The Sandbox

Outside's Toughest Shots

2009-10-06T14:48:37Z

Outside's website has a great series of challenging photos and the behind-the-scenes stories from the photographers who risked life, limb and sanity to get them:

"we were driving 95 miles an hour to avoid getting swallowed by this thing"

"I blew my entire budget on a helicopter and didn't get a single photo because of poor winds... then..."

"I attempted to be smuggled through a Pakistani no-man's-land, wearing a burka, without success"

"I walked 120 miles over four days to get it"

See the shots and read the stories from Antonin Kratochvil, Camille Seaman, Chris Anderson, Christopher LaMarca, Jason Florio, Jeff Hutchens, John Huet, Joshua Paul, Mark Fisher, Matthieu Paley, Nicky Bonne, Paolo Marchesi, Philipp Engelhorn and Ryan Pyle here.

(Supercell storm photo by Camille Seaman.)

Complex: Cover Tests

2009-09-28T12:00:33Z

Tim Leong, the DD at Complex, walks us through their Oct/Nov cover:

The cover features the rap group The Clipse, who have a new album just about to drop. To make the cover really special we collaborated with KAWS, one of the biggest street artists of all time.

]]> We initially shot The Clipse on a white background and then sent KAWS some of our favorite images. The original plan was for KAWS to create a new art background that would interact with the guys in some way. (above)

KAWS tried a different background but it still didn't quite feel right. We thought the hands were interesting though -- we liked the idea of them coming from the reader's POV. But the way they were grabbing at The Clipse, it seemed too zombie/horror. (below)

Then we tried with just one hand, and it still wasn't working:

We knew we liked the hands, but we weren't crazy about the rest. So we decided to start from scratch and try a different approach and figure out a way to make the hands work.

What if...the hands were at a store and they were reaching on a shelf? That's when we had the idea of making The Clipse into a bunch of bobble heads or miniature busts. But it looked ridiculously weird. Ridiculously.

We did like the toy aspect, especially since collecting is a key aspect to our readership. And that's when we had the idea of making The Clipse into action figures.

We put the art piece KAWS did in as a background, he then converted our coverlines into stickers and then mocked up a blister pack (the plastic encasing).

Next we called up artist extraordinaire Eddie Guy to help us finish. We liked the dimension he was able to create, but we wanted it to feel more form-fitting.

This version was definitely more form-fitting and looked great, but it just felt more like a dollar story toy, and not a collectible.

Then Eddie created the reverse plastic molding and it felt right. We added another coverline, tweaked some colors and details and we were done.

And there it is.

Photographer: Matt Doyle
Illustrators: KAWS, Eddie Guy

Gail Anderson on The Evolution of a Poster

2009-09-14T18:12:30Z

Gail Anderson, SpotCo Creative Director of Design, has a great audio slide show at The New York Times, talking through the evolution of the SpotCo campaign for the revival of Ragtime.
Definitely a must-listen as she walks us through several possible directions and the thinking behind their final choice. Always good to know about all the work that goes into making a final product, so much of which the those of us not on the project never hear about...

Command D

2009-08-19T13:05:48Z

Step one: select an amazing photo.
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Which brings me to this month's challenge:
Design the third installment in a set of features about Classic PM projects. This series follows our Home Editor, Roy Berendsohn, as he tackles old-school projects in modern times. From blacksmithing to building boats, Roy writes about his experience. Although slugged Classic DIY, our design goal is to make these look fresh and new, to bring what's considered an old craft to a new light.

Who doesn't want to smash a hammer against glowing hot steel?
(The Backyard Blacksmith: March 2009).

And wouldn't it be cool if you hit the lake in your own hand-made dinghy?
(To Build A Boat: September 2009)

This time around, Roy decided to build a stone bench. It's a great story about how his father instilled a sense of craftsmanship. Chiseling rocks and lifting huge slabs of blue stone, Roy built the bench for his dad. Very PM.
I've read the piece, gone over images with my team, and well, I'm stuck. After a few rounds of critiques, I presented these.

It's a mix of photos my PD, DD and I thought worked best. After some more debating, and still no select, I've decided to blog about it. I don't know where to go. Ultimately, we'll have to get EIC approval and then there will be a lot of back and forth on the design, but if I'm going to give this layout as much care and attention as Roy did the bench, I should make the first move soon, and pick an opening photo!

