Seattle Business magazine’s template (by Creative Director Matt Cole) is really rich with variety and detail. The goal for my two months as interim art director was to make new work that looked fresh and yet stayed 100% true both to the letter and to the idea of the template.
case study #2
Keeping Seattle Biz Going
The Most Leeway & the Biggest Challenge
Features
- Allrecipes: This feature came with the concept “prepare Thanksgiving for 1 million people” so I merged a cookbook look with Seattle Business magazine’s look.
- Retail: For this feature, we wanted to reflect the luxury of the new stores featured, so I used an entire spread for one image and then pulled in gold tones and excessive dropcaps for the next three pages.
Getting Things to Fit
Departments
The former art director did a great job at keeping these departments varied from issue to issue and I wanted to be sure that I followed suit. So I worked hard at using grid variations when allowed.
Concepting
Art
- Avvo is a company that provides unintimidating, quick-access to lawyers…for $39. I figured: You might as well be getting lawyers out of a happy, little gumball machine. The editors liked several of my Avvo concepts, but that’s the one they chose.
- The editors came up with the concept for this article on composite recycling: show an airplane being recycled into another airplane. The results were flat and dull, so by some sleuthing and very determined calling around, I was able to find a high-res image of a sheet of composite material to bring the image and the article’s material to life. I also drew the airplanes.
