At the end of last year, we were asked by The Drum to put our heads together and design not one, but two front pages. The designs were to be considered for the covers of The Drum’s final March issue and the Design 100 supplement – an amazing opportunity for us to show off our creativity.
The brief was very open, we were tasked to come up with a concept which communicated the theme of ‘design’.
After a lot of brainstorming from the entire studio team and an X Factor style audition process, two ideas were ‘shortlisted’ by our Creative Director, Rich – Oliver ’s ‘mindblowing design’ and Sean ’s ‘strain on the designer’ concept.
We arranged a photoshoot to turn these scamps into reality and spent the afternoon with Steve Sharp photographing our very own model (Oliver!) and props (pencils and cigarettes). Oliver and Sean then worked their magic, retouching the images and designing everything up to reflect what they’d initially envisaged.
The Drum chose to feature Oliver’s two-part cover concept and were so pleased with the two options we sent over that they’re banking Sean’s design for a future issue (but we’ll blog about that later!)
The magazine came out today (Friday 29 th March) and we’re thrilled with how it looks. Here’s what our Web (yes web!) Designer Oli has to say about the process:
“As a Web Designer I’m not used to doing magazine covers but this was something I was really looking forward to getting stuck into.
“Rather than coming up with two completely different designs for both The Drum covers, I wanted to make two concepts that you could piece together. So I thought it would be a nice idea to span a designer’s body across both covers.
“Firstly I used the torso for the main cover. I wanted to come up with a strong message for the t-shirt, and after much deliberation we came up with “The earth without art is just eh”.
“Then for the Design 100 cover, I used the head. I wanted to come up with a concept that resembled the creativity/thoughts of the Top 100 agencies in the UK. The hardest challenge was creating the Design 100 typography made purely from cigarette smoke.
“Overall it was a really fun project to work on, especially because I got to star in the photoshoot as well as help direct it!â€
Check out our behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot with Steve Sharp and the finished covers…
