jacgoesdigital

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ABCs, Tauba Auerbach

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One of my favourite pictures I took today.

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There are some things in life I don't want to do, and proofreading the novel of a post I created below is one of them.

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The Final Blog Post

This will be marked down as the final blog post for Emerge, and the final blog post of my university career. Today was the conference and everything went amazing. The turnout was great, the speakers were great and the way our graduating class was able to work together was even greater. I volunteered as a photographer and although I now have back pain from standing up for so long, I enjoyed every moment. I got to run around capturing key moments as well as some behind the scenes shots people do not normally see. I've uploaded the majority here but still have a few more left to add.

Overall this semester has been a great experience, between working on the magazine, working with my team in general and working at the conference, the amount of effort put in by students and the end result is incredible.

My head is very scattered at this moment with things I'd like to say, so I'll just make a quick list of things I want to mention:

1. TRENDING IN CANADA!! WOOO (congrats to Robin and his social media team for achieving your goal, I know how badly you wanted this)

2. Congrats to the PR team for organizing an amazing conference

3. Reminder to everyone who keeps saying Emerge is over...yes the conference may be done but the magazine is not! So I promise to work really hard during the summer months to make sure production runs smoothly and the magazine produced is the best one yet. The way I look at it is, the conference was the cake, and the magazine is this icing. (And everyone knows the icing is the best part)

4. This one is just a thank you to my visual identity team. Sam, your hard work for the magazine and the conference was outstanding and you have been an amazing leader for our group. You came up with numerous creative ideas and although you had many people in your ear asking you to do things, you pulled through with minimal to zero complaints, bravo. Dustin, you took on branded content and I can honestly say without a word of a lie, your designs are outstanding. The way you have been able to bring your pages to life had me wanting to make my own layouts better. (You know how much I love your UMBRA page). Sarah, my partner in crime, you have been my design partner this semester. Also being my roommate, we worked together creating layouts late into the night while consistently bouncing ideas off each other. I appreciate you telling me when something on my page didn't look quite right, and even more so when you tried to find ways to fix it. And finally to Raha and Amy, clearly you both were the life of the group. You two always brought energy and positive charisma to class, and had an endless supply of ideas to share, it was great being able to hear so many unique and creative thoughts.

Now to avoid this turning into a valedictorian/sappy run on speech (more than it already is)..I will list my "list of things I did this semester" below and then try my best to wrap this up.

Here we go: List of things I Personally Accomplished

-Putting together portions of the semester plan at the beginning of the year

-Adding ideas and feedback when deciding on style guide and brand guidelines for the magazine and conference.

-Provided constructive criticism to group members who created layouts. And also applied their criticism to my designs.

-Contacted Image Arts students as soon as we came up with our first cover idea to get them to start shooting.

-Attended meetings with John and Jasmine outside class hours to discuss layout, paper types, fonts, the gatefold, etc.

-Provided feedback and criticism towards potential cover ideas, as well as contributing my own. (We still have yet to decide on which one will actually be used).

-Spoke to photographers and writers both before designing a layout so everyone could provide input and feel like they helped put together the final look.

-Pitched an idea for the photo spread to the image arts students

-Proposed the idea of having two versions of stories written: one short version to allot for space in the magazine, and a longer or full version to be put on the web.

-Participated in the many pagination meetings held to decide the order in which the pages will appear in the magazine.

-Arranged a meeting with the Image Arts students to see if they had any ideas for the photo essay thus far, and then reported back to my group.  Although the photo spread is still under works, I am still in constant communication with Shelby (IA student) who will be sending me all 6 photos as soon as they are shot and edited.

-Was in constant communication with Michael Brown to see how progress with stories was coming along and if there were any new drafts I could input into my layouts.

-Got promoted to “Assistant Creative Director”

-Had everyone send me their layouts they had designed so far and printed out each one to put up on the bulletin board to see how the magazine was coming along.

-Designed the “Nerd Culture” page for the mini magazine, and worked with Sam to design the other pages.

-I will be staying on during the summer months and coming into the school a few times a week with Jasmine to ensure the magazine is finished and sent off to production without a hitch. During this time I’ll finish off any pages that were not completed by the end of April as well as working with Jasmine and Michael to ensure the magazine is as aesthetically pleasing as possible. (Let's win some awardsss!)

-Volunteered as the photographer for the actual Emerge conference. I stepped in as a photographer for the Image Arts students because they were short one person and needed someone to help take photos of conference speakers (which were then uploaded to Flickr periodically throughout the day). And I also shot behind the scenes footage and b-roll material for the video team to use.

-Created mockups for the photo spread

-Designed “Nerd Culture” story (4 pages)

-Designed “Women’s Rights” story (4 pages)

            --> The photographer asked for help shooting this story so I was able to track down and find two models for her to use. I acted as the medium between the models and photographer to arrange a time they were both free to do the photo shoot.

-Designed “Future Gazing/Rant” story (1 page)

-Designed “Editor’s Letter” page (1 page)

--

Well this has been the longest blog post ever, so Nick, if you are actually still alive and reading at this point, thank you very much for being such a supportive professor. It's been a pleasure being in your class two years in a row. Yourself, as well as seeing pictures and updates of Ruby will be greatly missed.

And.........post.

