GRAPHICS PATHWAY - 3 PROJECTS IN 2 WEEKS: 3) ILLUSTRATION COVERS

For my third and final project I choose the Illustrative covers brief. I feel this brief was may favourite out of the three, although I enjoyed the others, I fell this brief is more personal to my interests. The freedom of this project was also endearing as all we had to do was pick a potential title for either the 'New Scientist' or 'The Economist' magazines. I generally like to do cover art and anything related to this so I would enjoy this project. Out of a choice of titles for both magazine I choose to do 'China V Russia' as, for some reason, as soon as I saw this title a wealth of different ideas and imagery sprang to mind, I looked at the other titles briefly and thought about how I could portray them nevertheless the 'China V Russia' title. 

To begin with, I looked at what makes these two nations what they are. For instance, their languages, cultures, flags, leaders and so on. I looked at the Chinese languages and the difference between mandarin and Cantonese. Similarly the strange nature of the Russian alphabet interested me. The leaders Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia are often seen shaking hands in a political sense. I thought I could maybe perhaps play around with this image of them appearing to shake hands but actually thinking and suggesting something else.

I researched into some typical stereotypes of the two nations and found that there are some typical things one would associate with China and Russia. For China there was the Chinese dragon, the colour red and communism (an ideal once shared with Russia). With Russia there is snow, vodka, bears, red square and the soviet union. All these are very generalised and I only researched into them to give me an idea and some inspiration







I then decided to focus on the Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon because I feel these two symbolise the nations well and both have their own significant meanings to their natives. I began to draw out and sketch some rough ideas and layouts using some imagery. I also tried to include some text maybe the Russian alphabet or some authentic Chinese script





Below are the black biro drawings I did on the final day of the project. They are both A4 in size because I realised that when illustrating often, illustrators tend to draw something large in scale and then scale it back down to use in the final piece, that way it is more detailed. This is what I put into practice for use ion the final cover. I am pleased with these drawings and I feel they have a bold quality with the use of black biro.

Once I was happy with my final drawings, I scanned them into Photoshop to begin with and then  into Illustartor to add the text. I then played with the final placing of the two images on an A4 template to see which sizes and proportion works the best for a magazine cover. I had to erase some of the background space so that the two drawings appear as though they were drawn straight onto the sheet but apart from that, the process was fairly straight forward.

 

This is the final cover with 'The Economist' masthead and logo.
In hindsight I think the cover seems a bit obvious and slightly
unimaginative. I like how the drawings work and I feel the layout is
 well executed but considering the audience of 'The Economist' I
think they will think that this is almost a bit too obvious. Nevertheless
given the time period I am pleased with my final outcome.

Images - Author's Own 02/02/14