Atticus Erraticus

Ladies & Gentlemen, 

The Columbia Publishing Course Class of 2013 has survived Magazine Workshop Week.

Barely.

I was fortunate enough to be assigned the role of Designer/Art Director once again. 

Like many of the others, I didn't really know the first thing about designing magazines, 

but I thought FINALLY learning some InDesign would be quite useful.

(Little did I know that I would be up at 4a.m. unable to sleep, watching

Adobe tutorial videos in my dorm room...in the dark because my ceiling light burned out.)

At the end of the week, the Art Directors gave a very brief presentation of our work and our respective magazines/websites. I began my erratic, exhausted speech with, '..my choice of paper for jotting down

presentation notes was between a chocolate wrapper and a rejected cover design.'

That was my week.

But I'm very proud of the final product and my team.

Thanks for supporting your stressed out designers, everyone.

Our final logo. 

Designed in Photoshop (because I didn't understand InDesign yet).

It is a combination of type manipulation and hand drawn adjustments.

Our group was assigned to the Men's Magazine category. 

...difficult considering it is the demographic least likely to buy magazines.

Our Final Premiere Cover **

I used to think I could never get tired of looking at dad&kid pictures.

I was wrong.

Our Second Issue Cover **

A high-impact approach. I found this photo at 3a.m. and couldn't stop giggling.

Look at her!

Our Final Contents Page **

I Photoshopped three photos together and then drew/painted to create this page.

My group (thankfully) just said "we trust you" when I pitched my 3a.m. idea for this page. 

It was created on the final day and finished at 5:58pm on a 6:00 deadline.

My group didn't even see it or the 2nd Issue Cover until the 

Art Director presentation a couple hours later.

Our Opening Spread for our Feature**

Made in InDesign!! This image was originally going to be on our cover until

our resource team advised us that it would function better as a feature.

We had our differing opinions many times throughout the week, 

but I happily acknowledge that they were right.

(I did not really take these photos.)

Our Feature Spread **

It just has fill-text, so don't get too excited. My team wrote the quote on the left, and I 

wrote the quote and caption underneath the photo.

I named them Chris and Milo.

---THE FOLLOWING ARE SOME REJECTED COVERS---

I fought very hard for this cover, as did my team.**

Our advisors said that they didn't think Robert Downey Jr. was a good choice.

This was also when our magazine concept was much edgier. 

It was changed through much deliberation, 

and both of my covers were scrapped the day before the deadline.

Stress.

When the resource people told us not to use Robert Downey Jr. but to 

try to find a photo with a similar attitude and effect, I struggled to do so.

So, as an experiment, I decided to doctor Mr. Downey's face so that he'd be

less immediately recognizable and perhaps for the workshop purposes, 

we could still use this wonderful image.

(For curious minds: I Photoshopped his face to be considerably wider, moved the jawline down, arched the eyebrows, lightened his eyes, changed his hairline, widened his nose, and gave him a shave and a haircut. As you are looking at this thinking of RDJ, I expect that the changes will be less

obvious than if you saw it separately.)

We were pretty heartbroken to have to take this image off of the cover,

but as I said before, I'm happy with how things turned out.

(I don't like the placement of the -now changed- title on this, 

but it was scrapped before I could polish this cover. Oh well.)

I have included this because one of my proudest Photoshop moments thus far was digitally painting the watermark off of this photo. It started as an experiment and then became a personal game

...because I like tedious things.

**I do not own the rights to these photos, nor did I make any financial profit from my use of them.

They were used strictly as an educational exercise.

Square Button Books

Below is some of the final artwork I created as the fake Designer/Art Director

for our fake children's publishing house, Square Button Books in the very real

Columbia Publishing Course book workshop.

In eight days, we divided into 'houses', decided on our job positions/areas: 

Publisher, Editor(s), Sales, Business Manager, Designer, Production, 

Marketing, Publicity, and Subsidiary Rights

We have to develop almost 30 book ideas, whittling it down to six final titles.

With these books, each person has specific tasks to perform and include in the

final product: A Prospectus of our house's Fall 2014 list.

The horizontal version of our logo.

The cover design for our final prospectus.

**My cover design for our (fake) Mindy Kaling book for teen girls,

complete with my handwriting! 

I wish this book were real. I'd totally read it.

Our editors got to contact her agent to get permission to make our fake title.

**This book went through so many changes, my whole group (including myself)

were ready to scream. I'm relatively pleased with how this turned out

even though it is different from our original look.

Shakespeare meets Gossip Girl...

My cover for the first book of our Middle Grade boys' series, Pegleg Academy.

The final cover does not include the series title and instead just says

the individual book's final title: 

Sticks and Stones, Skulls and Bones

I had fun making the skull out of paper from my notebook and snapping

pictures of it on my phone in my dorm room late at night.

Harry Potter meets Treasure Island.

I illustrated this cover myself roughly in the style of the wonderful Brian Biggs.

We were allowed to use existing illustrations for our fake book covers 

during this workshop, but I thought this one needed

an original image (because there was nothing available to fit this particular title).

I thoroughly enjoyed getting so use my illustration background during

the book workshop.

Our editors contacted Helen Ketteman, who was very enthusiastic about

our proposed project!

**Now, this is a preexisting illustration done by the talented Sara Palacios. 

I borrowed it for this project and doctored it slightly, deleting, moving

 and adding things so that it will better suit the cover.

This was a picture book idea based around Sandra Cisneros' poem.

**Here is my cover design for our (fake) picture book based on the Instagram sensations: 

Tasuku and his best friend, Muu. 

Our resource team - a group of publishing professionals who graciously

donated their time to instruct us during our workshop -

suggested that I "brand" Tasuku & Muu, so the above title is how I interpreted that.

Thankfully, they liked it!

Thank you for looking through all of these!

Now, below are some of the earlier versions of the above titles:

The design supervisors and I fought for this cover for a long time.

Several of the people upstairs (literally upstairs) did not agree that it fit the

developing concept of the book. I appreciated that they did say it was a very good

cover before asking that it be changed 10000 times.

So, we went more modern, as was requested.

I actually didn't hate this as much as I thought I would.

It grew on me quite a bit.

Then, in an effort to try a different feel entirely, I tried a Playbill style

to allude to the Shakespeare aspect of the series. The buyer from

Barnes & Noble liked my Playbill cover a lot, but

she ultimately liked the original cover best, as did I.

That yellow is rough.

This was used in one of our sales packets. 

My teammate asked me to make a coloring book page of Tasuku & Muu.

This was one of my brainstorming results for a logo design. Way too corporate. 

I disliked it instantly. I found a happy medium between this

design and another, resulting in the final logo.

**I do not own the rights to this photo. As this was merely

an educational exercise, I made no financial profits from the image(s).

Littered Lectures

More sketches from my Columbia Publishing Course notebook.

Over lunch, I asked my friend what to draw. They said, "A raccoon hanging out with a peanut."