inside the design

Issue 22 of UPPERCASE magazine is inspired by colour. With such a broad topic, I had to find a way to tackle it within one issue.

Like many graphic designers, I thrive on constraints. So I gave myself some rules to follow: 1) The issue would be organized Roy-G-Biv-style, going from red at the front of the book through to violet at the last page. 2) The arrangement of the content and structure of the magazine would stay the same as any other issue of UPPERCASE. For example, the Beginnings column is the first few pages of the magazine and would therefore feature predominantly red imagery. I set out to find an artist whose work uses a lot of red: Canadian painter Janet Hill has been in my inspiration file for years and her paintings are punctuated with ruby accents. At the other end of the spectrum, I described the concept to longtime contributor Andrea Jenkins, who wrote a musing on her love/hate relationship with the colour purple. With these guidelines in place, I assigned and curated content—sharing my art-directed rainbow concept with our contributors and featured artists along the way.

I am so grateful to all the amazing contributors and featured artists who shared my colourful vision for this summer issue and turned in some spectacular work. UPPERCASE issue #22 will be released July 1. 

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