Break Free

A collaboration between Jenna Winn and myself

This is a collaborative cap between Jenna Winn and myself.  Jenna was gracious enough to write up a story to my cap layout "Breaking Out Is Hard To Do".  If you recall, I had a basic idea of a story and worked up an entire layout, design, and even a title, but couldn't get any traction on the story itself.

Where I was thinking about a hardened criminal breaking out of prison, Jenna took this into a far more personal and sweet story of someone breaking free of their former life.  It's a direction that I wouldn't have even considered, but am so glad that Jenna went to. As such, I felt it necessary to change the tone of the cap.

My original design had the background faded to black and white, leaving only the girl in color.  Even the title got the stark black and white treatment.  But I thought that Jenna's story needed the color... it needed to be based more in reality.  So I went back to the original photo and left it's sun faded colors in place.  I still used the text box under text format, but only because the original image had such an amazing space to use.

And since I wanted the cap to focus in as much on the story as possible (and because Jenna's story was relatively short) I recropped the image to a horizontal layout focusing in on the girl.  I did two other edits to the photo... I removed the crane/wires in the sky's background, and I had to darken the area under the title.

And lastly, while Jenna's story certainly could use the title "Breaking Out Is Hard To Do", I felt that the more uplifting "Break Free" was more appropriate (it helped that I was listening to Queen while mocking this up!)

I of think Jenna's story is great and only had to edit it a bit to make it fit.  But as always with a collaborative effort, I won't be satisfied until Jenna says she is satisfied.