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Bespoke Studio by STUDIO NEWWORK

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Argoe by Anthoney James

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Week 12

Since last week, I have received the photographs for the Women's Rights story so I have begun editing and working with in my mockups. After our class, Sarah and I met with photography to see if they had any ideas for the 6 page photo essay and am happy to say brainstorming is under way. I have also continued working on layouts like usual.

Our team again worked on pagination moving pages around trying to figure out the best possible order for all pages. Sitting with Michael, we discussed fonts, font types and whether or not specialty fonts (like the one I used for nerd culture) should be used. Some argue all stories should have the exact same fonts, while others say having one or two stories with a unique font could add visual diversity to the magazine.

The biggest difficulty in the last week was with photography. The photos I received for my story were not exactly what we have envisioned and thus it has been decided a re-shoot may be necessary. Although this will require extra work, in the end I think it is better to have a final product we can all truly be proud of.

Being this week is the final program meeting, I hope to be able to get all questions answered regarding the conference.

However on the visual identity side of things, I still have to get into contact with other photographers to see how their progress is coming along for their assigned stories. I also need to get final drafts of stories from journalism students so I can begin finalizing and perfecting layouts.

I'm also in contact with Shelby who seems to be the one shooting the photo essay- so I'm trying to answer all of her layout questions and assist her anyway necessary.

That is all for me!

Side note: Awesome job to the videography team! Shelby's profile looks great!

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Kosm.ici Monograph by Gabriela Namie.

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Liking the use of white space. Not something you see in most typical magazines

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Week 11

This week was all about photography! There was a lot of back and forth communication between models and photographers to set a date to shoot the Women's Rights story. And despite a few setbacks, the photos have been taken. They are currently being edited and should be sent my way soon.

Our team is busy working away on their own assignments/layouts to ensure the magazine is underway and done as soon as possible.

Personally the biggest difficulty I faced this week was communicating with the photographers. I was originally asked to help find models and was successfully able to find and confirm two. Later on, I was told different models were asked and used in the final photoshoot. Although not a major issue, I did feel bad cancelling on two people who were already confirmed and were excited about being part of the magazine. Perhaps we can use them in a different spread? Just a thought.

Overall, I'm happy the shoot is done and am eagerly waiting to see the final product.

For next week I'm hoping to insert the images into layouts. I've also taken on the "Final Rant" story so I'll be looking up inspiration and ideas for that page as well.

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Week 10

Since last week I have completed the layout for the Women's Rights story and have got into contact with the photographer who will be shooting the story. I was able to find two models who we will be photographing for this story and am talking with them and the photographer currently to find a common time where they can meet and start the shoot. I also contacted the photographer for my nerd culture story to brainstorm ideas and show her the space we have to work with in the proposed layout.

As a team, we are all moving forward with layout. Sam currently posted design ideas for the Table of Contents, Dustin is working hard on branded content and Sarah has begun working on the Ethnic Press story just to name a few. We also met with a lot of other sections last week to iron out problems and confusions any students may have had regarding design or art direction.

We also met with John and Jasmine again to rearrange some pages of the magazine and add in one more photo page (creating a 6 page photo essay).

One difficulty I am finding is communication between a writer, a photographer and myself. It seems sometimes the writer has one idea for a photo while the photographer - or even myself - has another. In the end we are deciding to shoot a variety of things and then choose as a team what looks the best. Hopefully this way, everyone feels involved and gets a final say in what is used.

For next week, I'm hoping to have some photos to look through for the nerd culture story. I'd love to be able to insert some images into the layout and make sure they look good with what I have designed. I am also contemplating redesigning that entire spread, so having the final images to work with would really help in the designing process.

I'm also hoping to have finalized a date for the Women's Right's photo shoot for next week. I am currently waiting on people to send me their availability, but once that is received I should be able to find a date that works for both the models and the photographers.

See ya next week!

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Could be a cool idea for the photo spread in the magazine

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BlackAndWhitePosters

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Words of advice to any stressed out Emerge students...and done so with very nice typography and colour. lol

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Week 9

Since last week I have chosen another story (Women's Rights Around the World) and started making a mockup for it. After completing a rough layout for the four pages I did hear they wanted to add possible info graphics to the story, which would change my design significantly, but until I get further confirmation this mockup is done as well!

In the last week, our team had another successful "first of the month" program meeting. We showed off our designs to all the students and were greeted with some great positive feedback. After the meeting, our team, journalism students, and photography students all met together with John where we drew all 54 pages of the magazine on the board and decided what exactly was going on each page. After an hour of discussion (and minimal arguments) we all successfully decided on the order! This was a huge roadblock for us, and I am super happy we were able to get it done. (John said it took them 10 hours to do the same thing last year). It also made the magazine feel a lot more real seeing it all sketched out on the board in front of us. Progress is being made!

The biggest difficulty we had was waiting on rough copies of stories to come in, but talking with Michael from journalism last week, he has been able to deliver quite a few of the rough stories to us. Now the difficulty lies with photography as we wait for students to be assigned stories to shoot. The sooner this is done, the sooner we can start working together to decide on shots and styles of photographs.

For next week, I want to upload my Women's Rights spread to our group to get feedback, insert the rough draft into my Nerd Culture layout, and get into contact with some photographers to get some shoots rolling.

All in all this was a very productive week!! Looking forward to the next one :)

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Congrats on baby Farnell!!!