LOPSY

Design a Deconstructivist Magazine Cover in Lopsy

Build a deconstructivist magazine cover in Lopsy with a split masthead, brush-drawn concrete shells, a faulted blue plane and a two-color headline.

  • Advanced
  • 90 min
  • 26 steps

Published

The finished RIFT issue 23 magazine cover on board-formed concrete grey. A split black RIFT masthead sits at top left and a serif deck at top right. A tilted ultramarine plane is sliced by a lime band that reads THE ARCHITECTURE OF SOUND. Lime and black ruled-line shells rise like the Philips Pavilion. XENAKIS runs across the bottom in tall condensed letters, lime over the blue and black over the concrete

Deconstructivist graphic design came out of Cranbrook in the 1980s and David Carson's Ray Gun in the 1990s. It breaks the grid on purpose: type is sliced and shifted, planes collide at conflicting angles, and one colour rule holds all the chaos together. The architects of the same name, such as Hadid, Libeskind and Gehry, did the same thing to buildings.

This cover is for a made-up music and architecture quarterly, RIFT. Its cover story is Iannis Xenakis, the composer who was also Le Corbusier's engineer. In 1954 he drew the string glissandi of Metastaseis as straight lines on a pitch/time graph. Four years later those ruled lines became the hyperbolic-paraboloid shells of the Philips Pavilion. You'll draw those shells from straight brush lines and cut a literal rift through the page. You'll also split the masthead and make the headline change colour as it crosses a plane. The document is 1400 × 1820 px.

The palette:

  • Concrete #C9C5BC, with formwork seams in #6F6B64
  • Ink #141414
  • Ultramarine #2A2FD8
  • Acid lime #D3F53A
  • Off-white #F4F3EE

  1. Pour the concrete

    Choose File → New, set Unit to Pixels and enter 1400 × 1820 with a White background. Fill the Background with #C9C5BC using Edit → Fill. Rename Layer 1 to Concrete Mottle and run Filter → Clouds at Scale 6. Then set the layer to Multiply at 10 % in the effects drawer.

    For pores, add a Pores layer and fill it with #808080. Run Filter → Add Noise… with Mono, Gaussian and Amount 100, then Filter → Threshold at Level 84. Set the layer to Multiply 35 %. Only a scatter of dark specks survives.

    A pale concrete-grey page with soft cloudy mottling and a scatter of tiny dark pores

  2. Add board-form seams and tie holes

    Poured concrete remembers its formwork. Add a Formwork layer and pick the Brush at Size 3, Hardness 100, in #6F6B64. For each seam, click once at one end, then Shift-click the other end to draw a straight line. Draw horizontal seams at y = 350, 700, 1050, 1400 and 1750, and one vertical seam at x = 700.

    For the tie holes, drag a small Elliptical Marquee (14 px across) at x = 117, 350 and 583 in each panel, 88 px and 262 px below the top of each panel. Fill each one. Set the layer to Multiply 45 %.

    The concrete divided into 700 by 350 px panels by thin grey seams, with six small round tie holes in each panel

  3. Tilt the blue plane

    Click the top ruler at x = 60, 940 and 1340 and the left ruler at y = 60 and 1760 to set margin guides. Then turn on View → Show Grid, which also switches on Snap. Add a Blue Plane layer, drag a Rectangular Marquee from (80, 470) to (880, 1640) and fill it with #2A2FD8.

    Switch to the Move tool, grab the rotate handle just outside the top-right corner, and drag it counter-clockwise. With grid snap on, rotation snaps in 15° steps, so stop at −15°. Press Cmd+D to commit, then turn the grid off again.

    A tall ultramarine rectangle inside a transform box, rotated 15 degrees counter-clockwise with its handles showing

  4. Draw the first ruled lines

    A hyperbolic paraboloid is a curved surface built entirely from straight lines. Take a twisted four-corner frame. Join evenly spaced points on one edge to evenly spaced points on the opposite edge, and the lines sweep a curve out of nothing.

    Add a Shell A layer and set the Brush to Size 3, Hardness 100, in lime #D3F53A. Use corners A (110, 760), B (520, 1580), C (960, 980) and D (430, 1180). Divide edge A→B and edge D→C into 16 evenly spaced points each. Click a point on A→B, then Shift-click the matching point on D→C. After 16 lines the saddle curve already shows.

    Sixteen lime lines fanning across the blue plane, each joining a point on one edge to a point on the opposite edge, already bending into a curve

  5. Complete three shells

    For the second family of lines on Shell A, join the points on A→D to the points on B→C. Then add a Shell B layer in ink #141414 with corners (520, 1580), (1130, 1540), (1080, 500) and (820, 1180), and draw both families the same way. It rises past the plane onto the concrete, like the Philips Pavilion's spike.

    Finish with a Shell Seam layer in lime: a single family of 11 lines linking Shell A's D→C edge to Shell B's D→C edge.

