Deconstructing an Award-Winning Cover
A couple of weeks ago, I received a Hermes gold award for the Spring issue of American Entomologist magazine. The collaborative input I receive from the publications team at the Entomological Society of America means everything to me. I am thankful for their support and encouragement and for their faith in my creative vision. When everything clicks, you get award-winning results. The award was given for the design of the entire Spring issue of American Entomologist magazine.
The Challenge:
This issue of AE had a cover focus on the new column “ETHOS,” which will be a regular forum for interdisciplinary conversations about ethics in entomology. Despite sustained interest in ethics among entomologists, there is a lack of dedicated spaces for regular discussions about the topic. The ETHOS column in American Entomologist magazine will be a small part of the field’s solution to this long-standing problem. We wanted the cover to be eye-catching and have a strong visual connection to the topic, engaging those both new to the field of entomology and older readers who have been wrestling with ethics in entomology for their entire career.
The Solution:
The image that I created to illustrate the topic of ethics in entomology is a photo collage designed with multiple, individual images. The main (base) image is of the female entomologist seated at the crossroads. After selecting the base image, I then used AI to help me find images within the same color palette and style that I was looking for to visually illustrate the complexity of the moral landscape that entomologists face today. The final illustration was carefully crafted in Adobe Photoshop. The final design draws on some of the more fundamental principles of design: balance, contrast, emphasis, proportion, movement, and repetition.
About the Hermes awards:
The Hermes award honors the messengers and creators of traditional and emerging media. An international competition for creative professionals, the Hermes Creative Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). Established in 1995, AMCP is one of the largest and oldest, third-party evaluators of creative work in the world.
This year, judges evaluated more than 6,500 entries. Winners were selected from categories grouped under advertising, publications, marketing/ branding, integrated marketing, public relations/communications, electronic media, and pro bono.
