aespa x WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP (週刊少年ジャンプ) MAGAZINE COLLABORATION
I drew inspiration from aespa's latest EP "Drama" and various manga series I've read in recent years to create designs that capture the essence of Shonen Jump's rich legacy, while integrating aespa's unique style.
Weekly Shonen Jump (怱刊少年ジャンプ) is a weekly shonen manga magazine published in Japan by Shueisha under the Jump magazine label. It was first published in 1968, and it is the longest-running and best-selling manga magazine. The magazine's manga series are aimed at young male readers in their teens and feature a good number of humor and action sequences. But even outside of Japan, many people have been impacted by the featured series. It has frequently featured many mega anime and manga series, such as Jujutsu Kaisen, My Hero Academia, and One Piece.
aespa (or æspa) is a k-pop girl group formed by SM Entertainment, and debuted in November of 2020. Giselle, Karina, Winter, and Ningning make up the group's four members. The band gained notoriety in K-pop for popularizing hyperpop music and the metaverse concept, which is often seen in their music videos and album concept photos.
This project was researched, directed, and designed by myself, and it took approximately one day for each cover.
Inspiration & Preliminary Research
I initially had a strong vision of how I was going to design these posters that did not need extensive sketching beforehand; inspiration originally came from aespa's "Drama" - The Giants teaser photos, where I drew similarities to the popular manga and anime series "Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人)" by Hajime Isayama.
I then considered two different magazines alongside Weekly Shonen Jump: Weekly Shonen Magazine and Weekly Shonen Sunday. Weekly Shonen Magazine's readership is predominantly older, with a large proportion of male high school or college students making up the audience. Both of these magazines often feature female models on the cover, alongside some anime or manga.
Furthermore, as mentioned above, aespa's "Drama" - The Giants teaser photos were the main inspiration for this project, specifically members Karina and Giselle;
Development
For Giselle's cover (left), I had two ideas for the main text: either "Drama", the name of the EP, or the group's name in Hangul (Korean). I ultimately chose the former, as it matched Karina (right). I also thought the Hangul would look out of place with the Japanese and English text.
The colour schemes I chose for each cover are pretty similar, but have small differences; for Giselle, I chose to focus more on red, black, white, and dark blue to fir the background of her photo more. For Karina, I used the same red but had a lighter blue shade, as well as the same yellow and green as the Shonen Jump logo.
Final Covers
While thinking of which anime or manga to add to each cover, I made sure to pay attention to the specific series that were being advertised during the time aespa had their "Drama" comeback (November 2023). Some current cover serializations at the time were Jujutsu Kaisen, Blue Box, and Kagurabachi. This included text that advertised new seasons or serializations, as well as teaser photos and photocards. Some Weekly Shonen Jump covers advertised previous volumes or merchandise, so I decided to add pictures of the "GIANT Version" of the EP.
Although "Attack on Titan" is not published in Weekly Shonen Jump, I added references and small graphics to emphasize my inspiration from the series. This included calling the girls "titans" on both covers.
I am extremely pleased with Giselle's cover, but I believe I could have maybe done more with Karina's, though I am still happy with it. If I ever remake or create more of these designs, I wouldn't restrict myself to just one comeback era of theirs, rather I would combine elements from their entire discography to create something potentially more eye catching; this also applies for any other group that I would design for. I personally think these came out well, and it was fun designing both of them!
