November 26, 2008

Time! spread and cover.

Probably not one of my favorite projects in photoshop so far, but does help me appreciate how these mags are made. Usually, these are done in Indesign, no?

Project: Design a Cover and and spread for on a social issue. 166 lpi, you choose magazine and thus specifications.



I chose to cover marijuana, ganja, cannabis, weed, grass, whatever it is they call it in your neck of the woods. Summary of artist statement included notes from Citibank's recent $306 billion bail out and the benefits that could come from legalizing marijuana and making as mainstream as tobacco which is arguably worse than marijuana.

On to the technicalities! Experimented with masking from vector to clipping. Did adjustment layers on the borders and box, most notably the cigar butts. Embossed the box a bit since the original was too light. Messed with the transformation tools to get the perspective right on the marijuana logo on the box.

The actual layout of Time was probably the funnest thing. A bit mundane but it was interesting to measure out the magazine and see how the specs are distance to be halves of themselves, I'm pretty damn sure they use some derivative of a golden ration, cause the measured specs aren't too random.

Logo was downloaded from brandsoftheworld. Had to mess with it since the one uploaded was funky.

Type and style was inspired by some Time magazines I had laying around. The alternate stories at the top were grabbed from recent digg articles I found rather interesting. Favorite one was Calvin and Hobbes.


After finishing the Title page, my eyes were blazing and I had to brush up on some other projects I had due, so yeah this part isn't that great.

Layout, again, inspired by Time magazines I had. The pictures of the Marijuana in the back look very unprofessional and plain gaudy, but, it was 4am and I was running out of ideas, so I just got a marijuana brush and scattered it all over the place. Found a picture relevant to marijuana and pasted it.

The picture itself was bad, should have been something more relevant to the economy and I probably could have orchestrated those leaves so they strategically covered white spots and not the lettering. Overall, horrible, but the magazine title cover took a lot out of me.

Technicalities not much on the spread. Did a clipping on the title, made vector lines for the borders, applied a clipping for the leaves themselves and did vector for the hand towards the bottom via paths.

As for the original site where the writing was lifted:

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/legalize-it-2

That's it!

No comments: