Welcome to the fist installment of the Designers Choice Award for the magazine cover creation competition.
I have been asked to choose the cover that best exemplifies professionalism on all design levels. Such as: the choice and quality of the background picture, font use and text content, color utilization and other criteria. I will show the design that was chosen as well as point out the reasons for my decision. I will also make a few comments, that as a designer, I see where areas of the design could possibly be improved upon.
I will not pick my own design for the award, but I may refer to it for the purpose of providing an example.
Here is this weeks winner by Alpha:
PRAISE
- I like the overall look of this design. I feel that is does a good job of capturing the basic design criteria that one would expect to see in a magazine for this demographic. Clean and mostly formal - ricers and street racers are not looking to trade in their tricked out ride for an econo car. You are directing your magazine at and older, established, environmentally conscious person who puts performance and looks far behind fuel efficiency and vehicle cost.
- The logo, with it's faded compressed reflection, is very suiting to the magazines name. Also, the lack of capitalization is a big plus - it says that "I'm a laid back, no frills mag with the info you want inside." The tree atop the "L" is a great touch that brings nature in to the picture.
- I like the choice of fonts for the "teasers". It is a very neutral type face that lends it's self well to informational headings. I also agree in the choice of not using a font with serifs (a smaller line used to finish off a main stroke of a letter, as at the top and bottom of an "M"). Serif fonts work far better for use in very conservative application. Something traditional - like a newspaper.
SUGGESTIONS
- The main issue that I see is the lack of color in the entire issue. I feel that with just a little contrast, the images could have more "pop" and not be quite so flat. This is especially true of the main background picture. You have a nice, warm green for the title logo, but the car looks as if it is in an area just coming out of fall on a very overcast day. Dull and cold. If this image was created in Photoshop, using the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer could help to "warm" up the image by increasing the saturation of the Yellow slider to +40 and reducing the brightness to -20. After that the Levels adjustment layer can be used to create a deeper contrast.
- The text beside the fuel pump does not "blend" with the rest of the cover. I feel that if you choose to use a very tight kerning (the setting of two letters closer together than is usual by removing space between them) for the majority of the text, then you will need to maintain that consistency with all of the text - especially when using the same font family. Also, the full capitalization does not fit the size of the pump-image. I feel that it needs to be a bit smaller - maybe 20%. If you choose to use a wider kerning, make it a lot wider then the rest. This way it will look more dramatic and intentional.
- The recycled paper logo is awesome and very fitting with the mind-set of the demographic, but, it is in the wrong corner. It would have more impact if it looked like a corner of the cover was torn off, but not where the corner meets the binding. Just swapping the barcode and logo would be ideal.
- On the barcode, you may want to look for a font set that I found to be ideal for mag covers. The ones I use are: MRV UEBMA, MRV UEBSA, MRV UEBTA, MRV UEBXSA & MRV UEBXTA. They are demos so some of the numbers are unusable, but the fonts are specifically designed for bar coding publications.
All in all, the cover is well thought out and arranged intelligently. Congratulations
Alpha on this weeks
Vicious VP Designers Choice Award. 👍
