The Aug/Sep 2014 issue of Canada’s History is scheduled to hit newsstands on July 28th, 2014.
This cover took a lot of back and forth with the cover team, with 3 rounds of refinements to reach the polished version below.
The cover feature is a series of short snippets from eye-witnesses reports/diaries to some seminal moments in Canada’s history. But how to communicate this concept with an image and just a few words?
Art Director James Gillespie found this classic image, which allowed us to build the story around it and effectively communicate the offering.
Here’s what James had to say about this cover: “Benjamin West’s painting of The Death of General Wolfe is a brilliantly executed adaptation of a very important event in Canada’s History. The lighting and the composition make it particularly suited for cover use. The image on the cover is only a detail of a much larger painting contained within the August-September issue of Canada’s History magazine.”
And here is what Publisher Melony Ward had to say about this cover: “As a history magazine, we are limited by the fact that photography has only existed for about 200 years. We are fortunate to have access to a treasure trove of paintings that depict important historical events. The August/September issue features a richly colourful masterwork on the cover – The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West. Wolfe died in 1759 on the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, and West’s work, painted about a decade later, used a fair bit of artistic license to dramatic effect. Art director James Gillespie has done a terrific job using the classic triangular composition to direct attention to the main cover line.”
