Magazine cover for Meeple Monthly

Meeple Monthly

I work in the hobby gaming industry, and we are working on expanding into publishing a trade magazine for gamers and game stores.

We are looking for a logo and cover design for our new magazine. The art for covers will vary from month to month, with a variety of different genres and tones of art, as we feature one game or another (think Magic: the Gathering, D&D, Star Wars, and Apples to Apples, not video games).

Content to include:

*Title: Meeple Monthly
*Subtitle: The Game Insider Magazine
*Issue #: 1
*Issue Date: January 2013
*Coverage Date: March
*Magazine Content: Kingdom Builder, Playroom Entertainment, Garfield Speaks, Essen Sets New Records!

Design elements we'll be looking for:

*Prominent logo in the top center of the page, including both the title and subtitle.
*The logo should integrate or make use of "Meeple" imagery (see included images).
*Issue number and date should be prominent, but the details of formatting the information are not set in stone (e.g., "Jan. '13", "January 2013", "Issue 1", "#1", "Vol. 1") - feel free to use your best judgment.
*Coverage date should be less prominent than issue date, and should communicate that the issue will be covering that time frame, but use your best judgment as to how (e.g., "Covering March!", "March Releases", "3/13"
*The Magazine Content should be readable from a few feet away, but not overly dominating the page. The commas in the article references are just to list each point that should be on the front page. Use your best judgment in placement and organization (e.g., "Inside this issue:", "Featured this month!", etc.)
*Elegant, simple design, but still being playful (almost, but not quite campy).
*We are far more interested in a title without a banner, but aren't closed to the potential of a good design including a banner.

The Sample layout image is one potential way to lay out the page, but the only things in it that we require in any design is this:
-Magazine Title and Subtitle in the "Cover" area.
-The use of the "Meeple" image in the Title/Logo design.
-A design which is uncluttered so the art on the cover is prominent.

The cover art will often have different color schemes, and the Logo/Title should be able to change color schemes to best be viewed against different kinds of art.

We're very excited for this project, and we hope that 99designs will help us find an excellent cover design. At this point, we already have expectations of several thousand readers, and we hope to grow more, so your work could be very prominently seen in hobby gaming communities.