About the fabulous covers of the Trends journals
You may (not) know that I was the full-time editor of Trends in Microbiology (TiM) for 15 months. During that time, I greatly enjoyed --in addition to other more obvious editorial tasks-- working with our in-house designer, Philip Patenall, for the making of the TiM covers.
The process used to be something like this. First, I chose one of the articles to be highlighted on the cover and suggested a tentative design. Then, Phil and I discussed about how to translate my (often not very clever) idea into a proper design. And, finally, he did (basically) all the hard work.
Note that the image shown here corresponds to a different journal, Trends in Genetics. This is my favourite Trends cover (and that of many other people) of 2009. It was designed by Phil, based on suggestions by the journal editor, Treasa Creavin.
Phil made hundreds of covers and lots of other graphic art for the Trends journals and other scientific publications. See below four examples of the work he made for TiM during 2009. If you want to see more pretty covers, go to the Trends website, choose a journal, and click on the magnifying glass below the cover pic (on the left sidebar) for each issue.
Unfortunately, Phil left his job last November because of a departmental reorganization, so his last covers were those of the December issues. Because my contract ended with the year, then I had the rare opportunity to make my own cover designs for the January and February 2010 issues, in the absence of a dedicated designer. Although I've always been interested in photography and anything visual, and have been using Photoshop for a while, I'm fully aware that I am not a professional designer. I know these covers are not very good but, hey, I enjoyed making them, and wanted to share them with the blogosphere. Here they are:
