Digital Graveyard: Covers And Artwork For Genetic Disorder Magazine, Part 5

(Click front and back designs for bigger.)

I mentioned before that Larry from Genetic Disorder would provide me with copies of the articles from forthcoming issues to generate cover ideas. Nothing much inspired me for issue #18 in 2006 other than a really funny piece about Sambo's restaurant. The article reminded me that I had in my possession a vintage coffee mug from the erstwhile family feed trough, so I realized that this gave me an opportunity to indulge in one of my favorite obsessions: bad food photography! I thought I'd give it a whirl. The good thing about attempting bad food photography is that... well, it's difficult to mess it up, right? It's much easier to make food look awful than it is to make it look good.

The National Gallery of Art serves breakfast for staff members prior to opening hours, and every Wednesday is pancake day, so on that particular Wednesday I came prepared with my camera, tripod,  and a plastic menu card holder (given to me by Pony Pal Ricky Rebel!). I ordered pancakes from Rose, my favorite cafeteria worker, and told her that her flapjacks were going to be stars, much to her bafflement. I located a table facing a blank wall, set up the shot, snapped about a dozen pictures, and then... sat down and ate most of my breakfast. I then adjusted the remains to look gross, and got the second shot for the back cover:

The cigarette butt and the cockroach are, by the way, Photoshopped in.

For the contents of the magazine, I designed a fake menu for the plastic holder, using an illustration of, once again, Li'l Kunty, this time in the guise of Sambo's late, post-racist logo:

The "menu" was, like the roach and butt, Photoshopped into the scene (the plastic holder just had a piece of blank paper in it). I was thrilled to call back the cat from my first Genetic Disorder cover to play the tiger.

Here's the Li'l Kunty logo by itself:

This time I didn't do an "ad" for my illustration services on the inside-front cover, because I was no longer seeking such work.

Overall, I'm super happy with how this one came out. It's probably the slickest of all the covers I've done for GD.

Next up: the most recent, and hopefully not the last in this series, features one of my other favorite things, shoes, as well as a frightening doughnut and my own hand.

Part one is here, two is here, three is here, four is here, and six is here. Purchase copies of these wonderful zines here.   Or on eBay if you aren't very bright.