We asked HSI Productions director and graphic designer Robert Hales to come up with a snappy cover image to illustrate the feature on music in digital campaigns. He came back with a strikingly simple image inspired by a trip to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Learn more about his creative process in this month's cover diary.

June 26th
I get a call from my production company asking me if I'd be interested in creating a cover for Boards magazine. I'm quite excited - it's been ages since I did any editorial design. The theme of the issue is "music in digital advertising", focusing on the best music from recent digital campaigns. The magazine sends over a couple of proposed cover lines and I start thinking about it.

July 7th
Another call, this time to discuss concepts. By now I've settled on the idea of doing something with the "mute" icon. It's a good starting point - a symbol shared by all online advertising, and an efficient, binary way of indicating quality: good music, mute off, bad music, mute on. I pitch the idea of creating a typographic treatment based on audio control symbols - simple and striking. The magazine likes it and we make a plan to move forward.

July 12th
Fly to Montreal for a pitch meeting, then on to Amsterdam for a shoot. Amsterdam is great. I start playing around with typeface ideas in my downtime, but the results are not promising - the typeface looks way cooler in my head than it does in Illustrator. Go back to the drawing board and start casting my net wider. Ideas are explored and rejected; everything feels either too obvious or too esoteric and I start thinking about dancing architecture. During a visit to the Van Gogh Museum I'm struck by a Hans Arp exhibit, and also how tall the Dutch are.

July 15th
Still no real progress. Somewhat stumped, and with the Arp piece still rolling around in the back of my head, I decide to embrace a simple approach to the problem: rather than elaborate on the theme of "music in digital advertising" I would try to express it directly with as few elements as possible. Feeling happier I return to the "mute" icon as a starting point and start playing around with ideas. Many combinations of elements are explored, but I keep coming back to the simplest: a mute symbol with a speech bubble. Once there I spend some time getting the shape of the bubble right (I'm going for an Elvis look), distort the type to look like loud audio played out of tiny computer speakers, and I'm finished. Live with it for a day or two and find I still like the design - usually a good sign. I submit to the magazine with fingers crossed, and a request that no further cover copy be added if at all possible.

July 18th
The magazine's response is positive but they have some reservations about their print stock being able to do it justice. Bleed-through from the ad on the inside cover could be an issue and without knowing what the final ad will look like they have no way of telling how serious a problem it might be. Several solutions are proposed but neither myself or the magazine are particularly enthused about the necessary compromises and we decide to run with it as is. I don't mind some bleed-through - I think it's kind of appropriate. I wave a fond farewell to Amsterdam and head home to wait anxiously for the results.

Two versions of Robert Hales' cover image for the August 2009 issue.

The August 2009 issue of Boards is now online. Read it here.

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