Making a Times coverKenta. K

! For my Times cover, I have chosen the ʻthe economic crashʼ issue. First of all, I searched for the size of the actual Time magazine, and found out it was 8 inches in width, 10 inches in length. So this is how my base looked like on below. On the one on the left, I used a grid, because not only it would make the red lines much more easier to draw, but it also made the word ʻTimeʼ centered.

And the one on the right is the cover base without the grid. It looks great.

My idea for this cover, was that there was an explosion on behind, and there were money spreading around. But then I rejected this idea. The reason was that the money spreading out can be photographed or handwritten, but I didnʼt have enough money to take a photo of money spreading, and also it was harder than I thought to actually draw a dollar bill, so I gave up. Instead, I used a businessman cartoon character running away from the explosion. The Explosion of the cloud was taken from a mushroom explosion especially known for the ʻHiroshima Genbakuʼ.

This is the drawing of the two cartoon characters and the boundary between the businessmen and the explosion. I wanted to make the explosion merged in with the drawing.

This is what the explosion originally looked like. Then..

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This is the final product. Since there were some grey after I extracted the highlights, I raised the contrast so it concentrated with one color. And using the base line I drew on below, I tried to make it so the explosion merging out from the drawing, but still the mushroom cloud looking realistic. But since the color of the base line and the mushroom cloud were slightly different, so I also raised the contrast of the base line to match the darkness.

Now I would like to go over this green collage I made for the background.

I think you have been wondering, “what about the copyrights?” I have checked already if these images are allowed to be used. For example, the Nasa™ logo hidden behind the 1 dollar bill is downloaded from ʻBrands of the worldʼ and it provides company logos for free, which was quite useful. There are also images from an graffiti artist, Banksy, who provides his ideas and images to everyone. (since graffiti arts are illegal, there are no way to sell it.)

And so I arranged it into a collage, and made a dark green transparent layer so it looks more green. When it comes up with the word, “economy”, I thought green would fit the most. Economic products use green for their theme color, the army suits are green, and dollar bills are all green. So I thought what if I use green.

And this is how it looks like combined.

That is how the design looks like.

And for the tweaks to make it look more like a magazine, I included a few words, just like so.

The economic crash is here-

Is the end near?(The font is Arial Black.)

And I added some other news on the top of the cover design, so it looks more like a magazine.

The topics I have chosen were

With this included, I thought the cover of the ʻTimesʼ magazine would be good.

This is a photo I have rejected, since he is smiling towards the camera, and doesnʼt seem serious at all. I chose a picture where he is making more of a serious face.

So my final product ends up like this:

After some editing, I decided to make the surface of where the businessmen character run transparent. It shows that the world we have now is gradually fading away to something different.

The whole idea of this design was that I wanted to make a completely different contrast between the lives we have been having, and the sudden economic crash. The lives were good, and it was all right. So I made it cartoon characters, which I think are pretty much the same. Whatever happens, like a boulder falls upon them, it is okay, since it is only a cartoon. But then all the sudden, an explosion called the economic crash attacks them, making life difficult. So then in the background I have used collages of the images of the reality, and the massive mushroom cloud.