Design Strategy:
Eleven years ago my mom enrolled me in a beach camp and I caught my first wave. Six years later when I was 14 years old I earned a surfing sponsor who paid for my boards, wetsuits, and competitions until I left for the beachless campus of Syracuse University. I grew up with Surfer Magazine and Seventeen Magazine sitting on top one another in my bedroom. And so I chose to do a surfing spread.
The best story I found was almost a travel log of a surfer’s adventures in Baja California – Mexico. The story itself is a visual feature, and contained a lot of imagery for me to draw from. The emphasis on the story was this man’s constant traveling around Baja in search of the perfect wave.
As a result, I was able to find great images that matched this idea of traveling in an old car with nothing but a surfboard and a friend around the barren desert of Mexico. Surfing is a graphic sport in itself, and one of the key elements in a surfing spread is the abundance of photos. In order to incorporate all these great images I was finding and wanted to use, Paul and I brainstormed the idea of a panel of images. This way the story is told in a storyboard kind of manner, depicting this search for the perfect beach break.
Green was the best choice to use an a gestalt element: too much blue is often overwhelming in a surfing feature, yet the green pairs will with the photographs and contains the fluidity of the spreads.
Breaking up text came in the form of visual elements such as the surfboards lining the columns of the first spread, a sidebar and drop quotes, and a surfboard-shaped sidebar, which put an unusual twist on a usual magazine element.
Choice of Typefaces:
My headline, drop cap, and headline for my surfboard sidebar are hand drawn in Adobe Illustrator. The Myriad style family is used for most accent purposes: captions, folios, sidebars, drop quotes, sell lines, etc. Bembo is used for the body of the feature because it’s almost scrubby and playful as a serif font, which matched the mood of the article. The quotes used for drop quotes are also hand drawn elements.
Visuals:
Many surfing images are taken for horizontal use; it was extremely hard to find a cover photo that worked vertically. As much as I didn’t want to (Paul twisted my arm), I used a photo of myself in a recent surf competition taken by one of my teammates with a water camera.
Cover photo: Baja 2008 Competition by Austin Somers, surf competition in Mexico in 2008.
Ad: Will Webber advertisement. http://www.will.webber.net.au/surfboards/zirtech.html
Wow spread
Baja Bad by John Ashley. http://paddlesurf.net/2007
Jump 1
Panel 1:
#1, 2, 4: La Ventana Baja http://surfingsports.com/2010
#3: Surfing in Cabo San Lucas by Chris Burkard http://surfmusic.blogsome.com
Surfboards:
Nash Epoxy www.stateside.co.uk
7S Dart Surfboard www.surfsailaustralia.com.au
Woody Koa Surboard www.floorboardz.com
Jump 2
Panel 2: Surfer Magazine, February 2010 (images #1, 2, 3)
#1: Julian Wilson by Todd Glaser
#2: The Border by Grant Ellis
#3: Gold Coast by Grant Ellis
#4: La Ventana Baja http://surfingsports.com/2010
Sidebar:
7S Dart Surfboard www.surfsailaustralia.com.au
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