Newspapers
10.13.10
The Victoria Advocate's M3 Entertainment Section
The Victoria Advocate is the second oldest newspaper in Texas, published in Victoria, a small town located in the Southeast part of the state, about 30 miles from the Gulf. The paper's M3 (Music, Movies, and More) entertainment section is distributed every Friday inside the paper and for free at select outlets around the city. M3's art director, Ryan Huddle, has created a remarkable body of work, with unique covers, special movie poster cover wraps, and entire themed issues. This is newspaper design at its best: bold, imaginative, original, and poster-like, with a direct visual connection to the readers. We've got nine great examples of Ryan Huddle's work at the Victoria Advocate, plus some comments by Ryan on how the pages came together. Unless indicated, all design and photo illustration is by Ryan Huddle.(Above): Cover wrap for Twlight. Design and photo illustration by Ryan Huddle.
Chupacabra the Musical, M3 cover: Every year we do an issue to coincide with the Chupacabra Multimedia Project. We wanted a comic book feel for the issue, but with photos of real people. Aprill Brandon is the woman on the cover (and also my wife). I am the man wrapped around her leg. Cover designer: Adriana Zavala; photograph by TC Baker.
Scream, M3 cover: This was an issue about getting ready for Halloween. I wanted to do an old horror comic look, and this was the perfect time to do it. I didn't have any time to draw the original artwork, but found some clip art that fit the look I wanted and that could be manipulated to fit what I needed. I did everything in Illustrator first, and then used Photoshop to add the dots and make it look more like an old EC comic book. This cover was done in about three hours.
Iran Man 2 M3 cover wrap: This was created by gathering movie studio artwork and cutting the people out, then putting each one on a background for a seamless transition across the page. We had three days to plan it and one day to execute. The section with this cover was distributed to people waiting in line at the movie theatre where Iron Man 2 was playing.
Iron Man 2 reverse cover wrap: This was printed on the backside of the Iron Man 2 cover wrap. We wanted to do something special about Iron Man's armor, and thought what better than to show some blueprints. I used photos from the media kit and Illustrator to make the drawing effect. Each photo was cut out and live traced seven to eight times to get the different lines, and combined to make each graphic. We used comic books for the basic information.
The Victoria Prophet, July 17, 2009: We transformed the entire M3 section into a Harry Potter newspaper, The Victoria Prophet. Every page of the section was designed in this format, complete with ads, puzzles, and stories. All the stories are real, either about Harry Potter, or actual entertainment stories for the week.
Punisher cover wrap, December 5, 2008: The wrap is about 16 different photos, some from stock, some that I took around the office.
The Victoria Advocate just renamed and redesigned the M3 section for its October 8 issue. See the new design here. And you can read more about Ryan Huddle on Charles Apple's The Visual Side of Journalism blog here.
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