FT W

I'm finally posting again after being MIA for quite some time. Its been busy and also a bit hard to get to write anything recently. It's too bad I ,issed a few good covers to comment on in the past few months. But let's not dwell on that and focus on the latest issue of W magazine instead!

For this (quite awesome) issue of W, Cyrus was photographed by Mert and marcus. Now there is no question, the cover is doing everything a cover is supposed to do: intrigue, surprise and please.

The photo is beautiful and at first you don't really know who it is you are looking at, "Is that Lady Gaga..? no, wait…holy crap!." That moment right there, that is how every cover should make you feel, great concept and art direction.
The article written by Ronan Farrow is great as well, really draws you in. Nothing particularly exciting or new, just good writing. The general design and layout of the mag is really clean too which is a plus. Cool illustrations are added in the mix and who doesn't love those…

 All other publications out there should be striving for covers like this one every month, there aren't many good ones out there anymore. Let's take Vanity Fair's hollywood issue as an example. It was pretty but when you open the mag to look at the story, surprise! there is none. The cover is all you get apparently nowadays at VF. I know I do a lot of commenting on cover design and photography but come on you have to back it up with more content inside. If the content is not as good as the cover you are really cheating the customer…

Anyways, W rocked it and I definitely want more.

ELLE october quick redesign

 I was going through my iPad's newsstand today and realized how out of touch i've been (once again) and all the good stuff I've missed out on! The first cover that actually grabbed my attention was the ELLE U.S cover for October. This cover feels very light with a strong summer feel, a little odd for an october issue. 

Let's start with the photography. This feature was shot by Ruth Hogben. This cover is not that striking, it's pretty but it looks a bit average and the type bothers me a lot. For me, it doesn't match Gaga's unique personality and feel.

So, here the headlines are just crowding up around Gaga's face which is just too bad. I wish things had been laid out better, this makes it hard to enjoy the photo and well…type wise it just looks like what Vogue has been doing, crowded, overpowering, busy, not good enough. therefore, I took about an hour,  and tried to tweak the cover to air out her face a bit. What was bothering me the most was the way the "Lady Gaga" type was almost on top of her eye. Used basic fonts for this, Futura and Baskerville, trying to stay as close as possible to the actual Elle design and layout.

It also seems this issue has a double cover (love those). The second one feels a lot more appropriate for an october issue, everything works, the colors, the pose, it just draws you in. Not loving the type but oh well...