Well it’s not the weekend anymore, which means new challenges! Exciting! Today’s challenge is only about 60% complete, sadly, and I will explain more after the jump.

Today I sat down to do this challenge at about 10:50 a.m. However, only a few minutes into it, I started getting a barrage of e-mails from a ton of people! Apparently they all decided that they would simultaneously e-mail me at 11:00 a.m. today. Anyway, I decided to pause for a few minutes to take care of some of those e-mails, and then I just kept getting more, and a few minutes turned into a few hours and then I had to go to work. I said I’d finish after work, but then I felt I’d be cheating if I had all day to think about it and then came back to it. That’s not the point. So I’m posting it as it looked when I left it, about 35ish minutes into the hour.

StoryCorps

StoryCorps is kind of awesome. From their website:

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.

By recording the stories of our lives with the people we care about, we experience our history, hopes, and humanity. Since 2003, tens of thousands of everyday people have interviewed family and friends through StoryCorps. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to take home and share, and is archived for generations to come at the Library of Congress. Millions listen to our award-winning broadcasts on public radio and the Internet. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, creating a growing portrait of who we really are as Americans.

I’m not going to go too much more into it because I’m a little starved for time, but you should all definitely visit their website and listen to the podcast. It’s fantastic.

So, for today’s challenge, I decided to make a collateral piece for StoryCorps’ mobile tour. They already record all the conversations onto CDs that the storytellers take with them, but I thought it’d be cool (if they don’t already do it) to sell CDs as a “best of” collection or a themed collection at their mobile tour stops to fundraise. So I decided to design how the case for that CD would look.

(c) Amy E. Rumbarger 2009

As you can see, the CD case has a gate fold-ish thing going on. When it’s open, the faces look like they’re looking away from each other, but when it’s closed, they’re brought together and looking at each other. In the background, faintly, is text from some past StoryCorps stories. The line, “Connecting lives through storytelling,” is something that I think StoryCorps is all about, and what I wanted my imagery for the CD case to convey. On the inside flaps, there would be a tracklisting and information about StoryCorps. The CD would be secured in a pouch in the center.

The Aftermath…sort of…

I’m not going to do a typical aftermath section. I’m just going to tell you what I planned to do with the rest of the hour.

1. A screenprint-type white overlay of the actual faces of the people
2. Design of the actual CD
3. Clean up the imagery
4. Write the copy for the inside flaps
5. Shade the mock-up to look more final
6. Work on the type more

Wish I’d been able to finish it! I may come back to this in the future, but I didn’t want to have nothing to show you guys today, so here it is. I promise you a finished piece tomorrow, but for now, feel free to comment, e-mail me, or follow me on Twitter.