Alternative Weeklies
05.26.10
Maui Wowie
MauiTime is an alternative weekly newspaper based on the island of Maui, Hawaii. Art director Chris Skiles has been there since August 2009. He worked at an ad agency in Houston before taking over the art direction duties at MauiTime. His covers are bright, bold, passionate, provocative, and engaging, heavily influenced by poster design, and done on a shoestring budget (according to Skiles, about $20 an issue, on average). Skiles creates most of the cover images, either with stock photos and illustration, or by doing the illos himself. Here are 10 of the coolest MauiTime covers. (Above): April 22, 2010. Illustration and design by Chris Skiles.
(Left): December 24, 2009. Photo illustration by Chris Skiles. (Right): November 5, 2009. Photograph by Federico Novaro.
(Left): April 29, 2010. Illustration by Tzu-Lan Hsieh (from a stock illustration site). (Right): April 15, 2010.
Chris Skiles: I usually will start my cover design by searching stock photography and illustration websites to see what sort of imagery I can find for the idea I have in my head. Depending on what's available I will either make the call to use some stock and modify or merge it, or completely scrap it and illustrate from scratch myself.
(Left): January 14, 2010. Design and art by Chris Skiles. (Right): January 21, 2010. Design and art by Chris Skiles.
April 1, 2010. This was a double cover. The image on the left was the outer cover; the April Fools! cover was on the turn page.
(Left): October 29, 2009. Illustration by Len Peralta. (Right): March 4, 2010. Photograph by Sean Michael Hower.
The scary illustration is of the mayor of Maui. This was MauiTime's Halloween issue.
Related links:
Chris Skiles's website, for more MauiTime covers and inside pages, and background on how they were put together.
Related stories:
Oh man ... that Halloween cover is incredible ... lol. Would love to know what the response was.
According to MauiTime art director Chris Skiles: "This cover caused quite a stir locally; many people were offended while others got the morbid humor. Adding to the chaos, Publisher Tommy Russo witnessed and recorded county employees removing issues from the racks in the county building and taking them up to the Mayors office to throw away, stirring up a First Amendment controversy. A great footnote: after the dust settled, this cover won a statewide award of merit."
Nice covers, but artists deserve to be paid properly for their work.