Design Work

As I'm sure everyone feels right now, it seems like I've been designing so much over the past few weeks. Most of my weekend was spent on the Meredith project. A lot of our copy hadn't come in until recently, so it's been a bit of a scramble. It's been fun watching this all come together, though. I'm excited to see it all in print (if only because that means it's finished!).

A challenging piece for me was a non-narrative piece about cooking without a recipe. The editors basically wanted an infographic type of flow chart to illustrate the process. I saw an article in a recent issue of Esquire that had a similar concept, so I thought I could take this story on. Initially, I tried to emulate the Esquire spread too much. I overestimated the similarities between the two stories and was trying to force our story into the Esquire format. Obviously, that didn't work so well.

So, I scrapped that and started over. It still took some time, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I think this layout works much better with the content, but still gives a flowchart feel.

I've also started working on a feature spread about a themed date night. Right now the title is "Bollyfood" and the theme is, of course, Indian food. When I think of Indian food and culture, sari fabric is one of the first things that comes to mind. I love the rich colors and ornate decorations that they have. From a design perspective, I am excited to use those saturated colors in my design. So far I just have an opening page and it's very rough. Here's what I have so far:
There is still work to be done, but I'm happy with where it is going so far. I think it gives a lot of options for continuing the theme throughout the spread. At this point I need to walk away with it and just let it sit for awhile. We'll see if I still like it in the morning.

Finally, in my world of design, I had an illustration for Vox that printed last week. It was for the screen department's story on actors and actresses that have played God or Jesus on screen. It was a tricky to get art for the piece. The editor and I spent spring break searching for photos that we had rights to publish. Originally, I wanted to draw the body of Jesus and have a cutout photo of an actor. In the end, I illustrated the whole thing and put a cutout where the face would be. I think this illustrated the concept well.