“A Year Later: Reviewing My Design Concepts a Year after Publication”
William Harris
For this assignment, I went back and took a look at my concepts for the outlet magazine that a graphic design class that I was in published last year!!
I designed 5 seperate pieces, one of which was selected for publication.
Let’s take a look at that one, and use it to break down how the design process worked.
Here's my process for my piece that was selected for publication:
Bearing Worry!
The poem was about becoming attached to your anxiety, and holding on to it even when it is unhealthy for you. I explored this mainly through a visual of a person attached to a dark cloud that was consuming them, but that they held onto nonetheless.
I came up with the idea after doing some scribbling, which I thought accurately represented how my anxiety felt. I liked the idea of those scribbles consuming or holding someone back from their truest potential.
FINAL
I started with a big blobby guy, but replaced it with a photo of my friend...
Honestly, looking at my earlier concepts… I like most of them better than what I ended up with. They feel less messy to me. However, this is the direction that I was pushed by my professor and I think the messaging is more clean? The concept itself is just way harder to read, and messier in general.
I wish I had used a photo of my friend in the position I had the blobby guy in in that second photo. I think the lying down is messy and unclear. I like the image of her holding on to the anxiety and wish I had gone with that.
HOVER TO SEE DRAFT
Love and Infatuation
Concepting Phase
Love and Infatuation was a hard piece for me to nail down. I knew I wanted to play with contrast immediatley, but couldn’t figure out how much was too much. A lot of these early drafts are sloppy and I’m very much not proud of them.
However, I think I needed to get them out. As you can see, I slowly but surely move towards a cleaner, more readible design, you’ll see that evident in where we end up as well.
FINAL
I love this piece!! If I’m being honest, I wish it was selected for publication, but I also admittedly made a few polishing choices after it was submitted that made it work better than I what I had initially submitted. I’m incredibly proud of this final design, but I think the way I got here was very rocky, which I think is evidenced by the fact that I didn’t even have it solidified in a way that I liked it until after publication.