Your favourite covers #8
A sombre final set of covers demonstrate the current affairs role magazines can still have in this 24/7 news access world.
Your favourite covers #7b
Warren sends this extraordinary Esquire cover from the sixties, a cover I have been unable to make part of a set. It’s and interesting editorial idea – what if Hitler had survived the end of the second world war and was found alive – but should it ever have been a front cover? Bizarre.
Your favourite covers #6
Here’s the sixth set of covers, three conceptual images remarkable for their strength whether or not you get the conceptual thinking behind them.
Your favourite covers #5
A slightly strange combination for collection five – some covers that were hard to find partners for.
Your favourite covers #3
These three covers share obvious visual traits and are linked by both their adherence to and avoidance of key design rules for front covers.
Your favourite covers #2
Here’s the second set of your submissions, three monochrome typographic covers.
From left to right: Herb Lubalin’s Fact: magazine is a favourite of mine (I am allowed to enter, right?) for it’s typographic simplicity. Published in 1964, it said the unsayable about a central member of the Kennedy clan, a message that was so shockingly strong it required little decoration. Leaving out the swear word only strengthens this cover.
Marcus Piper chose Wire’s 2004 ‘In Praise of the Riff’ cover, designed by Non-Format. ‘I think this is an incredibly brave cover even for Wire. This cover is a visual riff – a Riff being defined as: a melodic phrase, often constantly repeated, forming an accompaniment or part of an accompaniment for a soloist. The fact they have obscured the magazines logo so much and run it simply in black and white places all the emphasis on the idea and clarity of message. When I first saw this cover I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry it was so instantly everything’.
Lastly, Matt Willey chose Vince Frost’s woodblock cover for issue seven of Big magazine. The type is printed in metallic silver ink and echoes the block structure of New York streets.
*Following on from Tom’s comment to the last set of covers, I will be adding all these covers to Flickr once they’ve been revealed here.
Your favourite covers #1
Praise be to Mr Jobs and his fabulous Time Machine, without which I wouldn’t have been able to retrieve the JPEGs you sent in response to my request for your favourite front covers (that’s anything you thought better than those featured in the PPA’s ‘Great Cover Yawn, er, Debate’).
Over the next week or so I’ll be posting carefully edited groups of covers here, culminating in one great big selection sometime roundabout the end of next week. Maybe we’ll do our own vote or something?
Anyhow, here’s your first dose, three covers featuring facial expressions. From the left: i-D, ‘Hereos and Sheroes’, October ’88 chosen by Michael Bojkowski; The Face ‘Hard’ chosen by Michael Hernan; and Neil Braidwood’s choice of a sixties Queen… ‘old but still contemporary’. Second set soon.
