Sunday, November 1, 2009

11:54 a.m.


My best friend, Joe, decided to start a zine at the University of Missouri that focuses on sexual awareness and health. When he asked me to design the first issue of BodyTalk, I was thrilled. It was a challenging project. There are so many visual cliches for sex and virginity. I wanted to keep things light, spontaneous and avoid generalizations. I struggled a little with finding the right balance of consistency. I wanted each layout of the zine to maintain a cohesive identity but also be completely different from the one before and after it. It was fun stepping out of the structured comfort zone that comes with editorial design to do something slightly more off-the-wall. I spelled out a title with tampons! It helped that I was collaborating with a great designer: Marcos Roman designed the logo and contributed several illustrations, including the hilarious pink unicorn. Check out the complete zine here, and let me know what you think. Read the stories too — they're short and sweet, and since the issue theme is the "first time," some are quite amusing. Join the Facebook group too!





Illustration by Marcos Roman

Tighty-Whities by Marcos Roman

1 comment:

ray de mesa said...

hi sarah! this is such an awesome project!! congrats to you and joe. i LOVE the cover and most of the design. i like the concept of having a book cover for each story. some constructive critique: the writing is a bit vanilla to me. i guess because the topic is sex, i was expecting a lot more frankness and raunch, you know? these people sound like they're writing short essays to their english 101 prof. then again, my expectations may be a bit skewed because i read Butt. haha anyway, i love the idea. and congrats on the first issue. hope you guys are awesome.