Foxing Quarterly, volume 1, number 1 is now available. I served as the art director for this edition and provided artwork for the front and back cover.

Foxing Quarterly is a Print-Only Creative Space for Writers & Artists. Their Kickstarter is over, but this video is a good description of the journal:

Daniel Mejia, one of Foxing Quarterly’s editors, contacted me about doing the cover for their inaugural issue this past summer.

As we worked together, my role expanded to art director. I studied design in school in the 90s, and were it not for comics, design is probably the direction my career would have taken. So I was excited when this opportunity arose.

Daniel’s initial idea for the cover was something between a library poster, you know the ones that say “read” in bold letters on the top, and my cover for Cinema Sewer #5.

I think the back cover is closer to the library poster.

Once the covers were done, I started working on the interior.

I like doing different types of projects because it gives me an excuse to research. For example, I realized pretty early on that I have a lot to learn about typography. I picked up a few books on the recommendation of the Fox Is Black.

I approached each story and poem differently to create visual interest and an incentive for the casual browser to look at the book longer than if each typeset page was formatted the same. For visual art and comics, I avoided any stylization, deferring to the artwork.

This story references a newspaper article:

This one reminded me of an old sci-fi story:

This story features a spinning Puppetro, so I flipped every other letter in the title as if the letters were spinning:

I based this layout on a flier for a children’s event I saw somewhere:

I found this graph paper in my in-laws attic:

I laid out the contributors pages at the end of the book to resemble newspaper personal ads:

A lot of the ideas for the layout are based on the “print-only” format of Foxing. I wanted to emphasize paper and print in the design, and scanned quite a few different papers for textural elements.

Besides typography books, I also looked at a few design books such the Last Magazine by David Renard, Fresh Dialogue 7: Making Magazines by James Truman, Emigre No. 70, it is beautiful…then gone by Martin Venezky, Fanzines by Trill Teags. Here’s a tip for budget-conscious artists if your library doesn’t have the book you’re looking for – I purchased a used copy of the Last Magazine on Amazon, with shipping it was less than 5 bucks.

After I finish a project, I like to go to book stores or comic book shops and wander around. When I’m working on a project, I tend to focus on it to the exclusion of almost everything else around me. So when I finish, I usually have less time pressure in terms of deadlines. After finishing Foxing 1, I found a David Carson art directed issue of Ray Gun at Half Price Books for 50 cents.

You can order a copy of Foxing Quarterly here.

You can also pick up a copy of Foxing from me at Copacectic Comics this Saturday night (December 1st, 7 – 11 pm). Details here.

And I’ll be in Philadelphia on Sunday, December 16th at Locust Moon Comics Festival. More info here.

If you’re a writer or artist interested in submitting work to Foxing, here are some guidelines.

Some unused logo ideas:

Here’s the original art from the front cover. If you’d like to hang it over your mantle this holiday season, email me.