A couple of the car pictures are mirrored so all the cars are pointing towards the middle.

A Columbia Compostion

The third project of Visual Journalism consists of a magazine page reproduction. In the first complex design, the page reproduction has many different visual elements. 



The typography is the most complicated aspect of the page. The main quote in red at the top is the hardest to duplicate, because the word size and the tracking between the words changes. There is also four different types of fonts, which is a bit challenging.It would be used for print.

So the colors used would CMYK inks, which abstracts light to make the color. The font color was mostly black and white, however red is used a lot, a little blue and even less yellow.

The pictures weren't hard when the photos were found. They must be the right size, direction and placement. The aspect that is most difficult is finding the right picture with the best attributes.

For example, the picture in the top right needed to have a white background, so the red text would show up.

Let's add Some Color

For the second project for Visual Journalism at Columbia College Chicago, the students would apply warm and cool colors to their previous black and white design.

Since it is for online the designer has to use RGB light scale, which makes the colors by reflecting light.

WARM COLORS

The dark toned colors still draw the viewer's attention to the center like in the black and white piece, but it brings unity to all the other pieces in the design.

COOL COLORS

Yellow, orange and red are the warm colors that obviously makes the viewer feel warm and closeness to the piece. Blue, green and magenta are the cool colors that reminds the viewer of a cold feeling.