enfineitzstil

 

 

Cover for EnergyBiz November/December 2008, with my very own photo illustration.

 

The CEO of Energy Central, Steve Drazga, prefers not to publish photographs on the covers of EnergyBiz, which is an Energy Central property.
Editor-in-chief Mary Rosenberg suggested I modify the photo to make it tasteful. I had an idea about this technique of photo-illustration using modified alpha-channels of the faces from the photographs we hired from Gerry Lewin.
The colors and transparency were a last-minute modification. My first draft had solid colors for the figures.
While I usually blog about my clients and vendors, in this case I’m blowing my own horn. Gerry Lewin of Portland, Oregon, is due credit for the mug shots.
The challenge with these covers, and the reason I agree with Steve Drazga about avoiding photographs for covers, is because the subjects of these features are very left-brained and are typically conservative and mediocre. Successful photographs of people on magazine covers requires them to be open to the bizarre fancies of both the art director and photographer, to be a bit open-minded, and to have a slight entertainer’s disposition. Odds are that the average energy executive will not have these characteristics.
About 97% of the covers we’ve published for this magazine since we launched it in 2004 have been some sort of illustration.