Hasta La Ideas

Dutch independent magazine OK Periodicals has created what it claims is the world’s first crowdsourced magazine cover.

OK Periodicals is a biannual featuring up and coming and established creative talent published by Arnhem-based design studio OK Parking and Bouwe van der Molen Graphic Design. Its third issue took the theme Repeat, hence the cover idea. The OK team designed a front and back cover, then split it into hundreds of small segments.

Original front cover

Original back cover design

Through its blog, OK then appealed for contributors to take a segment each and re-do it in their own style.

Over a week, the contributions came in and were assembled to make the final cover. So, for example, one person received this piece of the original cover and came back with this version of their own.

So this original segment

Became this in the final artwork

This

became this

And this

changed to this

The final front cover looked like this

And the back like this

Successful? Well, not entirely. Even OK’s William van Glessen admits that the resulting artwork isn’t exactly a thing of beauty: “Okay, maybe it’s not very beautiful or aesthetically pleasing,” he says. “But that’s a thing I’m never looking for. The proces of this design and the experimental way of achieving it was for me the most pleasing aspect.”

And, of course, all of the hundreds of people who contributed their segment will presumably want to buy a copy, which has to be good for sales.

OK Periodicals #3 costs €9.50. More info here