Vogue UK June 2014 redesign

Kate upton made the cover of this month's Vogue UK. It's quite a disapointing cover considering the model and the photographer. I would have expected more but it turns out we don't always get what we want right?

After looking at the full photoshoot I saw this one picture and the cover alarms went off in my head. I took about 20 minutes and here's a little bit of a "what if..." moment...

 Dear Vogue, if you are going to have a really hot, beachy and steamy photoshoot with Kate Upton, do it all the way (by all the way I do mean put it on the damn cover).

 For this redesign I used some of the most basic fonts on my computer (though clearly they need a little help typography wise it's not the point I'm trying to make).

I understand that dealing with brands and getting the proper credits on a cover is a huge thing but that's why you plan those things ahead. This shoot is so light and steamy while the cover appears completely dull and washed out. This is another case of Vogue UK being so much better on the inside than it is on the outside (see my previous post on this with Natalia Vodianova). But this is supposed to be a package deal! (see below for more pictures from the shoot)

Next time Vogue, please go through with a concept ALL the way, 

it would make everything so much better...

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...

Vogue UK december redesign

Here is a 30 minute redesign of VOGUE UK's December 2012 cover, using the same copy and basic layout, only adjusting the main color and of course changing the photo.

SO as I have done before, here is a 30 minute redesign of Vogue UK's december 2012 cover using a picture from inside of this issue to give you an idea of how this could have been way more interesting (and pop since this was clearly what they were aiming for...).I am using pretty much the first typeface that I stumbld across in my font library for this as the type isn't the focus here. I don't know about you but I absolutely cannot tell that these two pictures are of the same woman...

Cosmopolitan Time Jump

Ah Cosmo, you've been there so long and you've been so present yet I can't get myself to like you the way I like other publications such as ELLE or teen vogue.

I figured the answer to my question had to lie somewhere within past cover designs. So I did a little research online to look at WAY past issues of the magazine. I explored covers from the 20th to the 21rst century
and oh boy was there some good stuff. (you can find a little visual at the end of this post of all the covers I looked at.)

I saw this one summer cover that I loved from 1970 and instantly thought, "wonder what this would look like if we modernized it a bit..." I don't need to tell you what happened next... (excuse the picture quality, I didn't really look for a higher res)

Now I did tweak their copy a bit (mostly shortened it), and for those of you who'd want to know what fonts I used, here is a little list as well as where I used the specific typeface (see image below for details). Benton Modern display Ultra for the headline, a mix of Arial narrow bold and simple bold for the sans serif text and finally Bauer Bodoni Std1 bold italics for the subheads.



and finally here are some of the covers I looked at when I was digging around, I was trying to see the evolution based on 10 year jumps. It looks like they started going type crazy in the 60s, too bad because the 1952 cover is really nice...

British Vogue: Quick tweak session

Here is the tweaked cover of November Bristish Vogue, done in less than 30 minutes
using the same copy, same picture and almost the same arrangement.

So from now on I will be posting very quick ( 25min) re-designs of covers that are on stands I wish had been done differently. I am using very basic fonts as my goal is to do this quickly, for this cover I used Arial and minion pro (can't go more basic than that).

Why am I tweaking the cover?

Number 1, it's great training, number 2 I might just be able to make my point better than with words. So to officially start it off, here is a very quick tweak of the November cover of British Vogue staring Jennifer Lawrence. See below for the before and after details.

VOGUE U.K quick re-design

So I was looking at this cover and thinking I should stop blabbing and start doing,
that's right take actions in my own hands.

SO, I re-designed the Kristen Stewart Oct cover in a little over half an hour and using pretty much the first fonts in my font library (Arial & italian Oldstyle except the big headline that's Narziss). Now I'm not saying that what I did looks amazing (clearly, I barely spent any time on it)

BUT I mostly wanted to see what the cover could have looked like if the pink and photography had been treated as a whole and not separately. In order to do that I changed the color of her lips to pink and changed the hue of her eyeshadow just a tad.It goes without saying I also tweaked the way the type was on the page...