Rebranding LATINA

2009-01-29T00:09:43Z

Say the word Latina, and what do many people think of? Women like Jennifer Lopez, Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek and Eva Mendes. But Latinas are also as diverse as Cameron Diaz, Raquel Welch, Rita Hayworth, and even Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter. The point is, there is no "typical" Latina. They are an eclectic group of women and their diversity became an editorial focal point for our redesign. ]]> The first task at hand was to redesign the logo. One concern was that the current logo, with its mixture of upper and lowercase, didn't feel unified enough. After many attempts with different typefaces, we decided to somehow make the existing Didot work.

Setting the name in all caps didn't seem enough, and while we attempted to keep the clever italic letter "i," we instead looked to Bradbury Thompson's Alphabet 26, which simplified the alphabet by using either an uppercase or a lowercase for each of the 26 letters.

For the inside, our goal was a visual vocabulary that made sense culturally without using stereotypical graphics--no Chiquita bananas or overly festive typefaces. We also avoided beloved artists like Frida Kahlo or Mexican muralism for inspiration. Instead, we chose to dig deeper and embrace more diverse elements found in this culture.

We found our inspiration in a fine arts show called "The Geometry of Hope," an art movement unknown to many, which featured Latin American artists whose work was characterized by abstract, geometric shapes.

Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times: "Latin American abstraction has tended to be ignored in North America, when not dismissed as fussy, gimmicky and a tad kitschy. This show of about 105 works by nearly 30 artists invites a reconsideration of such attitudes. Working through its riches is both humbling and thrilling; you encounter your ignorance and have a chance to rectify it."

Their approach became the building blocks for our redesign, and ended up shaping much of the format.

These are the slugs for our four main sections and an example of a feature well opener.

The geometric shapes of each feature well opener then dictate the design of some of the following features in that issue.

The photography for Latina at times presented a different set of challenges. Director of Photography George Pitts to PDN last year:

"Thinking back on the Vibe years, one of the unsaid, very clear imperatives was to deliver photography of ethnic groups, people of color, racial minorities, at the level that we see in all magazines we consume on a regular basis. One finds that the photography community has to be encouraged and invited to participate in photographing people of other races, other backgrounds. Many of them are extremely keen on doing it, some need some motivational direction."

Here are several more examples of various cover, fashion, and beauty stories from the past year, which I feel met the level that George spoke about:

This is part of a 14-page cover story on 20-year-old Dominican model Sessilee Lopez, one of the fastest-rising dark-skinned Latina models in the world, photographed by David Roemer. Here we're having fun with the ball terminals of the "a" letterform from our logo.

When Jessica Alba appeared on our March cover, many Latinas were convinced she was ashamed of her Mexican heritage due to false Internet gossip. Not only is she extremely proud of her Latina roots, she provided us with enough quotes to make her case on the back cover.

Since Alba was starring in the psychological thriller "The Eye," she worked with photographer Sheryl Nields to recreate scenes from classic horror movies like "Psycho," "Scream," "Poltergeist," "The Birds," and even "Rosemary's Baby." Considering she was four months pregnant at the time, we thought her sense of humor spoke volumes, as did her proud papa.

The goal of presenting culturally relevant, but unexpected design solutions is a fascinating challenge. In rebranding Latina, we also hope our magazine pages are a gentle reminder that any ethnicity is a lot more diverse than we sometimes think it is.

The Latina team is Editor-in-Chief Mimi ValdÃ©s Ryan, Director of Photography George Pitts, Design Director Denise See, Photo Editor Jennifer Sargent, Associate Art Director Phoebe Flynn Rich, Photo Assistant Christie Del Nero and Creative Director Florian Bachleda.

If you have content (big or small) that you think would be great for The Sandbox; behind-the-scenes stories, the process of a design, illo, photo, logo, typography...really anything about the way we put a magazine or website(!) together...forward it to Brandon at TIPS@SPD.org.

Tribute to Blueprint Magazine 2005-2007

2008-12-10T16:44:34Z

Blueprint from SPD Videos on Vimeo.

From Deb Bishop, the former DD at Blueprint:

This is fun little movie in fast motion (we were always in a hurry) of the Blueprint team creating the February '08 cover in the Starrett Lehigh building. Little did we know this would be the last cover we did, ever. Blueprint was the most fun, perplexing, frustrating, yet rewarding project I have ever been involved in. It's been a year since it folded. I just wanted to say thanks and I miss you all. I'm really proud of what we did.

