A Long, Strange Trip

Easily my most famous magazine cover. This one went round the world, it was in The New York Times, was rewteeted and shared everywhere, it had legs. And it’s easy to see why: its a bold, fun, unconventional take on the usual mag cover. When it was pitched to me the original idea was a simple play on Tower Records’ iconic bag design, which would have been perfectly fine. But I wanted to try to take it further. What if we took one of the main images from the feature (on Tower Records founder Sacramento’s own Russ Solomon and Colin Hanks’ documentary on the man and his empire) and designed it as if that was the cover then photoshopped one of Tower’s famous yellow bags over the top? I’d make it look as real as possible, right down to the texturing on the letters and the barcode. From a distance this would look real, just as if you’d picked it up from Tower back in the day. Kudos to Sactown for following me on this unorthodox concept. It was definitely a bold step and it paid off big time. The cover was a hit, even getting posted to twitter by Hanks himself (who was a very good sport about having his face obscured on our cover.)

  • Client
    Sactown Magazine