Magazine Cover Design

Back Cover                             Front Cover

There is a first for everything, and this is the first magazine cover I have designed. 

I discovered Salt & Citrus a couple of months ago. It wasn't through any effort of my own...it was a "sponsored" post that came on my Instagram feed. Always curious about art magazines, I clicked through and discovered it is a free online Canadian magazine founded by Ciara Gordon in the early days of the pandemic. 

Always interested in supporting entrepreneurs, I submitted some work to the Liminal issue published in March. Ciara and I communicated through email a few times, et voila, I was asked to design the cover for the May issue Rebirth.

There were very few "must haves" for the design....Salt & Citrus, Volume and Issue numbers, Title on the front cover....Contributor names on the back cover.

My original idea was to use a variation of my image called New Beginnings. I took the image I created for my Haven exhibit, flipped it, and moved some things around to fit onto front and back covers. This is the initial draft:

First idea - Rebirth

I really liked the concept (obviously, since a variation of this is in my upcoming exhibit). However I decided that it was too "busy" and too visually dark for a magazine cover.

So...I used the same "portal" theme with a simpler background. I chose a winter field for the background, added some doors, created a summer scene for the "portal" and kept the flying robin.

I wasn't sure about the font I selected, but the font name is Rebirth....the same as the title for the magazine issue...so I thought it fitting.

It was a fun challenge for me. However, I do find it quite different creating for someone else rather than just for my own satisfaction.