Riverfront Times is an alternative weekly newspaper based in St. Louis, owned by the Viilage Voice Media chain of newspapers.
Tom Carlson has been the senior art director at the paper since 1988. He does a lot of smart, cool work.
Carlson is one of a number of alt weekly art directors who are doing amazing, creative work with their designs, crafting cover after cover from scratch, on super-low budgets, with limited deadlines, using primarily stock imagery and self-created artwork. Last month SPD posted an article about the cover designs of Alexander Flores at the
Dallas Observer. We'll have more design from other weekly papers later in January.
As free papers, these weeklies are removed from the restrictions of newsstand sales and subscription renewals. WIth improved printing and reproduction capabilities (although their art directors would probably disagree about the quality), these papers have been able to get much more sophisticated in their cover designs, now oftentimes rivaling and surpassing other, slicker publications in their regions. There is some brilliant publication design going on under the radar at many of these weekly papers; it's a highly-fertile ground for creativity and originality.
Carlson's best covers at Riverfront Times are complete self-creations, made with stock imagery and Carlson's own technical skills. What photography he uses on the cover is generally by former staff photographer Jennifer Silverberg, and is made-to-order to Carlson's creative direction. "My cover philosophy is object-oriented. I like to go for visual solutions with clarity and directness that render text all but unnecessary. I tend to avoid decorative type choices and use type that just is, and let the words (when we have them) do their job."
You can find more examples of Tom Carlson's wonderful work at
Riverfront Times here.
(Above): St Louie Chop Suey cover, November 16, 2006. Photograph by Jennifer Silverberg; type, design, and digital manipulation by Tom Carlson.
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