Critique: The M-word

For the past two weeks, I have been working on my design for a prototype cooking magazine - Better Cook. Unlike many cooking magazines and blogs today, this magazine will focus less on the recipes, although there will be some, and more on the techniques of learning how to cook, which I think is great because when I started cooking in October 2009, I had no idea what I was doing. Recipes seemed so overwhelming (and complicated) when you didn't even know which knife was the chef knife or every chili looked exactly the same. Luckily, my friend, Lee Ann Flemming, was a mother and practically a professional cook (she was the food stylist for "The Help" and has a degree in home economics), and she was only a phone call away. I used that life-line on many evenings when smoke would be puffing out of my oven.

However, not everyone is as lucky as I was to have a chef friend nearby, so when I was designing Better Cook, I tried to keep in mind the idea of clear and effect designs that involved enticing but not overly intimidating images.

I have to say that I really liked what I ended up with, especially my table of contents.

Cover:

I decided to make two different covers to show to the team of publishers I will be working with on this project. The first, left, is more of a traditional cover for a food magazine. It shows a pretty meal in a home-type environment. I chose this image because it didn't seem like a particularly complicated meal - fish, rice and beans, however, it still looks beautiful. After reading a 1954 issues of McCall's magazine that is at least what women of the 1950s cared about, so I figured women of today would want something similar (gasp, we haven't come as far as we think we have!).

I also liked the image because it was very colorful and the balance with the extra table space provided a good canvas for the sell lines, which are very important for a newsstand magazine. For the sell lines, I wanted to use two basic fonts (Thonburi and Times) and create interest through varying the size, color and even direction. I think it was effective because I was able to create a hierarchy between the three different sell lines and then within each sell line there is an obvious hierarchy with the most important and eye-catching information in color and larger than the other portions.

My second cover, right, I designed because I was worried maybe a plate full of food would be overwhelming to a new cook and because this isn't a recipe-centric magazine. So, I wanted to add a bit of whimsy to the Better Cook image with the playful yet unintimidating shrimp that is almost posed like a model. The white background was equally as effective for placing the sell lines. I thought this one was very fun and would catch the eyes of grocery-store shoppers as they were checking out.

TOC:

I am definitely most proud of my TOC. I just love it! I knew I wanted to do something with a college-like image, which is something Esquire did at one point, but I wanted to do it in a way that felt more like a good magazine than a yearbook memory page. When I came across this images, it was like the heavens opened up, light shined down and the angels began singing. No joke. This image in the stock image library had everything in it that our prototype magazine was scheduled to have stories about - even a fish.

My next thought was how would I play the image large enough and create a TOC with all the information that it needed. So, as you can see, I decided to play the image large and create lines coming out from different elements that would give the reader the name of the article that had to do with that item and a page number. I decided to also create more of a "traditional" TOC below with the Departments and other stories that would act as the navigation system for the rest of the magazine.

Feature:

This issue will have two stories in the feature well - one about fish and the other about creating an easy vegetable garden for transforming your summer table. I don't like fish and am allergic to shellfish, so I decided to work on the garden story for my initial design. I just did the opening spread and unfortunately, when I went to the site where we are getting our photos, my Internet was too slow to get the library open. So I went to Google However, what I came up with I really like. I think the dichotomy between the two images is really effective, so I will be going for a similar design if I end up working on this feature story.

Coming up:

I am working on designing the March 8 feature for Vox. It was just upped from a 4-page spread to a 6-page, so I have quite a bit of work to do on it. I will post my initial design this week, and I plan to have a final-ish draft by Thursday, so be on the look out for my very first Vox feature design AND my first sports-themed design - ever!