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Newsweek Cover

OCTOBER 18, 2009
This is a cover I did for this week's International edition of Newsweek Magazine.  The story, titled "Everything You Know About China is Wrong", overturns most of the conventional wisdom about China's economy, from it's handling of the current financial crisis to the country's attitude toward environmental issues.  Mao upside down seemed to be the right way to go.   Some other cover ideas I tried are below.

I usually sit down with some sheets of paper and start quickly jotting down ideas, drawing quality is not important to me at this point, just trying to focus on what the story is about.  I had a headline to work with and that helps guide the image sometimes, I wanted to accentuate the word "wrong" in some way.   Showing Mao's portrait upside down popped into the thinking as well.

Some of the other cover concepts that I submitted.   For most magazine covers, I like to work with the logo, headline, etc., whenever possible.   It helps me figure out the details and balance of the whole cover.  The image and headline can sometimes work very well together.  Sometimes everything is changed after I submit my sketches, but they seemed to like this treatment and kept it close to my sketch on the final cover.  Thanks again to Adolfo for a nice collaboration.

© 2024 Edel Rodriguez