Sarah Humphreys, Cybele Grandjean, Lisa The, Jamie Prokell, Katie Hatch, Page Marchese Norman, Elizabeth Graves, Shane Powers, Rebecca Robertson, Scott Horne, Rachel Boyle, Sarah Conroy, Johannah Masters, Bora Chang, Shira Savada, Denise Clappi, Duane Stapp, Sydney Applegate, Sarah Rutledge, Valerie Rains, Petra Gugielmetti, Heloise Goodman, Mary Cahill, Johnny Miller, Amy Wilkins, Matthew Axe, Tom Prince, and everyone on staff. We only did 8 issues (or was it 9?) but those 8 were "effin" brilliant.

I know you have all gone on to do wonderful things and I wanted to wish you all happiness with your future endeavors in the New Year and beyond. Let's have a reunion.

Cheers
XO Deb

What Is This?

2008-09-17T15:39:02Z

These are all common elements that you can find at a hardware store or drug store.
It's also something else.
It's a bomb. And it can be brought on a commercial airline undetected.

Here at Best Life we were developing a story on how our airports post-9/11 are not much safer than before. Ripe with whistle-blowers and what not it was damn interesting...and damn scary. Searching the text for visual directions, one of the most intriguing parts was about a collection of common elements that one could easily get through security and assemble into a bomb on a commercial airliner. Much more interesting than the obligatory spooky picture of the whistle-blower in an airport, right? So we called Dan Winters.

I recently had a chance to catch Dan on the phone to talk about the project of assembling a bomb: fascintating, funny.....and terrifying.
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BRANDON KAVULLA: I remember we initially had our creative meeting about the article and it came up in the copy that there were all these items you could easily purchase at a hardware store or drug store that you could get through airport security and assemble as a bomb on a plane. Then it came up, "Well damn, let's see if Dan could actually build us a bomb if and actually put the thing together and shoot it."

You were dealing with our Photo Editor Jeanne Graves on this, so what was your reaction when she brought this to you? I know you've built lots of stuff for us and other magazines but had you ever built something this dangerous?

DAN WINTERS: Well, I've actually done a lot explosive stuff. I had a whole period of my life where I was studying pyrotechnics. I used to be a model builder for movies in the early 80's. I worked on Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rodgers building models, miniatures...

BK: (laughing) Ok, now it's all making sense.

DW: There you go!

BK: So this was not the first explosive you've built.

DW: No, not at all. In fact 3 Christmases ago my son drew this picture of a fire cracker on a piece of 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and it consumed the whole page. He said that's what he wanted for Christmas and wrote under it "actual size". So I made him ten of them. I made him a crate they went in and I made my own danger labels and each had a pound of black powder in them.

BK: (laughing) Where are these things?

DW: Well, we only have 2 left so we've already set off 8 of the ten.
You would not believe. The explosion is insane, you have to cover your ears.

BK: (laughing) Now I love this even more--that you have built explosives before, I had no idea.

DW: Oh, yeah, I'm way into explosives.

The thing about the Best Life bomb, I have to be honest with you: I built a fully operational bomb but I didn't mix the explosive component because it is very unstable. So the bomb I made for the issue wouldn't actually explode. I would have had to mix the precipitate, which is hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid and acetone mixed together. There is a distilling process and a heating process and then what ultimately forms out of it is a crystal precipitate and that's the explosive element. It's pretty unstable, but really easy to put together.

The tricky part is handling it.

What I did when I got the assignment is I talked to the writer and I talked to the person he was using as his source who was an ex-navy SEAL. Neither one of those guys had a whole lot of explosive knowledge so I was back to square one and had to figure it out for myself. I talked to the guy who was the source of inside information and had an operation with the FAA where they were sneaking stuff onboard air crafts to test different security areas.

I talked to him about his experience with things, but not as an explosive background and then sat down online for a 4.5 hour session of researching "If I was going to take down an airliner, how would I go about it?" Now this is all with the thought that I am going to kill myself in the process of taking the plane down.

The way we have things structured in airlines, if the passenger is not on the plane, then the bag doesn't go on the plane. I suppose the one other thing you could do is put the bag in the overhead and then drink something that would make you violently ill and they would take you off the plane and leave your bag there. However, placement of the device would be key to bring the plane down so you would really have to be on there. So it's really a suicide mission to bring the plane down.

This is an explosive that's easy to make, it has about 80-85% of the explosive portion of TNT. I think the editor really wanted to hear that this would be something you could completely create at the airport and sneak it on. But it's a bit more difficult to create the substance than just create it in the bathroom. There's heating and cooling required and some specific parameters under which that needs to take place. However, the substance is not detectable by any of the explosive sensing devices they use; like, the swab wouldn't detect it. It doesn't have the carbon elements that most explosives have.

