Marejada 09: The cover that didn't make it

Look what i found in my archive of works. It is the initial concept cover for Marejada 2009. Marejada is the literary folio of Ateneo de Zamboanga University under its official publicaiton, Beacon Newsmagazine. It is a collection of peoms, short stories, and artworks revolving on a certain theme such as "Memories", "7 Deadly Sins" or "Back to Basics". For 2009, the theme was "?" which was really unique. This was my last third and last time to be the creative director and layout artist for marejada. For the cover, we want to incorporate a sense of wonder, curiosity and imagination with the design. We had a photoshoot with three models that was used as digital art for the dividers. This particular photo gave me an idea for the cover. I really wanted to use cool and dark colors that reminds us of space or the deep blue ocean. As you can see the girl doesn't have an eye which i intended to give it a surreal feel. It also symbolizes our blindness about the truth, thus, sparking curiosity which leads to discovery. She is holding a light bulb which is a typical symbol for an idea or knowledge. We intentionally excluded the name of the book "Marejada" in the front cover to add more curiosity. Instead, we just used "M" that blends with the smoke.

However, there was an issue raised about this design. Accordingly, it is to feministic and they don't want a person to represent Marejada. I still want to stick with the "M" with the smokes and the color scheme so i just made few revisions. I replaced the photo of the girl with objects and symbols randomly floating in space inspired by surreal artist Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory." We are all happy with the final design and it was aleready approved for printing. We are really pushing the boundaries for this folio since it is the last year for most of the staff. Instead of the usual glossy paper and matte cover, we had it printed in book paper but in hard bound matte cover. It is was the most ambitious and complicated folio we ever made in Beacon. Aside from the vague cover, we also deviated on how we arranged the contents. Usually, it is divided into three groups: poems, short stories, artworks. We also also want to give a story by using the order of the entries. We grouped them into four categories: Wonder, Confusion, Dream and Inspiration. It was well-conceptualized and all our creative plans were realized. Thanks to our ever-supportive and genius EIC, Ate Maimai, our collaborators, the writers and artists who contributed their masterpieces published in this folio. I really miss doing stuff like this and i won't ever forget my beacon years :') Here's the final covers together with the spine.