Recently in Appreciation Category

The Guardian's G2 Section Covers

G2 is the daily (Monday-Friday) features section of the Guardian newspaper, based in London. It was the launching pad for Richard Turley, now the creative director at Bloomberg Businessweek. His successor, Joanna Cochrane, has been continuing the marvelous graphic tradition of the section's covers. Most of their covers are done in a day, on a limited budget, and are brilliant visual solutions, smart, funny, engaging, and graphic. Cochrane is an art department of one, and creates a lot of the imagery herself, turning out state-of-the-art cover design, every day. We love it!

Here's Joanna Cochrane's description of her cover design process: "I usually don't get more than a few hours to decide on a solution for the cover. We have an editorial meeting at midday. Prior to that I don't know what the content that day will be. All the covers are turned around in a matter of hours. I discuss concept ideas with my editor, then execute the strongest one. Often there's a complete rethink to react to news at 4pm, and we go to press at 6.30. I use our imaging department or Steve Caplin if I need any retouching or manipulation done, and work to a strict budget, with an occasional illustration commission."

(Above): February 4, 2011. Photo illustration by Sarah Plane / Guardian Imaging.
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Bloomberg Businessweek: The Features

It's the covers of Bloomberg Businessweek that get lots of attention (and rightly so), but their feature spread design is just as smart, original, groundbreaking, and fun. Here are 10 of our favorites from the past year.

On Thursday, April 21, SPD is presenting Bloomberg Businessweek: Process, an evening that will look behind the scenes with creative director Richard Turley and the Businessweek visual team. Tickets are on sale now. We expect they'll be sold out in the next couple days, so make your plans and reserve your space ASAP!

You can see these features and more on the Bloomberg Businessweek feature Flickr page here. You can get comments and smart visual ideas from Richard Turley on his Tumblr blog here. And if you're on Twitter, you can see the latest Businessweek covers as they're posted by following  @BizWeekDesign.
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Bloomberg Businessweek: The Covers

One of the great joys over the past year has been to watch the cover design of Bloomberg Businessweek develop, find its voice, and then explode with a multiplicity of powerful, smart, original visuals, and brilliantly understated typography. On Thursday, April 21, SPD is presenting Bloomberg Businessweek: Process, an evening that will look behind the scenes with creative director Richard Turley and the Businessweek visual team. Tickets are on sale now, and are selling out quickly, so make your plans and reserve your space ASAP!

You can see most of these covers on the Bloomberg Businessweek cover Flickr page here. You can get comments and smart visual ideas from Richard Turley on his Tumblr blog here. And if you're on Twitter, you can see the latest Businessweek covers as they're posted by following  @BizWeekDesign.

Pictured above are 30 Bloomberg Businessweek covers from the 10 months. Get full illustrator and photographer credits here. Get tickets after the jump...
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Happy Birthday Ronald Reagan!

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Up: In-Flight Magazine Designed by +2 Designers

Up is the in-flight magazine for Portugal's TAP airlines. Since its launch in November 2007, the magazine has been designed by +2 designers, who are Vasco Colombo and Raquel Porto. It's published monthly in mixed languages, Portuguese and English. Each cover is uniquely designed, featuring illustrative typographic treatments by Colombo. And the magazine features fonts by Portuguese font designers (Van by Ricardo Santos and Glosa by Dino Santos). To see an entire issue of Up, you can download the iPad app version for free from the Apple app store.

(Above): April 2009. Photograph: Alexander Koch, styling: Martin Kulik.

Post-production on all covers: Fernando Martins.
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Happy 20th Birthday Entertainment Weekly, Part 6: Amid Capeci

February 16, 2010 marked the 20th anniversary of the publication date of the first issue of Entertainment Weekly. We're concluding our six-part, year-long celebration with a look at the EW covers of the magazine's sixth design director, Amid Capeci. Here are covers from the years 2009-2010, plus comments from Amid about how they were created. For all of these covers, the director of photography is Lisa Berman.

Above: July 30, 2010. Typography by Joe Zeff Design.
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The Art Direction of Musician Magazine: Patrick Mitchell

For much of the 1980s and 90s, Musician magazine served as a home for creative art direction and imagery. It was a place where art directors learned their trade while producing cool covers and feature spreads. Art directors during this period included Gary Koepke, David Carson, Patrick Mitchell, John Korpics, and Miriam Campiz.

This is the fourth part of our month-long celebration of the art direction of Musician, featuring the work of Patrick Mitchell, who was the art director from 1989-1991. He had been doing Sunday newspaper magazines at The Dallas Morning News and Detroit Free Press before moving to Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Musician was based. Mitchell left Musician to be the art director of Garbage magazine, and in 1995 became the design director of Fast Company. In 2003 he launched PlutoMedia, where he is currently creative director.

(Above): November 1991.
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The Art Direction of Musician Magazine: Miriam Campiz

For much of the 1980s and 90s, Musician magazine served as a home for creative art direction and imagery. It was a place where art directors learned their trade while producing cool covers and feature spreads. Art directors during this period included Gary Koepke, David Carson, Patrick Mitchell, John Korpics, and Miriam Campiz.

This is the third part of our month-long celebration of the art direction of Musician, featuring the work of Miriam Campiz. After stints as an art director at The Boston Globe and Entertainment Weekly, Miriam headed up the art direction of Musician from 1983-85. After leaving she went on to art direct for Newsweek, Latina, Time, Allure, and many more publications, as well as teaching typography and graphic design at SVA and CUNY Baruch.

(Above): August 1994, Glenn Danzig. Photograph by Norman Watson.
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The Art Direction of Musician Magazine: John Korpics

For much of the 1980s and 90s, Musician magazine served as a home for creative art direction and imagery. It was a place where art directors learned their trade while producing cool covers and feature spreads. Art directors during this period included Gary Koepke, David Carson, Patrick Mitchell, John Korpics, and Miriam Campiz.

This is the second part of our month-long celebration of the art direction of Musician, featuring the work of John Korpics. Korpics was the design director for 11 months, in 1992. Before that he had been the art director at Regardie's magazine in Washington, DC. After Musician, Korpics went on to be the design director of Premiere, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, and InStyle. He is currently the design director at Fortune.

(Above): John Korpics: "My favorite Musician cover. I always hated the logo though. It was the ugliest logo I've ever had to design with. It was like putting a big turd on my covers."


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The Art Direction of Musician Magazine: Gary Koepke

For much of the 1980s and 90s, Musician magazine served as a home for creative art direction and imagery. It was a place where art directors learned their trade while producing cool covers and feature spreads. Art directors during this period included Gary Koepke, David Carson, Patrick Mitchell, John Korpics, and Miriam Campiz.

SPD is going to be hosting a month-long celebration of the art direction of Musician, starting with the work of Gary Koepke. Koepke was an art director at Polaroid before moving to Musician in the mid-80s, where he worked with a staff of two others (a typesetter and an assistant). He describes his design approach at the magazine as "Simple and elegant. The articles were always by great writers, and the photos were all by amazing photographers, so I always respected the word."

After working at Musician from 1984-87, Koepke went on to be the founding creative director of Vibe, designed publications as diverse as Colors, World Tour, and Businessweek, and is the co-founder and executive creative director at creative agency Modernista!

(Above): April 1984. Photograph by Deborah Feingold.
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