Critique: baby beauty pageant

This is the very first assignment of the semester.

Baby beauty pageant is not uncommon, thus the story is focus more on the "dad" character. The contrast of masculine and feminine is what I want to emphasize. However, the cute little girl is still the leading star, so, I also want to add something cute and princess feeling.

I actually outlined three covers. The reason is simple, because I like all these three pictures!

Then, I show all of them to my parents (I know VOX targeted younger audience! But it's already mid-night, my parents are the only ones that I could talk to). Surprisingly, they liked the first one unanimously. I like the picture a lot, but it could not convey the idea of contrast as effectively as the third on. Finally I chose the last one. The reason I told my parents was: you all chose that because you have a kid and I don't...That's an awful excuse. But, anyway...

The hardest part then, is to make the picture stand out. Since the original tone of the picture is dark, I might need some bright typo to lift the tone. However, I failed to find a nice color to match the picture...which is obvious...

This was not the first time I had trouble with color matching. I could tell this does not work, but have no idea what will work. I would really want to work on this now and if anyone have some suggestions please!! teach me..

Yes, I spent almost 2/3 of my time on the cover, and 3/4 of which on the color. And I got THIS!

Here's the spreads

I actually do like my opening spread, though, Jan said the photographer was really mad about the DAD on the picture. I am sorry about that. Also, lots of people use this picture for opening spread. I guess if give another chance, I would still use this because it just showed every aspects of the story: cute little girl in fancy dress, dad's hands always support the girl (dad's head is not shown in the picture because he's off stage hero!), the towel showed the caring aspect of the dad. NICE PIC!

The too much time I spent on the cover steal my time on the rest of the spread so the last two looks quite simple.

I might want to add more picture on the second spread since it is a photo essay. Also, what I don't like about the second spread is that the pics I chose is both too dark and made the whole spread not "happy" and "warm" enough for the story.

One thing I learnt through this experience: I would need to work on illustration more. Because I often have illustration ideas in mind but don't know how to execute them out. Even this assignment does not require much illustration, others will eventually.

Anyway, I really enjoy the  design, every minute of it, and always.