Crowdsourcing a front cover

OK Periodical has experimented with crowdsourcing to create the cover of their latest issue, above. It’s a brave thing to do, particularly when your magazine is so design-orientated and the last cover was so strong. To celebrate the issue theme of ‘Repeat’, the team divided the cover design into 400 tiny segments, each to be recreated by volunteers called to action by the magazine’s website. The rules were simple:

• Your 'bit' should still be recognizable to the original 'bit'.
• We want you to send it digitally back to us.
• RGB colormode.
• Same size and resolution as original.
• No use of Photoshop filters.

I took part in the project – here’s the segment I got sent:

To which I added lots of little magazine covers:

I’m sure there are plenty of cute little ideas within all the segments, but as a whole I’m not convinced it works. Apart from an overall lack of cohesion, the segments themselves are too small. I guess there are some things that aren’t suited to crowdsourcing. Still, they’re to be applauded for trying the experiment.

Happily the inside is as busy and inspired as usual, the sample spread below being typically playful. Buy a copy here.

The guys behind the publication, William, Joost and Bouwe from OK Parking, are planning a festival of independent magazines for Amsterdam next April. More news as and when.