    A lime hyperbolic shell on the blue plane beside a taller black shell rising past the plane's edge to a sharp apex

  6. Slice a lime band across everything

    Add a Lime Band layer on top of the shells. With the Lasso, click a thin parallelogram from (−30, 660) to (1430, 1051) to (1430, 1175) to (−30, 784). That's a 124 px band descending at +15°, the mirror of the plane's −15°, so the two form an X for Xenakis. Fill it with #D3F53A and deselect. Because it sits above the shells, it cuts straight through them.

    A thin lasso selection running at 15 degrees across the whole page, from the left edge down to the right edge

  7. Slide everything below the band

    Deconstructivist planes don't line up; they slip. Select Blue Plane and lasso everything below the band's lower edge: start 20 px inside the band at (−30, 764) and (1430, 1155), then run down past the bottom of the page. Switch to the Move tool and nudge 32 px right and 19 px down (Shift+Right three times, Right twice, Shift+Down once, Down nine times).

    The selection moves with the pixels, so re-draw the same lasso before nudging Shell A, Shell B and Shell Seam by the same amount.

    A lasso selection covering everything below the lime band, with the lower part of the blue plane already slid down and to the right

  8. Set and scale the masthead

    Choose the Text tool, set the font to Anton and the size to 430, and click near the top-left. Type RIFT in ink and press Tab. Click Rasterize Layer in the Layers panel, marquee the word, and hold Cmd while dragging the bottom-right handle to scale it uniformly to 125 % (about 780 × 462 px). Press Cmd+D, then drag it until its top-left snaps to the margin guides at (60, 60).

    The word RIFT in heavy black Anton capitals inside a transform box being scaled up from its bottom-right corner

  9. Split the masthead

    Marquee a thin strip from (30, 258) to (900, 266) and press Delete to open an 8 px gap. Then marquee everything above the cut, (30, 40) to (900, 258), and nudge it 24 px right with the Move tool. Press Cmd+D. The word still reads as RIFT, but it's visibly torn.

    RIFT cut horizontally through the middle with an 8 px gap, the top half shifted 24 px to the right of the bottom half

  10. Set the headline

    Set Six Caps at 500 in ink, click in empty space and type XENAKIS. Rasterize it, marquee it and Cmd-drag a corner to 120 % (855 × 522 px). Press Cmd+D and move it so its bottom-right corner sits exactly on the guides at (1340, 1760).

    XENAKIS in very tall, narrow black Six Caps letters across the lower right of the cover, overlapping the shells and the plane

  11. Turn the letters lime over the plane

    Marquee the headline, press Cmd+C, wait a moment, then press Cmd+V. The copy lands in place on a new layer, so rename it Xenakis Lime.

    Select Blue Plane, choose the Magic Wand and click anywhere on the blue: the wand selects the plane's pixels only. Click the Xenakis Lime row (the selection stays), choose Select → Inverse and press Delete. Deselect, open the layer's effects and enable Color Overlay in #D3F53A. The headline now changes colour exactly at the plane's edge.

    XENAKIS with its first four and a half letters lime where they overlap the blue plane and black where they sit on concrete

  12. Rotate the kicker to the band's angle

    Set IBM Plex Mono, weight 700, size 44, and type THE ARCHITECTURE OF SOUND in ink somewhere empty. Rasterize it and marquee it. With the Move tool, hold Cmd and drag the rotate handle clockwise: Cmd snaps rotation to 15° steps, so stop at +15°. Press Cmd+D.

    THE ARCHITECTURE OF SOUND in bold mono type inside a transform box, rotated 15 degrees clockwise

  13. Seat the kicker on the band

    Drag the kicker so its centre sits on the band's centre line at about (860, 961), with the same space above and below the caps. That puts it right above the headline, so the two read as one cover line.

    The rotated kicker sitting in the middle of the lime band, right above the XENAKIS headline

  14. Add the issue line and the deck

    At the right-hand guide (x = 940), set IBM Plex Mono 500 at 22 for three lines: ISSUE 23 / AUTUMN 2026, MUSIC / ARCHITECTURE / NOISE and EUR 14 USD 16 GBP 12. Below it, set the deck in Instrument Serif 44: He drew the string / glissandi of Metastaseis / as straight lines, then / poured them in concrete. The calm serif against the torn masthead is the contrast deconstructivism needs.

    A three-line mono issue block and a four-line serif deck in the top-right column beside the masthead

  15. Stack the cover lines and group them

    In the narrow column right of the black shell, set three page numbers in Anton 56 ultramarine at y = 480, 640 and 800. Under each, 65 px lower, add a cover line in IBM Plex Mono 500 at 20: STOCHASTIC / MUSIC, / A PRIMER, UPIC: THE / MACHINE THAT / DRAWS SOUND and CONCRETE / AS A SCORE. Click the first row, Shift-click the last and choose Layer → Group Layers. Name the group Cover Lines, then nudge the group so the longest line ends on the 1340 margin (x ≈ 1196).

    Three cover lines numbered 52, 78 and 96 in blue Anton stacked in a narrow column above the lime band, grouped as Cover Lines in the Layers panel

  16. Add a vertical barcode

    Add a Barcode Label layer and fill a rectangle from (60, 1494) to (142, 1764) with #F4F3EE. Set *RIFT23* in Libre Barcode 39 at 64, rasterize it, and turn it with the Move tool's Rotate 90° CCW button. Set the digits 9 770923 202609 in IBM Plex Mono 15, rotate them the same way, and stand them next to the bars.

