The December issue of Seattle Met was by far the most intense one I’ve put together yet. I designed props for photos, illustrated a bunch of spots in order to keep the budget down, and went eighteen days straight without a day off — and capped that with a 100 hour work week in the final seven days. It was exhausting, but I’m pretty happy with the results.
Here’s the cover, shot by Charlie Schuck:
Some pages from the feature:
Check out some behind-the-scenes shots from the photo shoot here.
James Yang handled the spots for this feature.
A week or so ago I posted some behind-the-scenes shots of John Keatley‘s Quote Unquote photo:
I handled these photo illustrations for the Amanda Knox feature myself, the night before we sent the magazine to the printer. (I’d had the concept for a couple weeks, but I just couldn’t find the time to get to them.) By 3:30 in the morning I realized I’d just been senselessly moving text boxes around for a couple hours, so I went home, slept, and started on a new layout at 9 AM.
The photos are modified stock.
This opener is one of my favorite things from the issue. In September I spotted some really nice metal letters for sale at Restoration Hardware, and I snapped a photo with my iPhone to remind myself to use them for something someday. (I’m always doing that — I’ve shot about 2,000 reference photos in 2010 alone. On a side note: I’m always snapping photos of my monitor before I leave the office for lunch or for the night, so I can look at my stuff whenever I feel like it, and from a distance I don’t get when I’m at my desk. I think my work’s gotten stronger because of it. Maybe I’ll post a gallery of iPhone shots of work in progress one of these days.)
We ended up using the letters as drop caps for our X-treme Spa Guide feature, and I had photographer Paul Kooiman coat them in honey, lotion and cake frosting. I’m so happy with the results:
Mark Matcho handled the spots:
My designer Melissa handled 90% of the layout work here.
And finally, a nice holiday illustration by Leo Espinosa:
We just got the January issue in this week. Watch for some great photos by Michael Clinard.
Two days ago I art directed a nice cover/feature shoot with Paul Kooiman for the February issue (missing my company’s holiday party in the process — but I really have to scramble to make up for my week in Vegas for Christmas). And I’ve been putting together a labor-intensive collage for February that I’m pretty excited about …
