The Guardian bright & hopeful cover design
The Guardian | Manchester International Festival (MIF) Supplement Cover Design
Tips, Tricks & Features
The design is an intentionally playful two part experience
You see the rainbow
You learn that you can read the rainbow
This creates a pleasing sense of surprise and wonder and in turn a desire to decipher the simple yet playful puzzle.
The Guardian approached me to produce a feature cover to promote to celebrate the 200 year anniversary of the Guardian and the upcoming international event Manchester International Festival (MIF). I worked with their design and marketing team to produce a piece that was on brand, fit for the brief and, sit well with the mandatory page furniture.
The brief, in a bit of a nutshell was that the cover needed to be dynamic, celebratory (coming out of lockdown) and really inviting. They gave me the prompts love and human connections, division and togetherness, equality and social change, from which I created the copy Love is a Catalyst to suit.
The design I created was then illustrated through the rest of the magazine to create a coherent whole.
‘The award-winning artist and designer Micah Purnell created our front cover. Renowned for his distinctive, inspiring billboard art, Purnell lives in Manchester and has worked with the NHS, Elbow and the University of Manchester among others. Of this image, Love is a Catalyst, he says “Love is an action, a four letter word, a gritty, head-down-and-work kind of word.
It’s this kind of love which is a catalyst for change. Along the way we can expect good days and bad - but when they come together, we can enjoy a moment of kaleidoscopic wonder and hope” He adds “As a proud Mancunian and festival attendee over the years, I’m really happy to have produced this piece.”’