So my ideal scenario if I was going to take down a plane would be this: I would work with three or four people, one of which would ultimately get on the plane with the bomb.

BK: So there would be a team of three people and each person would be carrying a different element of the bomb through security.

DW: Correct. So two of the guys would be carrying one small satchel each of the explosive element, in bags that were in their groin--wearing loose pants, and they would get through the metal detectors with no problem.

They would bring the actual crystalline in. Then other people would bring in 16 gauge wire, a couple of flashlight light bulbs, a nine volt battery, a timer off of a dog feeder, 2 coke bottles and some chewing gum all of which could get through easily or be purchased after we're through security. Nine volt batteries get stopped sometimes but they would be very easy to get in inside the film magazine of a 35mm camera and it would just look like electronics within the camera.

BK: Man...very wild.

DW: Yeah, you can get that stuff on there. So all those materials are brought in including the explosive element.

Someone stops at the magazine stand, buys a couple bottles of coke, everybody meets in the men's room, and the individual that is going to assemble the bomb...

BK: This is AFTER getting through security?

DW: Yep, this after everyone's through...which would be a breeze. The individual that is assembling the bomb would set up shop in the handicap stall and the other individuals bring their items and hand them off to him and he can put it together in about 10 minutes, pretty easily. Get it ready to go, start the timer and get it on the plane.

So I built the bomb with the exception of the explosive element. I set the timer and I let it go and the igniters went off exactly when I set the timer for, so it worked flawlessly. If I had put black powder into it, it would've detonated. Now black powder would be easy to get through and there's a couple ways you could do it. Once again, non-detectable by any of the metal detectors, easily carried on. I was thinking guys that would wear chefs pants or bodybuilder pants and they can hide it in their groin area. There's pretty much no way they would get searched for it. Once again, this involves a guy going down with the plane.

Now there is this whole urban myth that a hole in an aircraft at 30,000 feet sucking people out of it, which is bullshit. It would depressurize the cabin, etc. but that's it.

So you'd have to strategically place the bomb to bring the plane down.

My idea was that the pilot's cabin doors have all been retro-fitted with kevlar ballistic nylon. However, the walls on either side are not, just the door is. The lavatory in first class is against the pilot's bulkhead and shares a wall with the cockpit. Now again you'd have to pick the right kind of plane: a 757 or a 737 .

You would book a first class seat, take it into that lavatory and detonate the device in there and it would blow right through that wall, kill the pilot and copilot and the plane would go down.

BK: So you didn't really research this project heavily at all.

DW: (laughing) No, not at all. This kind of thing comes around and it's totally intriguing to me, trying to work this stuff out. I really enjoy working on stuff like this. You learn so much.

BK: Let me ask you one other question, could this thing have been assembled on the plane that's in the air? Say if all 3 guys were crazy and they all agreed to go down with the plane.

DW: It could be assembled on a plane in the air. My thoughts are that it would be unlikely you could pull off being in the men's room for that long. Because there are people that are monitoring that on the plane. Whereas at the airport no one is going to pay attention at all.

BK: But it's basically a 15 minute assembly though.

DW: Yep.

BK: Now someone else here told me something I wanted to ask you about. Do you have a relative or something that's a firefighter?

DW: Yeah my brother.

BK: And I heard you had wanted to detonate this thing for real after the shoot and he had talked you out of it? (laughing)

DW: Yeah, he's actually a hazmat (hazardous material) and explosive certified L.A. County firefighter. I called him right after I researched this and asked him what would be the most reasonable way to do it. He told me I was on the right track, TATP would be the best thing for it because it's non-detectable and anyone can put it together. But he said it's unstable and basically told me don't fuck around with it. So I said, Ok I won't do it. And he told me exactly what it looks like and you can google it, it's just like a white crystalline. And so I just used sea salt in the bomb. He signed off on the bomb too, I went over the whole thing with him.
I really would've liked to have detonated it after the shoot and videotaped my bomb exploding but right now it's just sitting on top of my refrigerator at my studio.

BK: (laughing)

DW: So every time someone comes to my studio they're like "Whoah, what the hell's that?" (laughing)

BK: (laughing) Oh that's just my bomb I built.

DW: Yeah, that's my bomb!

BK: Waiting for you..."Dan, detonate me!"