Pictured above are all my designs since the last time I blogged (minus my Spring Preview cover which I forgot to PDF onto my flash drive and won't open with the CS4 on my computer). The cover was an illustration of a old movie theater marquee. I originally started with an idea about baseball, but I thought it wasn't really appropriate since the issue was coming out in February (and there's 18" of snow on the ground). I decided to go with a movie theme since I had this voice stuck in my head from movie previews like "Coming this spring...". So the marquee sign said "Coming this Spring" and above it said "Sneak Preview." Then I went with a collection of movie posters for the splash page. I ran into some difficulty with the order of the posters. I was trying to use two of each category, but there weren't very many events listed in May.
For the spread, I was initially intimidated by the number of events, plus the Black History Month sidebar, but after learning we only had to use some of them it made things a lot easier. I used matching colors and themes from the splash page, but I wish I would have added some simple elements to carry the movie theme over to the spread. Also, I didn't leave a whole lot of room for photos, and the ones I did use were so small I might as well have left them off.
As for the foreclosures covers, I liked the idea of the housing bubbles but I understand the criticism that the bubble has already burst so it's a little confusing. I think it would be a little strange (and difficult) to show a burst bubble too. For my final cover, I'm going to go with the idea of the foreclosed sign across the houses. I think it speaks pretty loudly. However, I'm going to use several photos and create more of a collage of foreclosed homes. I'd like to tie in the human element to it though, which I'm going to try to do with some clever headline and dek writing.
Finally, I'm also starting to work on my first feature for VOX about Midwives. It's been fairly difficult so far considering I don't have any photos to work with yet. However, I'm trying to thing of some typographic or illustrated elements I could include on the opening spread. I'd like to emphasize the theme in the story about how a woman should have the choice of how she wants her child to be born. I haven't quite decided how I'm going to do that though.
I like your concept for the spring preview cover. I think the idea could have been a little stronger if fewer colors were used for the bars. I think it would have just made a more uniform statement.
ReplyDeleteI do, however, understand the reason behind the colors. I think it worked really well for the inside spread. You organized all of that information really well. And I really love how clean and direct the entire idea was from the shapes you created to the text treatments.