First and Last Impressions: Meet the Front and Back Cover Group

Contrary to the popular figure of speech, information designers always judge books (and magazines) by their covers, and with good reason. The cover of a publication says a lot about what the reader can expect to find inside. Cam, Kassandra, Chris, and Natasha worked together to make sure that the cover of effekt represented the content, our class, and information design accurately. Keep reading to find out how they did that.

What is your job?

The cover represents the magazine as a whole and helps the entire publication feel unified and cohesive. We wanted to create something eye-catching that represented the personality of the magazine and the features inside. The title of the magazine if effekt, so we needed our design to reflect that name and the concept behind it.

Why is it important to have a good magazine cover?

It establishes the credibility and the topic of the magazine. It tells our audience what the publication is about. For this specific publication, it’s important that we represent not only this publication, but also Information Design. It’s tricky because we can’t really use words.

How does your design play into “Effekt”?

Everything on the cover is connected. Each element of the cover is affecting another element. We’ve colour coded everything to each section of the magazine. We explored the major themes of the magazine and made 8 different categories that the features fit into, then made some icons that represented them. The icons on the back cover correspond with the features. 

A nearly final draft of the cover, showing the 8 colour-coded categories.

What was your group’s strategy for making the front cover? What stages did you go through?

First, we sat down and had a brainstorming session. It turned out that that some of us had similar ideas, so it was great to start off on the same brainwave. We decided that we wanted to work on this as a group, rather than breaking the task up into individual components. Once we had a general concept, we broke off and did some sketching individually, and then came back as a group to compare. We basically followed this pattern throughout the rest of the process. 

Kassandra doing some initial sketches.

Cam and Natasha sketching.

We wanted to incorporate everyone's ideas into the final design, but we also gave each other constructive criticism. Chris started a voting system on Blackboard, and we each got to have input on what features we liked about each iteration.

In the end, we completed about 28 iterations. Maybe 10 more, if we include the initial sketches. we made a lot of small changes. 

An early iteration.

4 of the 28 iterations of the front and back covers.

What challenges came up when you were making the front cover?

We didn’t have too many problems. It was challenging to come up with a consistent theme between all of us. it was also hard to keep on top of things with so many other things going on in the magazine. Each of us was also working on a feature.

What went well?

We didn't have much conflict. It was great seeing everyone's ideas every week. We would look at an idea and brainstorm together about what would make it better. This way, we were all on the same page.

A weekly meeting, discussing everyone's ideas.

What is there left to do?

We are basically done. We are just finalizing the colours. So, we just have to put out last draft up in the lab!

Ben and Cam, making some final decisions about the cover.