SPECIAL NOTE:
This design was awarded 2nd Place in the Special Section Covers category in the annual Arkansas Press Association contest.

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This special section runs once a year. This special section has proven to be my worst nightmare in previous years. The usual requirements are using a local photograph from someone who is spotlighted in the section. This year was no different except I had recently seen some polaroid photos and how cool it would be to mimic that appearance on a cover.

Considering this particular section was spotlighting the history of mining in the area, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity. For color, it had to be a pleasant mixture of sepia and grayscale. Considering the topic and photos at hand, colorful would be disorienting and unnatural. The grayscale accents were strictly for highlight.

The font I was going to use had to be representative of that time period. The only thing I could think of was those big bold stamps that would put on army crates. "FRAGILE" or "CONFIDENTIAL". I opted for a similar industrial-style font.

Now, at this point everything looked way too clean to fit the image in my head. I created torn paper textures, dirt and coal textures, and I even cut up text layers to make them appear broken.

In the end, one of my most undesirable cover design jobs turned into one of my favorite of all time to create.

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