Burning Brain's creative director has now completed five covers over the past 10 years for Out & About magazine. This is the first cover that has not been a drawn illustration. In this case the publication was seeking a photographicly designed solution that captured the overall theme of the month's articles: corporate change, retirement and seeking your next step in your career or retirement.

Burning Brain worked with the editor and editor-in-chief to brainstorm over possible solutions that could help represent this thought without stereotypical imagery: fork in the road, scales of balance, fishing.

As the session progressed a solution was derived that simultaneously solved the imagery for the cover and established the issue's tag line: "Time for Change?"

Burning Brain worked through several subtle concepts related to the image of corporate America's biggest symbol for dedication and service: the executive watch. Gifted most often for retirement or decades of service it was the perfect symbol. The challenge was to arrive at a visual metaphor that captured this staid symbol of the old way of doing corporate careers versus the new era in change of taking packages and retiring or starting small business.

Burning Brain designed the photo-illustration, cover typography and layout. The cover image is comprised of six separate stock images agreed on by the team. Buring Brain did the image selection and concept refinement working closely with the editorial team to best match their articles. The separate images are featured in the collage you'll find in the upper right hand corner of this page. Here are some rejected concepts: