Sell sheet for Guinness World Records column

What can I say when I get the chance to design the sheet for the new syndicated Guinness World Records newspaper column? I had visions of the world’s heaviest twins sitting on their motorcycles, the dude with the longest fingernails, the man with a kazillion cigarettes in his mouth.

Unfortunately, I learned many of those images are not owned by Guinness World Records. Guinness can only use them in an editorial context. This sheet is a promotional sheet, thereby outside the realm of proper use. Guinness owns only a handful of images, but when I saw straw-boy, he had to be the poster child for this sheet. Just look at him! Two hundred ten straws in his mouth!

Much of the recent Guinness books have this futuristic style which I find very bizarre from what I remember of Guinness as a child. Guinness reminds me of vaudeville, circus-type aesthetic. So the trick with this sheet was merging the futuristic look of their current books, their existing color palette, and what most people think of when they think of Guinness.

I admit that I did tweak the color palette used in the layout (the logo in the lower right, however, does remain unchanged). Their colors were too bright for this design, so I darkened them down a bit. I’m quite happy with the result, as were the people over at Guinness World Records. They mentioned they wanted more designs like mine!

Sell sheet for Rick Steves’ column

Rick Steves—THE name in travel guides. He’s now writing a newspaper column, and Tribune Media Services is syndicating him to newspapers across the country. I designed the sell sheet to help the salespeople to convince newspaper editors to buy his column.

Since Rick Steves already has a great brand with his guidebooks, I picked up the basic look from his jacket covers—yellow Futura bold condensed on a field of royal blue. But I expanded it a bit more, made it more fun, and added more yellow for some happy pop. And the design elements also add more fun, with Rick’s head poking out of a circle with rays bursting out. A fun eyebrow to highlight that this is a weekly column. And a bunch of photoshop work adding soft shadows to pull it together into a cohesive look.

Even the back of the sheet has some fun treatment for the call to action. Usually, the call to action is put into a rectangular box. But here, I pulled the curved eyebrow from the front and used it on the back to add some appeal. And I also dropped another photo of Rick into the call. He’s such a TV personality; I wanted to use his image as much as possible to drive home that it’s his personality that editors are going to get into their newspapers.

Folder for Insider Trading database

Insider Trading is one of Tribune Media Service’s columns. It provides information about how CEO’s stock portfolios. I developed a “James Bondish” look for this folder. The glass-looking cover implies how this column allows you to look inside this confidential trading information. The circles evoke a target, similar to how this column provides a focus for which stocks to invest in. The illustration is mine too.

Sell sheet for Dear Pharmacist column

The Dear Pharmacist column gives a weekly dose of pharmaceutical, herbal and nutritional advice. The design of this sheet has a pharmaceutical quality, yet it also brings in the soothing, calm, down-to-earth feeling that Suzy Cohen brings to her column. Examples of natural remedies and prescription drugs are sprinkled throughout the piece. The line graphics bring a precision and clerical feeling. Contrasting with the line graphic is a soft Photoshop blending of images.

The font Adobe Jenson has some tremendous classic swooshes, as seen in the “RPh” that give this design a sophisticated look. Myriad brings a contemporary feel to complement the natural feel of Jenson.