Meg Robichaud

Walk through a Cover Design

One of my latest projects is to design the cover and assets for the Saint John Telegraph Journal’s Arts & Culture section, Salon. The topic for this weeks issue, is a series of artists writing letters about their favourite/most influential art teachers. 

As always, I started with a series of quick sketches. With a cover like this, it’s important to incorporate the masthead, and a natural space for text. So naturally, that makes an appearance in the initial sketches.

I decided that the one that was working the best was the second sketch, an apple with the hand print on it. It fit the “Grade school” feel that the client was looking for, and had a simple, symbolic element to it, which is why he sought me out in the first place.  So the next thing to do is a proper sketch, working out all of the little details. Again, it is important to consider the masthead and natural space for text, so that made an appearance in the sketch. Since this is for a newspaper, it’s also important to consider the fold, and how the top half if the image is going to look. 

Next up: how am I going to make this? I have quite a few illustration styles up my sleeve, watercolour, ink, vector, sculpy, crayon, cut out .. ect. Since this supposed to have a grade school look and feel, playdough seemed like a natural texture to emphasize, so I went with sculpy. 

And then you’re done! (Actually, this isn’t the final cover, at all, wrong mast head, wrong info ect. I just threw it together to give you an idea of what it would look like. 

• graphic design
• illustration
• sculpy
• design
• sketch
• salon
• telegraph journal
• artists
• apple