HOW magazine cover

HOW‘s February 2012 cover is nice, and reminds me a lot of this custom publishing piece created way back in the day.

And here are the corporeal fruits of our recent labors at the full-time job. This doesn’t count the two digital Buyer’s Guide magazines, the print HIFI+ magazine which we haven’t received copies of yet, or the myriad other collateral pieces we work on. But anyway, it’s nice to see them in person instead of onscreen.

You don’t have to be rich to read OceanHome magazine, but it helps.

I’ve been reading a lot of home magazines recently (can’t call them shelter magazines, feels very douchebaggy) because of another project I’ve been working on. OceanHome feels pretty small when you pick it up. Paper feels good, cover very shiny feeling, but not over glossy. I liked the super-bright, clean cover when I picked it up, but the more time I spend looking closely at it, something about the photo is bothering me that I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it the color, has it been really photoshopped? There’s a confusing lack of detail. At a glance it looks great, but spend any time staring at it, and details suddenly become fuzzy messes of color. Was the image really hard to color correct given the amount of information in it?

Coverlines are banal and completely inoffensive. There’s nothing compelling or exciting about what’s happening here. I wonder if they tried to get a shot of the Obamas for their “exclusive”. This is clearly aimed at the high-end homebuyer, and the issue is chock full of very high-end real estate ads including – shocker! – an ad from the real estate agent who manages the Plantation Estate, aka “The Winter White House” featured on the cover. The ad even uses the exact same headline as the cover!

LOCALE magazine project

I’ve been working on this project for a couple of months now – it’s been an interesting experience creating this mini (digital) magazine. I’ll go into more detail later (because I’m lazy and it’s almost 3am), but here are a few pages from the latest issue which went out a couple of weeks ago. I’m excited about where this magazine could go design-wise, and the potential for experimenting once the production process has smoothed out.

Some recent TAS work…

Some recent work, featuring some particularly awesome photography from Adam Voorhes.

October Custom Publishing Facebook page

I’m building a Facebook Fan Page for October Custom Publishing (my company), in order to try and get us out there a little more. On there you’ll be able to view almost every page of every magazine we’ve either published or been hired to create thus far. I’d really appreciate you becoming a fan, and I’m happy to return the favor! Take a look at the page here. Introduce yourself!

GivingCity Austin magazine issue 4 available for download

It’s that time of the year again where in-between neglecting duties to my family and multiple full-time job deadlines, we somehow managed to crank out another issue of GivingCity Austin. Please hit this link to download, and PLEASE send it to as many people as possible. We’re probably not going to do another unless we can find someone willing to bankroll it for us, so the more people that see it, the better chance there is that someone may want to.More pages after the jump….although I’d really rather you went here and just download the thing.

GOOD magazine issue 17

I’d stop buying GOOD magazine a while back – partly out of an effort to spend less money (no ladies, I’m not independently wealthy, contrary to popular belief. Nor am I a Formula One race car driver, and I have never saved the earth from certain destruction) – and partly because it just wasn’t making me want to buy it. Anyway, I saw this issue and picked it up because of the cover. Despite the almost unreadable cover-lines up there in the top right corner, this cover made me want this magazine. Totally imaginative and different cover, obviously advertising content that’s slightly different from what they usually put out. Digging the 3-D set made from props used throughout the magazine – although I wonder why they didn’t make the ‘GOOD’ logo in the same way – or all the cover-lines for that matter. Regardless, very cool. I like the visibility of the white strip of information at the bottom of the cover, but think some the information in there could have been a little more interesting.

GivingCity issue 3 now available for download

UPDATE: Please download the 4th issue here!

Been super busy the past few months and really haven’t had time to update the blog at all. We’re happy that the new issue of GivingCity is now complete (at last!), and we can move on to the next one – and get that one done on time! Please take a look and give me your feedback. Also, please please please send the link to as many people as you can!

I’ve no idea what this magazine ‘Russia’ is about…

… (Russia maybe?) but I like the way a lot of it looks. Take the cover for example. What is that about? Look at the mixture of bolds and bold compresseds used in the logo. Then all that white space around a pencil drawing of a floating head. No type, nothing. Just a couple of lines in a black box at the very bottom.

Possibly the most depressing image I’ve seen (today) on one of the contents pages, but I like the style of photography and it would sit just as well in the front section of a GQ or Esquire. The layout itself is fairly standard, not much going on there.

There’s no set style for the various types of info they display graphically, which lends a nice quirkiness to the already obviously not your run-of-the-mill content, and the style also suits the apparently low-budget for images and/or illustration.

There are also some really good, rich and colorful portraits and fashion pages… no idea if the general film look on some of these was achieved by actually shooting on film and exposing somehow, or if it’s all digital and post. Anyway…