Some visual parallels

I have a friend who edited the school’s political magazine, and she roped me in to do some cover pages for them. At the time the Arab Spring was the topic on everyone’s minds, so it – obviously enough – became the theme in that edition.

As usual with this type of student pro bono work, I had a very quick turnover time. I suppose it’s mainly because non-designers have no idea how long it takes to come up with something really good; it’s not just pretty pictures, people! But anyway, in a couple of hours time I managed to come up with something.

I decided to use a fist. Duh, right? Now if only I had seen Print Magazine’s article on How to Cover a Revolution. The fist is obviously a common motif in revolution, and there are a couple of good examples in the article.

Let’s compare my favourite (bottom) with the cover I did (on top).

Hmmm yeah I like the other one better It’s got enough visual detail to be interesting, whereas mine is – a fist on this radial vector background thing. Meh. I had wanted to draw a fist with some Arabic calligraphy details in it, but there was no time! No time!