Labor of Love/Masochism

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; laid-out in InDesign CS3; font: Helvetica (portrait) and Gotham (headline & body)

I need to stop signing myself up for labor-intensive projects. This lovely, hand-made piece of work took about three hours. God knows how long it'd take if I filled in all the midtones.

Preview: Grey City

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; Fonts: Gotham, Nevis, and Annivers

Notwithstanding many and various reservations, I must admit that I will miss working for the Maroon and Grey City, its quarterly magazine. My term as managing editor will end next Thursday, and, quite frankly, I'm not looking forward to the anomie that will no doubt follow. I've been mulling over the prospect of drawing editorial cartoons next quarter, but we'll see.

In the meantime, I'm quite happy with how the cover of this quarter's Grey City turned out--illustrated magazine covers are a rarity nowadays, at least outside the confines of art publications. The general design philosophy elsewhere seems to be one of total imaginative surrender (read: "let's slap a ton of copy onto some photo and call it a day").

Anyhow, the the above illustration was assembled by hand--the weight and physical of the characters describe values from a reference photograph, which I posterized in Photoshop before reproducing it in Illustrtor. The entire process took something in the order of four to five hours, I think.

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3 and InDesign CS3; Font: Univers

The original lead graphic for the above article was less-than-satisfactory. It involved a vector profile of Rockefeller Chapel that led to some pipes representing the tunnels, which in turn led to the modified letterform "S" of the drop cap. I wasn't enthusiastic about the way the image locked with the copy, and felt that it failed to capture the headline. What you see above is a last-minute change, which, in my estimation, works much, much better.

Nikon D90; 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5; ISO 1600; WB: Auto (A3); minor adjustments in Photoshop CS3; un-cropped version available here

I also took some photos of the steam tunnels for the article of record. They're less remarkable, but shooting in the field is always entertaining.

Nikon D90; 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5; ISO 1600; WB: Auto (A3); minor adjustments in Photoshop CS3; un-cropped version available here

Nikon D90; 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5; ISO 1600; WB: Auto (A3); minor adjustments in Photoshop CS3; un-cropped version available here

Grey City

Grey City: Issue 5

Cover photo by Shahzad Ahsan

Update: A logistical mixup prevented today's issue from being delivered on time. It will be resolved tomorrow.

The fifth issue of the Chicago Maroon's [sleeper] quarterly magazine came out today (download the .pdf version here). I updated its visual identity so that it would be consistent with that of the rest of the Maroon, which I redesigned earlier this year. Apart from story-specific types, the entire magazine is set in various, systematically determined weights of Gotham, which, incidentally, is the Maroon's new san-serif typeface, supplanting Futura.

Like the rest of the paper, the new iteration of Grey City is cleaner and more functional than its previous incarnations. The generously-spaced, two-column inside pages mark, in my estimation, an especially pleasant departure from the stale, early 20th century magazine design of the New Yorker et al. You can find the title spreads I designed (and an inside page) below:

Photo by Camille Van Horne; font: Helvetica Neue

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; laid out and typeset in Adobe InDesign CS3; font: Univers

Photo by Camille Van Horne; fonts: Grafinc Extra Black (with slightly modified letterform "C") and Rockwell

See what I'm talking about? Info-graphic designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3; laid-out and typeset in Adobe InDesign CS3; font: Quicksand

Bonus: Exciting content occasions commensurately exciting layouts, wherefore Voices received a double-truck centerfold spread in today's issue (see below).

Not bad for a night's work.
Drawn in Adobe Photoshop CS3 using a Wacom Cintiq 12WX tablet; laid out and typeset in Adobe InDesign CS3; fonts: Museo (titles) and Quicksand (body)