Neufang | Magazine Project

The Story

After multiple failed attempts at making raising chicken in your backyard look cool, I went searching for the old stand-by of my favorite bands. I did some searching for good stories on a couple of bands before I stumbled upon a press junket for Yonder Mountain String Band. There were high quality photos and a nice little story about the band and their new CD.

This story is nice because it focused on how they were once again reaching for new grounds. This is what I have always loved about the band, so it was easy for me glorify them. The accompanying photo shoot was just too good to turn down also.

Typefaces:

When searching for a typeface for the magazine flag, I knew I wanted something traditional; after all, bluegrass is about tradition. Baskerville Old Face really had nice details, and when I started to skew the letters around it reminded me of musical notes or grass blowing in the wind. It was a pleasant surprise.

As for the headline I mixed Didot and Neuva. I was really looking for something unique, since Yonder Mountain is really taking bluegrass to new places. Didot is a modern typeface, and was probably from around the same time that people starting changing the violin into the fiddle. I thought it was appropriate.

As for the body text, I just wanted easy readability. I chose Century, on a tip from a professor I know.

Photos:

As mentioned before, I hit the mother-load of great photos on a website from Vanguard Records Publicity. They were just waiting for someone to put them into a publication. I did get a couple of extra photos; one from a Google search for “Red Rocks,” and the other inspired my sidebar while perusing the Yonder Mountain String Band website.

Color:

I used a lot of grayscale, because I liked the intensity it lends to the normally goofy group. I borrowed the grey on the cover from the bricks. I borrowed the green and brown used in the spread from their shirts in the color pictures on the first spread. The blue on the cover was obviously a reference to ‘blue’grass.