On the Saturday of World Dairy Expo, the theme for the following year's event is announced. As 2013's "Center of the Dairy Universe" drew to a close, the artwork for "Designer Dairy" was unveiled. From that time, our staff has 10 months to come up with our interpretation on the latest theme. The design or image that is crafted then graces the cover of our September 10 World Dairy Expo Supplement.
Found in the center of your September 10 issue, this year's gatefold cover was composed and photographed by our art director, Ryan Ebert. He estimates that between, sketching and brainstorming, dying and drying the shavings, the photo shoot and finalizing the design, 30-plus hours of work were wrapped up in this year's cover. To see what went in to our cover creation process, Ebert put together the video below:
To create the colored shavings, Ebert soaked wood shavings in fabric dye for 10 hours. "After dying the shavings, the red shavings were the only ones that didn't stay true to color. These were dusted with red spray paint to give them a deeper color," noted Ebert.
"After deciding to make the Hoard's Dairyman H out of red shavings, and considering possible layouts, I decided that the H would have more impact alone on the cover instead of being split on the fold," added Ebert.
All totaled, Ebert set-up 12 compositions of items that are often seen on or near Expo's "designer" cattle and show people. Ebert took 200 photos of these various compositions. After culling, he narrowed down the images from 200 to 10. "Going though the images, I looked for those that had the right exposure, tone and were sharp from edge to edge.
After consulting with the magazine's vice president of marketing, Gary Vorpahl, the images were narrowed from 10 to three. With these three, Ebert created final mock-ups, which can be seen in the video. From these, the image that graces the gatefold cover was chosen.
We would like to thank Nicky and Mark Rueth for donating the champion blankets and Jake Hushon for allowing us the use of the Brown Swiss bell.
The author, Amanda Smith, was an associate editor and an animal science graduate of Cornell University. Smith covers feeding, milk quality and heads up the World Dairy Expo Supplement. She grew up on a Medina, N.Y., dairy, and interned at a 1,700-cow western New York dairy, a large New York calf and heifer farm, and studied in New Zealand for one semester.
Found in the center of your September 10 issue, this year's gatefold cover was composed and photographed by our art director, Ryan Ebert. He estimates that between, sketching and brainstorming, dying and drying the shavings, the photo shoot and finalizing the design, 30-plus hours of work were wrapped up in this year's cover. To see what went in to our cover creation process, Ebert put together the video below:
To create the colored shavings, Ebert soaked wood shavings in fabric dye for 10 hours. "After dying the shavings, the red shavings were the only ones that didn't stay true to color. These were dusted with red spray paint to give them a deeper color," noted Ebert.
"After deciding to make the Hoard's Dairyman H out of red shavings, and considering possible layouts, I decided that the H would have more impact alone on the cover instead of being split on the fold," added Ebert.
All totaled, Ebert set-up 12 compositions of items that are often seen on or near Expo's "designer" cattle and show people. Ebert took 200 photos of these various compositions. After culling, he narrowed down the images from 200 to 10. "Going though the images, I looked for those that had the right exposure, tone and were sharp from edge to edge.
After consulting with the magazine's vice president of marketing, Gary Vorpahl, the images were narrowed from 10 to three. With these three, Ebert created final mock-ups, which can be seen in the video. From these, the image that graces the gatefold cover was chosen.
We would like to thank Nicky and Mark Rueth for donating the champion blankets and Jake Hushon for allowing us the use of the Brown Swiss bell.
The author, Amanda Smith, was an associate editor and an animal science graduate of Cornell University. Smith covers feeding, milk quality and heads up the World Dairy Expo Supplement. She grew up on a Medina, N.Y., dairy, and interned at a 1,700-cow western New York dairy, a large New York calf and heifer farm, and studied in New Zealand for one semester.
