Public Service Announcement-Two Page Spreads

Our latest Typography project was to do a two page spread for an artist, musician, inventor or do a public service announcement. I chose anti-smoking because that's something that's still pretty important to me. Rather than create some depressing article filled with facts about death and cancer and such, I found a site and put together helpful tips for quitting. I wanted something positive and inspirational. Of course, our teacher doesn't actually care what the text says, but I picked it out and put a lot of work into it so that it would actually be useful as an article (hint hint to my smoking friends!)




We had to do one with images (at least three) and this is where I got hung up. I had a hard time integrating the pictures. The one with the beer is the one I did best I think. The other two...well I had to have two more pictures. I don't think their placement is horrible, but I'm sure it could be better, I just don't know how. X__X I really like my background (the giant letters) and overall I think the article is very readable. My teacher viewed my first drafts and suggested that I try to capture the feel of quitting smoking with the layout...I didn't really know how to do that, but on the second page I tried to make it more varied...because quitting isn't easy? Something like that. I don't know if it looks weird because the first page is more structured...but some magazine articles have two pages that are pretty different, so I think it works. We'll see if my classmates cut it up or not. X_X







We also had to do one with just type. I created this one first and overall I'm pretty satisfied with it. The background is something I really like (if you look at it, it's a bunch of letters but you can read STOP SMOKING going across the page. Sort of a subliminal message type deal. My teacher thought it was too busy, so I lightned it, then he said it was too faint to be useful, so I'm hoping that it's somehwere in the middle. I'm satisfied with it...I think it's readable without getting in the way of the body text. I think these pages work together a little better, though the overall design is a bit more formal. Something Krasner said of the first version was that it could be an article for anything (hence trying to get it to portray the feeling of quitting) but...well I don't know how to fix that. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much in terms of a magazine article (I can't help thinking that way with so much text to deal with) but I think that many articles could be about anything...it doesn't mean they aren't designed well.


I'm sort of frustrated with graphics. I seem to be pretty stagnant grade wise and I'm not sure if Krasner is seeing any progress with my designs. I got a 3.0 on my Nueva posters, which is respectable, but I was hoping for something higher. I seem to be stuck at a B level no matter what I do. Now that could be Krasner's asthetic (in Rob Carr's case I got a 2.7....so we won't go there) or it could be that I'm not pushing myself or I'm really not progressing. I do enjoy graphics, but I don't really enjoy it on the school level. I don't know if I'm stuck because I'm tired of school...or if I'm just not a good designer. I feel a lot of stress becaue I should have a decent portfolio going on and I really have nothing. I'm not sure if I can make it in the real world. I don't know...
Anyway...yeah.