Design Lab of Death

Before I begin I would like to dedicate this blog post to my lecturer Brian Garman. (And to anyone who has ever used the African Media Matrix Design Labs.)

When I was at Rhodes University I studied Graphic Design. One of our projects was to create a 120 page magazine from scratch. There were 12 of us in our class and we worked on it for almost the entire year. We had our own "special" design lab. (Henceforth referred to as "The Design Room of Death"). This is it below:

Did you notice anything "special" about this design lab?

Wait, look again....

Yes. That's correct. It has no windows. Repeat: NO windows.

This can be extremely deceiving.  For example: you arrive at the Design Room of Death on a bright and sunny Tuesday afternoon...

You work very hard on your magazine project for a good few solid eye-ball-straining hours and you expect to leave the Design Room of Death and see this:

Instead, you walk outside and see this:

(also please note the dark eye circles)

Yes, you lost an entire day of your life to design. 

Now this may not be so detrimental but what happens in the situation where you have a really hectic design project that you are working on- maybe even for a REAL magazine company or where the design is SO awesome that it just sucks you right in....

Now, let me just add this background... and let me just change this font... and I need to just adjust this tracking... and that leading needs work... and this sizing is a little off... is the colour too strong?...

The literal end. 

* * *

PS. in case anyone was wondering... this is how my final magazine turned out - the many hours spent in the design labs and the fruits of my labour paid off...

 My magazine was called Juice and it was an interactive (cut-up; doodle; tear-apart; fill-in-the-blanks) /inspirational design related magazine:

The front cover:

Letters to the editor - in a PopArt /Andy Warhol/ Roy Lichtenstein style...

Editor's Letter - yes that's my face.

Flip through a magazine. Then flip through it again and think about how much work went into designing it...