Critique: Cover March 8

As you all know by now I was selected to create the March 8th Cover. It was an interesting process getting here though for one with all the feature stories being rearranged we didn't always know what story was going to be on the cover. Once we were assigned the softball story Timmy wanted to a special photo shoot with Chelsea for the cover. I think it worked out for the best because us designers got some great action photos to work with on this cover. The photo shoot was not until Friday so we only had 4 days to design the cover compared to the regular 14. I was out of town all weekend so I actually did my entire concept design in about 4 hours before they were due.
I did run into a few technical problems with moving the file, fonts and printing, but after I talked to Jan, Jen and Teresa I think they had a basic idea of how I wanted the final project to look.
I wanted to use the Mizzou colors as the pallet and then I just used a great photo by Timmy.

Original Concept:

The redesign was relatively painless. We decided to move the sell lies to the bottom of the page and put them in a gold box so they wouldn't blend into the background words. Also we added a swosh to the title font. The font in the original is not what was on the turned in copy—tech problems. Also we decided to lighten the background words so she would pop more. There were other editorial changes, but for the most part it was pretty smooth and easy.

Redesigned Cover:

This is what it looks like after we fiddled with it and made some changes. I liked the concept and design the whole way through, but it is nice to see what a design can look like after it has been edited and redesigned with others help. It makes such big difference to get a fresh pair of eyes to loo at something.

There are actually a few other small things that were changed for the final cover, but I want everyone to go and grab a copy tomorrow so I don't feel I can share all facts. This is my first complete cover design and I hope any in the future go as smooth and pain free. Heck I just hope there are more in the future.

I am currently working on the first draft for the March 22 issue. I am still not sure on the direction that it will take, but it is the design I will be giving all my attention for the next few days.