Critique: Cover up

Well, I was up this week for doing preliminary designs for the weekly cover competition for Vox. I was pretty pumped because I have not done a cover before for a magazine other than choosing the image, and it seemed fun.

I was right! I had a really good time. Although not all of the ideas were great. I definitely will be making changes before this Thursday.

For now, here are my initial three design in the order I like them best (left) to not-quite-right/have-we-returned-to-the-90s?

The story is about Lonnie Barker Jr., a gospel rapper, who grew up on the streets of Oklahoma, and overcame a life ridden with drugs and violence. Today he sings and speaks to kids like himself about channeling anger and persevering through staying positive and making good choices.

His story is one I know well. I lived in a town ridden with poverty. Teen pregnancy, bad educational system and food vouchers were a way of life for almost 70 percent of the town. It is heartbreaking.

The story, however, concentrates more on him and his music, so I wanted to express that in the cover. I really liked the photo of Lonnie singing in the studio - doing what he does best. However, since there was a religious undertone to the story, I liked that the window of the studio created a cross without being overtly Christian. I also liked that I would be able to frame the "Vox" information in one and the headline in the other.

I really tried to pay more attention to my typography this week since that is an area we have done some reading in my design class and because I have personally made a goal to improve in that area of my design. So I chose the hed, "Inspired Sound," because I thought it married the idea of two types of music (gospel and rap together). I also wanted to show that in my type choices, so I went with a classical serifed font for the word "inspired" and a more edgy italicized font for the work sound. I also tucked them together because I wanted to show that they were one, like in Lonnie's music.

For my second cover, I decided to do something more illustrated to mix it up. However, I still wanted to show Lonnie because the story is with him. When I read through the article, I noticed how he doesn't use curse words in his music. It got me thinking about all those funny stand-ins for curse words people use. Everything from "shut the front door" to "gosh darn it." This lead to more of a collective conscious session of my evening where that idea trickled into "Holy Cow," which lead to the idea of a cartoon character that ended with a pop art-inspired image using the photo of Lonnie looking up. That might have been thinking gone awry.

My third idea didn't turn out at all. I hate it. I really have no words for what I was trying to do other than that was not the original intent. I wanted something more hip-hop-y, but what I got was a "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" gone wrong cover. So, I am not going to even bother saying anything other than I'm sorry about that one.

I am going to continue working on the first cover and hopefully it will be the cover for the 2/16 issue of Vox!