Critique: L Boogie

This week, cover group two, which I am part of, was assigned to design the covers for the feature that will run in Vox on 2/16. The story is about "L Boogie", more commonly known as Lonnie Barker, also known as Hope Hop. (Yes, he has many identities.) Whatever you want to call him, the story is about a man, hailing from Oklahoma who escaped a life that many thought he was destined for. He now has a family and is a Gospel rapper, straying from many topics that other rappers speak about such as women, money, drugs and violence.

Above is my first cover. I was drawn to this photograph initially because it seemed as though Barker was looking towards the sky for guidance and inspiration. I wanted to play on the idea of good vs. evil, except holy vs. hip-hop, because many people today think that things in the world of hip hop cannot be "good."  Please excuse the white box! I'm going to fix this, but I figured it was important to include since this is how my document printed out. Lesson learned, don't cut things out on Illustrator because even though they look cut out on your screen, they won't print or export as a cut out.

Cover number two: I wanted to play off of the typical hip-hop idea and I thought that graffiti and a brick wall would convey this message well. Creating the graffiti was a bit of a challenge for me. I found an awesome online graffiti creating website, but of course I couldn't use it for the publication. Therefore, I attempted to create my own version of graffiti in photoshop. This method took me more than two hours. You can't really see it, but there is a lot of color layering and blending techniques going on.  Again, note the white boxes (yes, they're on the last one too...). I'm not sure what Illustrator's reason for this one is, because it printed off perfectly fine. However, I'm starting to think that I should shy away from Illustrator cut outs...

Cover number three: this was more abstract and less to-the-point, which, looking back, isn't the best idea for a magazine cover. A cover should draw the reader in and give an accurate message about what stories they will be reading on the inside of the magazine.  Nonetheless, I liked this idea even though it wouldn't work for the Lonnie Barker story.  I made the background green to mimic a chalkboard, and I wanted to insert Barker's actual lyrics on the board in a chalkboard-ish font.  The headphones are plugged into the apple (which, again, looks much cooler without those lame white boxes...) to imply that Barker is inspired by today's youth (which is mentioned on the cover in words as well).

Based on the feedback that I got on Thursday, I plan on doing a combination of the first two. I have some ideas that I'm playing around with, so just sit tight and see what I come up with!