    A small white label at the bottom-left holding a vertical Libre Barcode 39 barcode and a rotated row of digits

  17. Draw the Metastaseis score

    This is the idea behind the whole cover, drawn small. On a Score layer, use the white Brush at Size 3 to draw an L-shaped axis about 206 × 160 px. Then draw 18 straight lines across it. They start evenly spaced on the left and end bunched on the right, so their crossings trace the same curve as the shells. Caption it in IBM Plex Mono 14 white: METASTASEIS, 1954 / BARS 309-314.

    Add an elevation mark too: +21.00 in Plex Mono 17 at the black shell's apex, with a short Shift-click leader line.

    A small white pitch-and-time graph on the blue plane with 18 crossing glissando lines, captioned METASTASEIS, 1954, plus a +21.00 elevation label with a leader line at the shell's apex

  18. Add print grain

    Select the top layer and add Print Grain. Fill it with #808080, run Add Noise with Mono, Gaussian and Amount 60, and set it to Overlay 40 %. The flat inks pick up a printed tooth.

    The cover under a fine, even overlay of grey noise that textures the flat blue and lime

  19. Open the rift

    The slide in step 7 is hidden under the band, so the break needs to be visible. Lasso along the band's lower edge exactly, from (−30, 783) to (1430, 1174) and down past the bottom of the page. Nudge Blue Plane, Shell A, Shell B and Shell Seam 6 px left and 23 px down, re-drawing the lasso for each layer. Move the score layers by the same amount with no selection.

    A strip of raw concrete opens under the band. That's the rift the magazine is named after.

    A lasso running exactly along the band's lower edge, with the plane and shells below dropped away to leave a strip of bare concrete under the band

  20. Re-clip the lime headline

    The plane moved, so the lime/black split in XENAKIS no longer follows its edge. Delete Xenakis Lime and repeat step 11: copy and paste the headline in place, wand-select the plane, choose Select → Inverse, press Delete and add the lime Color Overlay.

    The effects drawer open on Xenakis Lime with Color Overlay enabled in lime, after re-clipping it to the moved plane

  21. Turn the black shell lime over the plane

    Apply the same rule to the black shell: black lines on ultramarine have almost no contrast. Wand-select the plane on Blue Plane, click Shell B, then copy and paste in place. Name the copy Shell B Lime and give it a lime Color Overlay. Now one rule runs through the whole cover: lime on blue, ink on concrete.

    The black shell's lines turned lime wherever they cross the blue plane and still black on the concrete

  22. Select the headline with a margin

    The shells run straight through the headline's letters. Cmd-click the Xenakis layer thumbnail to load its letters as a selection. Then choose Select → Grow… and enter 6 px.

    Marching ants around every XENAKIS letter, grown 6 px outward, over the shells

  23. Knock the lines out around the letters

    With the grown selection still active, click Shell A, Shell B, Shell B Lime and Shell Seam in turn and press Delete on each. Every letter now has a 6 px gap where the lines stop short. Press Cmd+D.

    XENAKIS now surrounded by a clean 6 px gap where the shell lines stop short of every letter

  24. Reseat the score

    Drag the Score Label row directly above Score, rasterize it and choose Layer → Merge Down. Marquee the merged score, Cmd-drag a corner down to 80 %, press Cmd+D and move its top-left to (275, 1450). It now has about 90 px of blue to the plane's edge and 45 px to the X.

    The glissando score scaled to 80 percent and moved inward, with even blue margins to the plane edge and the X

  25. Share one right edge

    Shift-click the Issue Info and Deck rows and nudge both 30 px right so the deck's longest line ends at 1340, the same edge as the cover lines and XENAKIS. Select the three barcode layers the same way and nudge them 14 px up so the label's bottom sits on the 1750 seam. Finally, on Formwork, delete the tie holes that sit under type or peek through the masthead gap: an Elliptical Marquee over each one, then Delete.

    The issue block and deck shifted so their longest lines end on the 1340 px margin, the barcode seated on the baseline, and stray tie holes removed

  26. Ink the lines that leave the plane

    The lime strands that climb over the concrete toward the apex are nearly invisible there. Wand-click the lower plane, Shift-click the upper plane to add it, and choose Select → Inverse. Copy Shell A and paste in place as Shell A Ink, with a Color Overlay in #141414. Repeat for Shell Seam. Then choose File → Quick Export PNG, and File → Save Project to keep the layers.

    The lime shell strands that climb over bare concrete toward the apex turned black, matching the black shell
Lopsy showing the finished deep blue poster, with a huge black deep headline, a red sounding line dropping into eccentric blue circles, a red probe with sonar rings and blue knocked out of the circles in paper colour

Design a Swiss Style Exhibition Poster

Build a Swiss International Style exhibition poster in Lopsy with a strict grid, giant grotesk type, eccentric circles, halftone shading and a rotated caption.

  • Intermediate
  • 50 min