The DINING & ENTERTAINMENT Magazine Logo & Planning With Thumbnails

When I found the Family Values logo sketches I also found thumbnails for the other magazine I had to edit/design called Dining & Entertainment Magazine. These thumbnails I did after I had designed the final logo and then had to work up some designs for a letterhead and business card. The two sketches on the second piece of scrap paper were for interior story layouts as I wanted to get an idea of how the text, headers, pull quotes and pictures would look as a whole. Even from these simply sketches you can get a clear idea of what I was going for at the time though they would change over the years I did them.

Here is the black and white version of the logo (for letterheads) and then the color version...

I added the color bar behind it to make it pop more as we always kept the text white as it always popped more as white than as another color. The color bar color itself was changed though every month depending on what we were doing. Below is one of my favorite covers I did and it was jam-packed with a lots of interviews that I did for that month, which was great since I really got to play with the design and layout of each interview as well as the cover. I try to give my covers room to breathe as well. Some magazines jam way too much text onto them and it makes them harder to 'read' at a certain distance.

BONUS: Here's a mock up cover with the super rare logo that only last two issues before we changed it. This was the second issue I worked on and this was the last time we used this logo. It was actually the first logo that I designed though and I really liked it as it had some tooth to it and looked like a steel-cut piece of metal and it had some energy to it. I went this way as originally we were shooting for a young and hip demo but that would change. Maxim was hot at the time and a lot of publications were trying to mimic the look. I got the idea from watching old episodes of Dragnet 1967 where after the credits ran at the end of the show there was a hand that came down and pounded out the Mark VII or something in the steel with a hammer. It stuck with me and so I thought a steel look would work well. 

Looking at it again after all this time, it's hard for me to call it a failure though. While everyone in the office liked it, it became somewhat of a designer's nightmare for me as it limited me in terms of the space I had to layout a cover. I had to run the photo flush left all the time to make it work and most press release photos simply weren't shot with enough bleed and it would have been a hassle each month to have to separate the person from the background and put a new background behind them that would fit. It was easier to simply run the logo straight across the top and then have a full square below it in which to play within. As the cover above shows, even by moving the logo down a 1/3 I still had some decent ratios to play within.

Hope you found this post interesting!

FAMILY VALUES Magazine Logo - Original Concept Sketches Found!

While cleaning out the studio I found my original layout sketches for the Family Values magazine logo that I created back in 2002 when I was hired to be editor/designer. The publisher had wanted to come up with something new for a look and he wanted a new logo as well. Above are the sketches I did with a ballpoint pen on some scrap paper. I did some other designs as well (but this one struck me as working well with the area that it would have to occupy on the cover and I liked it best) and then played with this one to get it to the next level.

Here's the final logo that I did in Illustrator as I wanted it to be vector art in case they ever wanted to make it bigger for something like a banner. I used these colors for the first two issues as they complimented the photos and text but then I would change out the colors to compliment the overall color theory or even to celebrate a certain holiday or seasonal theme. It also works well as a black and white image and could be easily converted if need be. I usually always design a logo with the idea that it must work in black and white first. Scott's Rule: If it works in black and white, it will work in color.

Here's a November cover for Thanksgiving where I changed it up so you have an idea of how it looked. The month before I changed it to black and orange for Halloween and it popped really well off the cover. It was kind of cool to find those original sketches still laying around here. Usually I don't save that stuff as thumbnails are mostly for the artist as a guide, but I have been saving more of it lately as scans just so I have them.