Fortune launched its iPad edition last week and we were excited to be a part of it, creating the magazine's app icon as well as its first cover — and an animated cover at that. Many thanks to Creative Director John Korpics, a longtime friend and client, for including us.
The icon.
John, an icon himself, asked us to create an icon that would stand apart from the crowd. He specifically wanted to shed the Armor All sheen that you see on most icons, a layer of lacquer automatically applied by Apple. We figured out how to turn it off -- thanks Google! -- and started doodling in Adobe Illustrator to present John with some general compositions:
The best way to go, it seemed, was the solitary F. John agreed, and we proceeded to F up his magazine, creating about two dozen renderings in LightWave, the most promising of which are shown below:
The winner? A combination platter, mixing the grid with the blue button and adding a fever line. It debuted as Fortune's Twitter icon a few weeks back, and now appears as the magazine's app icon, splash screen and atop the iPad masthead:
The cover.
A few weeks later, John called for a cover illustration for what happened to be Fortune's first iPad issue. The subject: Google, and it's potential vulnerability as search becomes more commonplace and new competitors emerge. It would be our second Google cover for Fortune — the first had President Obama peering through Google-inspired glasses last November. Once again ... thanks Google!
We executed three concepts: cracked Google, discarded Google and the winner, Google turned to goo.
Here's how it appears in print:
We've been jonesing to do an animated iPad cover ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the device earlier this year, and finally we had our chance. We've done several covers for Time since its iPad edition launched, but the WoodWing software hadn't yet matured to the point where cover animation would be feasible. We reworked our LightWave render to add motion, which took about a day and a half.
Looking forward to the next one. And the next one. Its exciting to consider the many ways to add interest, information and impact to covers and spreads, leveraging the magic canvas we've been provided by Apple. Thanks again to John, Fortune, Time Inc.'s technology team, and WoodWing.