Process: Magazine Covers II

After interim I went back to the blank page and started to sketch out every image idea I had for each theme. I also began sketching other layouts and mastheads to consider. I was terribly stuck on how I could extend the technology idea but I eventually came up with the idea to have the magazine cover extend beyond the front and back to have some inner flaps (as shown in the red sketch in the left page), where there would be landscape evolving from rocks to a cityscape, the FB 'like hand within a moon and the twitter bird flying over the city.

I started off by painting a blue background to get a nice texture which I then scanned in then photoshopped. I also decided to try my magazine layout in landscape format - but that wasn't really working out for me. Somehow I strayed from the whole cityscape idea - perhaps I felt that it was too elaborate to do given the timeframe.

But I kept the idea of the rock boiling it down to the simple idea of stone tools which I then extended it into the idea of scissors, paper, rock - all of which are pretty ancient inventions. And of course placed next to our most recent technology of social media. I thought it was also quite quirky that you could connect 'scissors, paper, rock' to the fb like hand by the action of the hand (2 fingers, high five, fist and thumbs up).

Going back to portrait and putting all the elements together I finally felt like I was getting somewhere! You can see here how I kept the moon from my first idea which I moved to accompany the bird.

Then came the Typography issue. The idea of relating typography to biology/science is not new. During visual research I found that a few designers also had some very beautiful responses:

  

Left: by Andreas Scheiger

Right: by Björn Johansson

by Andreas Scheiger

Initially I wanted to connect letters with body parts but I found that it wasn't working as I thought it would.

  

After seeing the other possibilities for the concept of anatomy of type came my next idea which was pretty much an amalgamation of the two visual styles: scientific bone structure sketches and typefaces revealing its internals. I however extended these two ideas by relating the actual anatomical structure of type with its equivalent bone structure i.e. shoulder of n would use shoulder bone structure, spine for S and leg bone for the leg of K.

The letter n proved to be tough as the shoulder bone didn't fit so nicely with the shape of the n funnily enough. The shoulder blade part had to be compress. I knew I definitely had to adjust it further. In keeping with the layout structure I had for the technology issue I also decided to add other image ideas I had for the back (as shown)

The Colour issue I found to be the most challenging issue. It was much harder than I thought it would be. There was one definite thing I wanted however! And that was to have a orange/pink colour scheme with blue - I also happened to find some awesome clothing pattern paper in my home (my mum used to do sewing so we have a fair bit of sewing materials) which was printed in blue. I fell in love with the paper on first sight and just knew I HAD to use it for the colour issue.