SND Visual Journalism Hand-outs
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under design, journalism
SND is making 17 handouts available for a very short time on their blog.
The first two hand-outs are already available as PDFs. Be sure to follow their blog to get the remaining articles as they become available.
If the remaining articles are anything like the first two they should prove to be great resources
Richard Koci Hernandez, San Jose Mercury News: How to train yourself.
Stephanie Grace Lim, Pay Pal: How to jump start your creative mind
Over the next week, SND’s Update will feature 17 handouts from the upcoming issue of Design Journal, free for you to download. Hand-outs brought to you from visual journalism experts from all over the globe, including Eduardo Danilo, Nigel Holmes, Stephanie Grace Lim, Vince Chiaramonte, Richard Koci Hernandez, Tim Harrower, Tracy Collins, Matt Mansfield, Joe Hutchison and many more.
We cover how to make a photo assignment, how to make an illustration pop, how to make body text legible, how to navigate the newsroom, how to use a grid, how to think about stories in multimedia, how to think about stories in chunky bits, how to sell the big idea, how to come up with the big idea if you’re stumped and how to manage your people so they come up with the big idea. And more.
Redesigned my blog.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under me
I spent a few hours tonight giving my blog a shiny new look.
The picture editor in me spent 3 hours trying to find a header image that I thought worked well. Finally I found a few possibilities and settled on the one you see above.
If you’re reading this by a RSS feed drop in and check it out.
I was boxed in with my old theme. It was dated and was never meant to harness the full potential of WordPress. This should free me up nicely.
What do you think?
Tags: design, me, web, wordpress
The photojournalism resume
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under promo
I’ve unofficially labeled my spring one of self promotion. My mom, like any good mother keeps reminding me that I need a job career.
I’m in the process of updating my resume. See my resume here on my about page. I briefly entertained the idea of redesigning it, but lack the creative drive right now to make something fresh of it.
Some resume design inspiration
You might find it useful when it comes time to freshen up your resume for that new job prospect or internship.
Tags: creative, design, inspiration, promo, resume
FFFFOUND! - Image Bookmarking
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Came across this site called FFFOUND It’s geared more towards the design end of visual communications, but none the less can be a great source of inspiration for your daily visual push-ups.
The great thing about the site is that it’ll recommended images based on the image you selected. It’s like Pandora except for eye candy. You can read more about it here.
FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!
Photo by:Christian Conrad
Tags: creative, design, inspiration, photography
SND Goodies.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under design
There’s bundles of information and inspiration to hand in these handouts from the SND(Society for News Design) conference that took place earlier this year. It’s geared towards designers, but can easily be applied to us as photojournalists.
I found these PDFs especially useful.
Storytelling in print and multimedia
Jenn Crandall (washingtonpost.com’s onBeing) project and Kelli Sullivan (Los Angeles Times projects including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Altered Oceans”) show how words and images can be combined to create compelling narratives.
Download PDF(3.6MB) of Kelli Sullivan’s talk.
A few things worth highlighting in the handout:
Communication - Be a conduit for the various disciplines
Become a part of the discussion early and often
Partner with people who determine space in the paper to ensure you get what you need for your project.
Editing - Look at every item and weigh it against one another.
Edit for redundancy and push to move the story forward.
“What makes this project unique?” Build on that theme.
Collaboration - Need I say more?
Planning - Get out of your chair and make it happen.
Be proactive.
Look ahead to the budgets and ask about items you might want to work on. (How often do you get photo assignments that have us there when nothing is going on? Much like Renee C. Beyer said at the Flying Short Course reschedule your assignments for when something is going on.)
Scott Minister who’s just up the road in Columbus, OH had a great handout on sports design. His advice might as well been written for photographers too.
Download PDF (6.7 MB) of Scott Minister’s talk.
A few things worth noting that also reinforce what I’ve taken away from my picture story class this quarter:
Let the content drive your decisions. (You have a vertical to fit this hole? Shouldn’t happen when the content is driving the design.)
Strong ideas are the most valuable commodity that we have.
Ideas come from things that you’re passionate about and they also come from words, so be well-read. (Everyday I read the NY Times looking for ideas that could lead to strong visuals.)
Make planning a priority. Always have a reservoir of ideas. (Need to keep my ideas in one place.)
Be prepared. (Every year you know the paper will have something dealing with Valentine’s Day, etc so plan ahead and do something special.)
A healthy, working relationship between the photo and art departments is imperative to the success of the paper. (Communication and Collaboration once again.)
One last handout I found helpful was on creating an effective portfolio. OU professor, Terence Oliver, had a hand in this one. (Had to get my OU plug in somewhere.)
Creating an effective portfolio
Though we’re in the presentation business, many of us struggle to present our own work. Tips for both students and working professionals from author Sara Eisenman (“Building Design Portfolios”) and Terence Oliver (Professor, Ohio University).
Download PDF
Hopefully you find the handouts as useful as I have.
Tags: design, inspiration, journalism, photojournalism
Make sure your clothes match.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
I guess there’s value to found in making sure you leave the house with an outfit that matches.
Research reveals all human beings make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment , or item within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone.
Find more resources on color at: Complete Color Matching Guide.
Also interesting to note is the info found at: How Does Color Psychology Work?
Colour is energy and the fact that it has a physical effect on us has been proved time and again in experiments – most notably when blind people were asked to identify colours with their fingertips and were all able to do so easily.
Colour-blind people are also sensitive to colour psychology.
There are four psychological primary colours – red, blue, yellow and green. What do they mean?
RED. Physical
Positive: Physical courage, strength, warmth, energy, basic survival, ‘fight or flight’, stimulation, masculinity, excitement.
Negative: Defiance, aggression, visual impact, strain.
BLUE. Intellectual.
Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm.
Negative: Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness.
YELLOW. Emotional
Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity.
Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide.
GREEN. Balance
Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace.
Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation.
Nobody knows or understands the power of colors more than graphic designers. Knowing that white reflects purity and cleanness it makes sense that its’ used in promoting personal hygiene products for women. The same can be applied to hair care products. Look at more expensive products and the packaging they use to create a level of sophistication(Paul Mitchell) with the consumer.
Tags: design
Design Goodness
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
I finally found the time and inspiration to update the design of my blog — much like those pop songs you can’t free yourself of I’m hoping the new look will stick.
While on the topic of design Fast Company ran the response of 15 designers on what makes good design.
Here are few of a their comments. See more at: Design Rules
Good design is probably 98% common sense.
One of the essential elements that differentiates design from art is function.
Simple, but highly effective response on relating Legos to design:
Legos embody pure simplicity. In many ways, they were the first digital toys — all bits and bytes. But to experience the product, you have to interact with it. Part of that experience comes from what you bring to it. The word “lego” is a combination of the Danish words “Leg Godt,” which means “to play well.” In Latin, lego means “I study,” or “I put together.” I remember my dad and I used to spend hours building these elaborate creations — circuses, cars, planes, space stations. There was no limit to what we could make with Legos.
In a sense, playing with Legos is a lot like designing: The process is slow and requires focus. A joint is missing here or there. You make mistakes. So you try something else, and that leads you to a different form, a different connection, a new discovery.
The notion of designing from a sense of feeling is something all photojournalists should be able to relate to:
I rarely think about design; I feel it. and I approach design more with my heart than with my head. So when I create something, I do it because it feels really good to me, not because I think it will go over well.
Great design — whether it’s of a product, a service, or an event — should give the viewer an epiphany of communication and understanding. It should astonish.
Ahemn to that.
The brilliance of Apple’s design: They understood that a computer, like many consumer products, can be an object of lust.
Tags: design
