Graphic Design II

Sense of Place:

In Graphic Design II we are doing a semester long project called "Sense of Place." The point is to develop different media associated with a location of our choosing in the Sarasota-Bradenton area of Florida; the town surrounding our campus.

Knowing everyone would do the beach, or a mall or one of the other few things Sarasota is known for, I decided to do a road that runs through my campus called "Old Bradenton."

Ringling, unfortunately, for all its merits as a school located in the middle of a high crime rate ghetto. Sarasota is known nationally as the most racially tense and segregated town in the United States, and Ringling is near about the worst of it. I've had friend's houses robbed or mugged themselves, and murders happen across a creek from my apartment in alarming frequence. Its not uncommon for me to hear gunshots at night while working on assignments.

Anyhow, I decided to brave Old Bradenton Road, collecting photographs to use for my upcoming assignment. I walked its entire length where it meets Highway 41 to where it ends at University Parkway near the SRQ airport, documenting nature, downtrodden buildings, graffiti and generally anything interesting I could find for about two miles.

The images I used in the project below and will use in subsequent assignments under this project are taken by myself with a Nikon D40, courtesy of my girlfriend.

Magazine Spreads:

Our first assignment was to find three of an existing magazine, and then make three magazine spreads about our location using a story we had written in the format of the magazine we chose.

I'm not very happy with these as I was confined to using the setup of the magazine I chose: "Alternative Press." Stores usually only sell the existing edition of a magazine, and so while I have many magazines at my house, I had none at my campus apartment and so was forced to use a music magazine that has pretty bad layout and type choices because it was the only one I could get three of. Overall it was interesting, because if I ever work for a magazine firm in the future, it is good to know how to conform to their themes, style and formats.