Earlier this month, I was very lucky to be contacted by Riverfront Times. Not only was I glad to receive a job after a break, but it was a cover! Nice! Then the AD dropped the bomb that the article would be national among Village Voice Media publications, and that was awesome!
They had an idea of what was wanted so I sent two quick layouts to choose from (I used a frame from another assignment's sketches as an indicator):
After layout approval, I worked up a tight sketch. While doing so, the AD ran the layout by the other art directors and wrote me with the feedback that it seemed very "farmer" with the pitchforks and such. I made it more urban by replacing them with pikes wrapped in barb wire. I thought it might be too much, but I guess not:
And I submitted two versions of final art. Initially, I was working the piece to emulate images on my website that the AD had mentioned. However, I really wanted to explore this as a two-color image, and he responded to that as the direction to move in:
After some discussion, we settled on this final version:
The difficult part of this assignment was creating a suitable composition that would work with all of the papers' mastheads. The AD allowed me some leeway and said that overlapping the logos is fine and actually encouraged in some cases. Good news for me! Here is a sample of what most of the other mastheads look like:
The artwork is being featured as an interior image in Minneapolis City Pages as well as the cover of Riverfront Times, Village Voice, Houston Press, SF Weekly, Miami New Times, New Times Broward Palm Beach, and Dallas Observer. Needless to say, I am SUPER-PSYCHED to have this artwork coming out this week! It's one of those days where you can't stop smiling and whistling, and people look at your weird.Many thanks to all the Village Voice Media ADs for such a great opportunity as well as the great exposure. I hope to work with each of them again in the future!
Enjoy the Day,
Chris
chris-whetzel.com
