An imagined cover design for luxury lifestyle & travel magazine, Condé Nast Traveler.

I was very attracted to the style of the magazine – minimal with the main focus on the cover photo and the unique the logo/masthead. In my research, I learned that the logo typeface was specially designed for the magazine by Type Supply.

For the concept of this cover design, I was inspired by my own travels and experiences in Asia.

I had lived abroad in Hong Kong for several years and also had traveled around various parts of Asia, so I wanted to use one of my own photos from my collection for my design. I got the idea for my main cover story based on cover story examples from past Condé Nast Traveler issues.

My cover design is centered around a photo I had taken while I was inside a train station in Japan. Japan is just one country in East Asia where the public transportation system is very advanced, and high-speed transit is a part of everyday life. My cover’s lead story is about this high-speed transit system that exists in five different countries/regions in Asia.

My original photograph has some very vibrant colors which pop out – the turquoise of the train station’s poles, plus the yellow and red signs. I chose to use the same red color for the logo/masthead for a strong contrast, which I had recreated in Illustrator using the pen tool. To keep the focus on the photo and the logo, I chose a simple, sans-serif typeface for all other text which is all in white.

Photography: Julie Chew