Orlando Arocena is a Mexican-Cuban-American vector artist and creative director based in New Haven, USA. One of his dreams was to collaborate with the Empire Magazine, as he said, it was in his bucket list. Well, we are happy that it's not there anymore because he created a fantastic magazine cover design for the upcoming movie Avengers: Infinity War. The cover features no one else but the super villain THANOS and it also rocks a super colorful, I dare say 80s graphic design look. Below you can learn a bit more about the creative process behind it.

For as long as I can remember I always admired Empire Magazine and as a result I included it to my "Bucket List" of Brands I would be honored to collaborate with and have fun. Well, dreams to come true...

Magazine Cover Design Process

Below is my "Iron Man Equation" from 2013 and the basis that inspired the

Creative Director over at Empire Magazine to start a dialogue and get the project rolling in time to announce the evil super villain from the new Avengers: Infinity War movie...THANOS!

What the Creative Director appreciated most about the Iron Man equation was the color , the sense of motion and the "Deco-Pop" style I had created for myself over 5 years ago.



Since this illustration is intended to be the cover, I removed the text exploration

and delivered the first round with an exploration in Thanos' expression and background.

and then placed in the Empire branding

Round 1 feedback was received, we now had an approved pose. So we quickly went into Round 2- where I delivered a spectrum of options pertaining to lighting, mood and facial expression of Thanos. ( see below)



Round 2 feedback received we now were in the home stretch and was given the green light to play with their Branding- which rarely ever happens in this industry. So I respectfully went into round 3. Below is the first evolution for the stylized Empire Branding but I felt it detracted too much from the original and explored a less extreme interpretation but smarter version leveraging the lens flares off the Gauntlet and adding them up top to the letters.





Below is a click through video of the actual vector created in Adobe Illustrator + Wacom Intuospro.

The final magazine cover thanks to the Creative Director at Empire Magazine.

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