Critique: VOX food challenges cover

This week's critique features cover concepts I developed to highlight VOX Magazine's food challenges issue that will be printed during spring break. One problem that arose was defining what exactly a "food challenge" is. Apparently it's really just about people eating huge, spicy or otherwise ridiculous food in a competitive nature. All three of my drafts utilized similar color palettes, which wasn't especially intentional but something that's understandable given the color palettes of the food featured.

meaty madness

Since the story conveys a tone as though the food involved in the challenges is intimidating and confrontational, I wanted to convey a fun photo illustration that gave a sense that the food is "attacking" the challenger, which would be the reader in this case. Although I'm not sure how feasible this concept would have been in regard to the images VOX photographers had produced for the story, I really like how this one turned out.

uncomfortable eats

With this cover concept, I basically wanted to show how unappetizing these challenges can be. I honestly don't think that anybody is going to look at that and say, "Oh, that looks delicious!" I wanted them to think, "Oh God, that looks terrible. Who in their right mind would try to eat that?" Fun fact: after printing my first drafts for critique, my boyfriend pointed out that he read the title as "Uncomfortable Cats." Obviously this would have been a problem, so I would have worked with the type.

the human element

I personally thought that the most compelling part of the story is the fact that actual people choose to partake in these challenges. I definitely thought that showing somebody in the midst of a food challenge would be the best way to entice readers to pick up the issue. In the end, this is the one that the editors and art directors wanted me to rework for our final drafts.

final draft

Unfortunately, once the rest of the photos came in from the photographers, I quickly saw that there weren't any new ones that featured an individual partaking in a challenge. Instead, the photos were basically still-shots of the food, which were obviously not interesting as far as compelling cover images go. I looked through the photographer's raw files of this burger shoot, but this was still the best image as far as content and framing were concerned.

Jan wanted the burger itself to be more dominant as well as more centered, so I zoomed in on that aspect of the photo and tried to rework its position, as well as the title, to make it more of the focus. I knew the words within the title would be crucial for selling the rest of the story, so I worked with the title a lot to find the best way to convey information.

In the end I was satisfied with the end result. I think it looks like something VOX would run, even though it wasn't the final choice for the issue.