"Did you try... "

Good gawd. Awesome post! Love it.
I feel your pain brother.
Oh and i was wondering if you could try.....

Hello Bruce, And others! I'm sure such story evolutions are common at other magazines—or, at least, that's what we say to ourselves to keep our sanity!

The original idea for the story was simple: Chinese food as we know it here in North America sucks compared to the real thing in China. Let's send a photographer along with the writer to document the story.

The first 23 layouts you see in the mpeg are opener variations using the shots from the photographer. First we tried to find one shot that worked —there are 5 images that we tried full-spread bleed....you see all 5 as layouts in the mpeg. We didn't feel that was working so we tried two full-page shots running together—10 variations there. Didn't feel that was working so we tried a "dictionary" approach (one large image with smaller explanatory images) —there are 7 in the mpeg. Finally, desperate, we tried a grid approach...there's only one shown.

Why did we feel these weren't working? The documentary photos themselves were great, but would our reader care? They're not used to seeing travel photos in the magazine; would they pause long enough to realize what the story was about. Did any of these versions truly capture the spirit and breadth of the story?

Also, when I say "we," I'm referring mainly to the art directors and photo editors. We have a very public wall where we put up our works in progress so that all can comment. It's mainly an art department wall, but editors do sometimes take a look.

Then the story itself came in. And it was great. And the great story sparked other ideas: maybe this was the beginning of a series of "Guy Foods Reclaimed!" and we'll run them in consecutive issues! All of a sudden, the importance of that opener working for the entire series was magnified.

So we headed in a different direction: maybe each opener should be something unique, created especially for the series. A few issues before, Eddie Guy had created a fabulous opener for a feature we did on organic foods. Maybe he could do something here. And you see 3 sketches/ideas.

Also, at the same time, we decided that we should shoot some of the recipes that were mentioned in the text. When those shots came in and we liked them, we tried them as openers. You see 5 of them in the mpeg. They weren't really shot as openers, and didn't feel completely right.

So then we decided to try a more straightforward approach: shoot Chinese Food as we know it, all greasy, oily, and soy sauce laden for the opener; on the turn spread we would run one of the beauty food shots large to say this is what it can look like when done right. And we'd sprinkle the travel shots throughout the story.

One shot; two layout variations. By this point, we had also run out of time. The idea seemed solid. The editors liked it. File was shipped!

George, how much time would you say this covers? A week? A month?

If only things happened so logically. Truth is, the first batch of variations using the original shoot from the photographer we sent to China, took about 3 days for those 23 variations. It was more a matter of crank out the options and take a look.

Then we had to wait a few days for Eddie Guy to do his thing.

Then when we decided to reshoot the opener, we had over a week to wait before working on the opener again.

Thankfully, we could work on the rest of the feature and produce it. Otherwise we would have been totally screwed!

Amusingly, the whole process took about a month. It was the one feature we had in early...and it was the one feature we had hoped to close early. That never seems to work out that way!

Well, you beat my 18 versions that I did on Tuesday night! ...which was just for image selection... the coverlines will be a whole different matter.