Ad Age Global Issue Cover

I just completed this cover design for Advertising Age’s annual Global Issue design contest. The challenge was to create a cover that creatively represents the marketing / media / advertising worlds—so it was a pretty wide open brief.

I tried to think about this project like designing a logo or writing a core message—what is the most basic idea I could associate to advertising if I tried to explain it? The word that surfaced was: perception. Advertising is a lot of things, but really, it’s us helping create the way people interpret a brand. Since this idea—at it’s core—is simple, I wanted to use rather simple and well-known imagery to explain it in a smart way. This being a global issue, I also wanted to make sure that imagery would be recognizable in any country, and feel the scientific illustrations I used are understood worldwide. While I don’t think there is one right way to advertise, I do think there’s a kind of artistic science to it. And that’s what I wanted to show and feel I successfully did.

The winners and finalists are announced at the end of this month. Grand prize is a trip to Cannes Lions this June—fingers crossed!