Four Covers in One Month

By now most everyone has had a chance to flip through their favorite livestock magazines that came out in April. If you're anything like me I'm sure you took advantage of reading these during the many hours spent sitting on the showboxes at Houston or the Beef Expos.

The month of March was a big month for us, we designed exactly 99 pages of ads that were in all kinds of magazines.....Showbox, Show Circuit, NLE, Livestock Plus, Angus Journal, Brahman Journal, Show Times, Purple Circle, Shorthorn Country, and more. If you get the magazine, basically we designed an ad that was in it.

So the big highlight for the month of March was that for the first time, we had FOUR different covers that were designed by Ranch House. The only major cattle magazine we didn't design the cover for was Show Circuit, but we did send in 39 ads for that magazine, so RHD was pretty well represented.

Anytime you design a cover ad, there's always just that added little bit of pressure...because after all...it's the COVER! And, from our clients perspective, the cover costs a lot more to buy, so we have to make sure what we do stands out and is something that makes someone want to pick up the magazine and look further.

When I see these four covers designed by RHD, I just can't help but feel a big sense of pride. Ten years ago, I was driving from College Station to Crockett, Texas on nights and weekends just to get experience working with a magazine. I spent countless hours scanning in photos at The Showbox, so the designers would have the photos to work with when they got into work the next morning. It took me a whole year until I got enough experience just to design a 1/4 page black and white ad! Now, ten years later, I'm designing the cover. And, we also got to design the cover for the April Showbox, which I think is really cool, you'll have to watch for that one.

So even though I'm writing this blog at the END of March, and I probably should have done it closer to the beginning when the magazines actually came out, it's still exciting. And to those clients of ours who trust us with putting their business on the covers, we thank you. The four covers this month were Lautner Farms - Livestock Plus Cover, Habeger Cattle - NLE Cover, Nick Reimann & Brian Martin - Showbox Cover, and Matt Lautner - Showtimes Cover.

I'm starting a new poll today too -- which is your favorite cover design. I have my favorite and I already cast my vote...Let me know what you think!