“…in-house designers are trying to overcompensate for the normally uninspiring art and photography that alumni magazines routinely have to work with… The key is to use cheap art in smart ways.”
“…in-house designers are trying to overcompensate for the normally uninspiring art and photography that alumni magazines routinely have to work with… The key is to use cheap art in smart ways.”
13 Comments
it’s an oxymoronic position to, “….use cheap art in smart ways.” yeah, that’s a real smart way to improve your publication.
@Tim,
2nd.
I am with DJ. Good design is powerful stuff.
I would imagine that the supplied photos that alumni magazines are asked to work with is often of low quality. And their budgets are probably too low to do much about that. Maybe what DJ meant was that designers need to resist the urge to overpower the art they have to work with by overdesigning pages. It doesn’t do the photos any favors…
I agree Jamie, particularly coming from one of the foremost designers in the business…….DJ Stout.
I think calling their position oxymoronic is oxymoronic in itself. We’re in this mess in the first place simply because of all the over-inflated shit that built up before it popped (is popping).
All they’re saying is to use what you have well and a better product will be produced. I couldn’t agree more.
Kinda sad that they would drop a boatload of cash hiring Pentagram to figure out how to save money using bad photography.
that boatload of cash will “pay forward” in the response that alums show the school in terms of $$$. they can hire students to do pictures that will be perfectly fine if handled in clever ways by the designers… and they’re not just referring to photography — illustration, too, i would think… these mags just don’t have the dough to hire lots of expensive artists and photogs… i think it’s a smart move, most alum mags are a pity to behold
@APE fan,
I agree, though hiring Randal Ford (and flying him to Alabama no less) to shoot the cover feature is a whole different galaxy than having student volunteers do most of the work for clips.
The Auburn mag may be fairly low income relative to other publications, but clearly they are well funded. At least, this launch issue is.
That’s head and shoulders above my alumni’s magazine. I wish our cheap art looked so good as those bird images!
“The key is to use cheap art in smart ways.” -smart as in minimal to make way for the big ass pictures we paid a ton for in the feature well.
“The departments and reoccurring sections of the magazine were simplified and designed to be more consistent in look and feel from front to back. ”
Yes, smart. The font, branding, and cohesiveness/flow of the mag can get you a long way so “cheap” is a relative word…
Smart use of these creative design components, getting a good photographer for cheap (it is not a photographers market these days) & strong written content could be a smart start for the mag…
Even if the statement by DJ seems flippant or naive, it is sharp and based on truth…
The bird pics are solid for an Alumni Mag… a sort of dummied down Jill Greenberg approach. And the font and cohesiveness are on the right track…
http://pentagram.com/en/Auburn_spread6_pop.php
Sorry to chime in so late, but I didn’t see anyone else saying this…
Alumni magazines HAVE to use crap photography supplied by the alumni themselves – normal work-a-day people that have no photographic training. They cannot afford to send a photographer along to Belize to photograph a graduate working on a master’s project. They rely on the graduate to submit photos along with updates on what they’re doing.
Yes they have money to make the cover look nice, and maybe a feature or two, but there is a lot of crap that needs to be included for the magazine to accomplish its goal of informing graduates about what is going on at the school and what other graduates are doing.
Cut them some slack. It’s a tough job making chicken salad out of chicken sh…
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