This latest art project was to create a fictional magazine cover, of our own idea and design. I thought of four different concepts, but settled on another idea I had to showcase Morgaine and her Lolita style.
“Lolita” is a niche fashion style from Japan styled after Victorian and Edwardian era clothing. Lolita fashion has no ties to the same-named novel by Vladimir Nabokov, nor does it have any of that story’s connotation. To learn more about the Lolita FASHION culture, here’s a good link.
Once again I asked Morgaine to pick out one of her wardrobes and I toted her downtown to shoot some poses outside the Tampa Museum of Art. It was a sunny day and I wanted bright, but not direct sunlight. That location has lots of high overhangs and frosted glass panels to reflect lots of natural light, but no direct harshness. It’s like semi-shade everywhere.
I also wanted to create a masthead style that would be recognizable as a fashion magazine but unique, minimal and modern. The element of the reduced-size O, with the word “STYLE” inside developed over a couple of days of tinkering.
Once I settled on the masthead, I followed with styling the article titles, spine and other miscellaneous pieces. The price, $19.93 is Morgaine’s birth year. The bar code was generated by an online bar code generator with its defaults, TEC-IT.
Masking, a soft peach color scheme with a very minor radial gradient, soft shading and some adjustment layers completed the cover. I extended the cover’s background color to the spine for continuity.
This project also has a back cover, and that was to be a simple advertisement for something related to the magazine. I put together a simple advertisement for Morgaine’s favorite Tea Room, coincidentally located in Brandon, close to where we live – The Victorian Grace Tea Room & Gift Shop.
I ran the finished PDF over to Kinko’s to print – I had planned a scant few millimeters over-print so I could mount the finished cover on a Glamour magazine. Wouldn’t you know it, the Kinkos attendant didn’t print all the way to the edge of an 11 x 17 sheet of paper. My overall design was 16.25 x 11, with maybe 1/8 inch to trim off (planned) – but the finished product left a sliver of white on the covers. I’ll take a hit on that, but it’ll have to do because I’m out of time.
The finished product came out pretty well – to attach the cover, I first used double-sided tape on the spine after I had the cover lined up. Then I used spray adhesive on the front and back covers to make it permanent.