Make your own Wallpaper*

I previously mentioned Wallpaper*’s ‘Design Your Own Cover’ concept, created in conjunction with their forthcoming ‘Handmade’ issue – and today, the interface to create your own cover went online, for a limited time only.

I was somewhat skeptical about how much freedom they’d truly allow. So how does it play?

In short: surprisingly well. The process begins simply enough, with a basic and straightforward payment page, following which you get your unique link into the system.

Once inside, you’re presented with a very simple and easy-to-use graphic design set up. It reminds me of something I had once on my BBC Micro – limited tools, but enough to provide a large possibility space, and surprisingly fun to interact with.

Unsurprisingly, they don’t allow you to upload your own work or write your own cover lines. Instead, your toys are three pages of shapes and icons by James Joyce, seven pages of unusual photo crops (from previous Wallpaper*‘s?) created by Hort, two pages of apt slogans by Anthony Burrill (including “I made this!”, “You made this!” and “Touch me!”) in two different display fonts and three justifications, and a series of textures and full-page patterns by Nigel Robinson and Kam Tang.

You don’t get to touch the masthead, and somewhere at the front of the image has to sit a fixed size/rotation label that reads “The Handmade Issue”. Beyond that, however, there’s a decent amount of flexibility. For Hort’s pictures, you can control the size, rotation and layered position; for the others, you can also change the colours, textures, integrate patterns and so on. You can also choose to repeat any of the selections, and include as many as you like, so giving a huge variety of options, and a great deal of creative possibility.

Early attempts came out rather Sergei Sviatchenko. This was nearly the one I sent:

I was fond of the handmade-feet playoff, but in the end, I decided that it was a bit too clean, and that maybe I should create something that better reflected the single cover line I had to work with, The Handmade Issue. That, and the temptation to play with the Wallpaper* asterisk, included in the list of possible icons, was too great to miss.

As for what I actually sent to the (presumably digital) printer… I’ll put it up here when it arrives. Or it might appear in the gallery, when that goes online soon, but I doubt it. Suffice to say, the image is worth more than a thousand words explaining why I should stick to the editing side of magazines, and leave the designing to those with a modicum of artistic talent. Ahem.

Following the creation of the cover, you’re then asked to choose which Rolex ad you’d like on the back – a neat bonus piece of interaction for the sponsor.

Overall, it’s a smart idea that is well worth a play, even within the boundaries that they set, and will most likely sell a few thousand extra copies for the novelty factor. Though surely a computer-generated cover created through an online interface is anything but “handmade”?

You can sign up and create your own cover here until 8th June.