Spring Preview Cover/Feature Contest
Last week's Spring Preview contest posed an interesting challenge for me, but one that I found to really enjoy. Vox Magazine's annual Spring Preview issue poses somewhat of an organizational and creative challenge for designers. The issue calls for a theme without the stereotypical spring themes (i.e. umbrellas, rain boots, flowers, baby chicks and so on), but instead with a clever and refreshing non-spring theme. In addition to coming up with a clever theme to execute into a cover and splash page, the design must also be incorporated into several text-heavy "feature" spreads and have enough readability and functionality for this type of feature.
My theme for the issue was neon. Although, it's clear on the cover with the Vox logo, in the finished product, the neon is not as apparent on the rest of the pages. The photos of downtown Columbia business signs were meant to help push the theme. If my design had been chosen, my plan was to add the effect used on the Vox logo to much of the other neon-colored text on the splash page and feature spreads. (If my design had been chosen, I would have worked to find photographs that would fit the cover.) My biggest challenge ended up being the execution of the neon effect. Finding a tutorial for creating neon in Photoshop that I could easily transfer to InDesign was surprisingly tricky. In the end, I was happy with the type treatment I decided to use and the way I decided to organize and lay the text on the feature spread, however, I do think the design and its theme could have been pushed much further.
Tova, your design is very appealing, but I completely missed the neon theme. I understood from the cover that it was nighttime, but the neon was lost on me. I think this mostly could have been avoided with a type choice that was less elegant and more direct. When designing around an idea that is inherently typographic, it is imperative to choose the perfect type to represent this. A type that more closely resembled neon signs would have hammered the point home much better, I feel.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of the three categories of graphic design. That is pretty cool; I would have never considered only three categories could have summarized such a complex thing.
ReplyDeleteI love your Spring Preview design Tova! You did a great job. The font choice works well and the spread looks awesome! I'm excited to see more of your designs this semester.