Did you know that a Bay Area Advertising Agency located in San Jose has designed nearly 50 cover concepts for international electronic magazines? That Bay Area Advertising Agency is DRB Partners, San Jose-Silicon Valley.

In the past few years I've worked on nearly 50 electronic magazine cover designs for Linear Technology. They range in degree of conceptualization. These covers pose the challenge of communicating a desired concept and finding a balance of elements in the design and on the printed page. The objective is always to present Linear in the best light, communicating the message quickly to entice the readers to read the featured article about Linear's product. Sounds like an ad, but it isn't. Last thing the publication wants is the design to look like an ad. Some publications even limit the number of logos (this is a good thing).

The process starts with a concept meeting. Our team, at DRB Partners. usually meet with the key engineers and marcom specialist for the specific product. Lots of ideas are tossed around. The cover illustration for the recent issue of, the German publication, Markt & Technik is a good example of the how the process works. Right off the bat there seemed to be a move toward having a video game theme. Something like Space Invaders. We really had to look  at the merits of such a concept. One member of the product team even had sketched out a concept. It was a good talking point to get things rolling. Plus it gave us an idea of how certain members visualize. We pointed out the we didn't want a space ship that was shooting out lasers and destroying things. Then toyed around with tractor-beams grabbing key features. Visually this could have been exciting, but this would make the product appear to be customizable. We determined that what the product really did was gave the customer a choice. They had the choice of parts from a product line. So, off to the drawing board I went.

Mainly focusing on the “choice” concept overall. The engineer just had to dial in what part worked best for their project. Showing pencil comps at this stage saves a lot of time and frustration. If I had worked all the following ideas up to near final I would have been way over budget. Had I choose one, I might not have opted for everyones favorite.

 

Well, our verion of the space theme went over well. Everyone seemed to "gravitate" to the retro space idea and felt it still communicated the concept. Here is where the pencil comps really accelerate the process. Now the clients are in edit mode even before you do final art. Nothing worse than having to edit a conceptual illustration after you've spent hours finalizing. Now you have the client starting to visiualize the finished art. They feel as much a part of process as the designer.