Florian BachledaDesign DirectorVibe How'd You Do That?American Magazine Conference 2005October 17, 2005Fajardo, Puerto Rico
The title of this presentation is “How’d You Do That?”, so I’m going to show some work from Vibe and share some of the thinking behind it.
I started at Vibe almost five years ago, and one thing we talked about developing was our own typographic language. I knew that whatever we came up with, it had to be something that highlighted the photography of Vibe.
In thinking of what we could do, I remember admiring designers that created frameworks for their designs, like Fred Woodward did at Rolling Stone, and Bob Newman at Details eight years ago. Fred did this by keeping his designs within this particular type of border called an oxford rule. He said he felt like he could use any typeface he wanted, as long as it was framed by these borders.
Bob based his design on the Blue Note jazz covers that Reid Miles did in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Maybe most importantly, we did not want any predictable typographic depictions of hip hop — like graffiti, spray paint, or distressed lettering.
So, we settled on building a look based on two ideas. The first, was using letters and acronyms. We felt it was fitting for a hip hop magazine because so many of the musicians use letters and acronyms in their stage names. The second idea was taking SOME of the principles of a type of jazz called modal jazz. In modal jazz, the musicians would settle on a predetermined framework of scales to play — as opposed to chords — then they would improvise within that.
So... using those two ideas as the game plan — at the start of each issue, we would choose a particular typeface as the framework, then the designers would improvise from there.
Here’s three spreads from one issue using the typeface Vibe Gothic Bold. This is Faith Evans, Johnny Depp, and that’s Lenny Kravitz (in case you don’t recognize him).
Here’s three spreads from another issue where we drew up our own typeface. This is Eminem, India Arie, and Sean Paul.
Every April, we publish a Hollywood issue. One year the package was divided into two parts, between musicians and actors. So, we took a typical film strip and divided it into 2 parts.... the sprocket hole part, and the strip part.
We designed letters made out of strips for the musicians... This is Fabulous (not the layout —that’s actually his name, though I do like this layout a lot. DJ Kay Slay.
And we used the sprocket part for HEADLINE TREATMENTS for the actors. This is Cedric the Entertainer, Devon Aoki.
And here’s just a few more individual spreads from different issues. This is Beyonce. Blu Cantrell. Nas (with his army of letter “N”’s). Gabrielle Union. Mary J. Blige. Sean Paul (again).
Eventually, we wanted to EVOLVE the letter treatments more, so, where we could, we started playing around with the idea of multiple meanings. And I'm going to break down a few examples.
This is a feature on Jamie Foxx. This was a Q & A, so we first had a page of just the questions. The headline was “Moment of Clarity”, so we then BLURRED the questions. We needed to find someplace for the headline and the letter “J”, so again playing off the words “Moment of Clarity”...we designed a thought balloon in the shape of a letter “J”, and placed the headline inside that.
This is a feature on Bobby Brown. Here he is taking a little nap. Playing off the idea of counting sheep, we designed the sheep to be made up of little Letter “B”’s. Even his little legs here.
By the way, many of these spreads were designed by Wyatt Mitchell and Alice Alves, my design team at Vibe.
Also riffing on the shape of certain letters is this feature on the rapper Young Jeezy. This is simply 2 letter “J”’s arranged in a way that by flopping one of them, we get the letter “Y”, and there’s the letter “J”.
Put together, they form a tong, grabbing a block of ice, to correspond to the headline, “Cold as Ice”.
This is a feature on Nelly. Starting off with the way his arms are crossed in this photo, we first had a big letter “N”, and combined it with a flopped letter “N,” which formed 2 letter “M”s, to echo the headline, which was “Marked Man.”
And this is a feature on Amerie. She’s half African-American, and half Korean, so we first designed this. This is actually a… letter “A”, combined with a Korean character “A.”
We felt this looked a little too confusing, so we just keep the Korean character “A”.
And here’s some more of the recent spreads we’ve done. This is Usher. The Ying Yang Twins (the left page is just the right page flopped). Flavor Flav. Olivia (the only female member of 50 Cent’s G-Unit crew). Quentin Tarantino. Alicia Keys. Outkast (by the way, the letter treatment is on the far right...).
Here are some that are not letter treatments, and, just a more, traditional type of design solution. This is Erykah Badu (back in school). Hip Hop Producers. Barack Obama (our lone black star in the Senate).
And a Mississippi fashion story. This was a fashion story that created a little bit of controversy in the office. It features Terrence Howard and Eva Mendes acting out a troubled, and possibly abusive relationship. Some thought that it was too serious a subject matter to be done as a fashion story. Others argued that, for better or worse, it was a part of some people’s lives.
This is the last spread. We thought about switching the order of these two pictures so the sequence would show her first closing the door on him, then being left alone in the end. But, we decided to keep the original sequence. Now it’s open to interpretation whether he’s trying to get back in, or if he’s being pushed out the door.
This is a very troubling feature on how some men do physically abuse their wives or girlfriends. The illustration was a little too graphic for some people, but our Editor-in-Chief Mimi Valdes stood by it, and we ran it. It’s interesting how an illustration can sometimes disturb people more than the actual facts reported in a story.
Another theme we’ve explored at Vibe has been based on sampling. We used this theme in one of our past illustration issues. We decided to sample some of the great fine artists of the 20th century, and have some current illustrators work in their styles.
This is a feature on Ludacris done in the style of Picasso. The singer Keith Murray done in the style of Basquiat. This is a feature about Cops on Steroids done in the style of Keith Haring.
Finally, here’s some covers. Jay-Z announced in late ‘03 that he was retiring as a rapper. As the design of this cover took shape, it occurred to me we were doing everything you were not supposed to do on a cover. It had a very dark background. The subject has his back to the camera. He’s not smiling. The main cover lines were not in the upper left corner, they were on the bottom...and they were tilted. So — of course — this ends up being one of our best-selling issues of the year.
This is our Sexy Issue cover with Brandy. She’s been on many Vibe covers before, so here we decided to photograph her in an... unexpected and surprising way.
The movie “Scarface” is, in many ways the Hip Hop generation’s “Citizen Kane.” For this year’s Hollywood issue, we did a package on The 50 Movies That Shaped Hip Hop, and “Scarface” was #1. So for our cover, we re-created the film poster with 50 Cent in the lead. (I guess our readers liked it, because this image ended up being bootlegged on a lot of t-shirts around town. So, that was nice.
Okay, this is the last one. Earlier this year, we wanted to address on a cover the unsolved murders of Tupac, Jam Master Jay, and Biggie — 3 hip hop heroes. Mimi had the idea to base the cover on the famous George Lois-designed Esquire issue from 1968. We commissioned photographer Jim Porto, who went down to Arlington National Cemetery and shot for hours, until he got just the right angle. After going through dozens of photos to select headshots of Tupac, Jay, and Biggie, we then hired 3 models that physically resembled them, and Jim put it all together and we had a cover.
So, I thought I should phone George Lois himself, and ask him to come in and check out this cover we’re working on. He comes in, he looks at it for what seems like... the longest 5 seconds of my life, and he said he liked it. He understood right away why we did it.
And this is George with the cover. And this is the expression George makes... when he likes something.
So, there it is. Thank you very much for your time.
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