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Covers already coming in – what’s your favourite?

“KILLER” – THE FACE
Styled by Ray Petri

I can’t find my cover to email in, so I’ll leave a comment here.

Early 2000′s Q Magazine ran a cover with Beyonce in a green dress. About a year later someone from Q told me they’d been strongly advised against running that cover, “we were told there were three no’s in cover design; women, blacks and the colour green”.

That cover was Q’s best selling issue that year.

Hardly an original choice, but the Esquire “Oh my God” cover gets me every time. Strong Bodoni typeface, white on black, type bigger than the masthead. The only thing that could have made it better I think would have been the elimination of the line “From Fort Dix to Vietnam”. The combination of the politics of the time, and “M Company”, would have made the Vietnam link clear, I think.
It’s not warm, it doesn’t make you happy or laugh, it doesn’t have any clever hidden messages that requires prior knowledge (unlike the Ali / Saint Sebastian cover), and against a picture-filled, colour-filled newsstand, must have stuck in people’s throats for the rest of the day, whether they bought it or not.

It gets me the same way that Ernest Hemingway’s shortest story ever told does. “For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.” Powerful, economical, hits hard. Great stuff.

This is one big and interesting question, as the idea is to try and work out what makes a cover both brilliant AND British. To that end, Siffin’ Glue, September 1976 featuring The Damned must merit serious attention…

>Ben. Are you thinking of the September 2003 Q cover? I’m sure that was Beyoncé’s only solo Q cover. I was the art director of the mag at the time and we photographed her (shot by Patrick Hoelck) as being the cover feature specifically. It wasn’t a great cover by any means, and certainly not helped by her coverline ‘The Ass That Shook The World’ !

I really don’t recall there ever being any questions (well, certainly not among editorial staff – perhaps publishers were chin stroking) of the ‘black or woman’ question at any time.

The philosophy of Q’s approach to cover subjects around that time (whether right or wrong) was to exclusively access and then present the biggest star in the world at that moment on the covers. At that month and at that point in ‘Q’s world’, it was Beyoncé. No questions asked as to her suitability. Her dress did originally have a lot of green on it though, but we retouched that to a Q-friendly red :-)

Not sure it was the best selling issue that year – there would have been too much competition from other issues (David Bowie with a naked Kate Moss, the return of Radiohead, Justin Timberlake’s first hook-up with Terry Richardson, The Strokes, an undressed Brtiney) that had more crossover sales to the casual readership away from core Q readers. I may be wrong though – the haze of time is heavy.

Here’s that year’s Q covers:
http://covers.q4music.com/Default.aspx?start=2003&end=2004

Personally, I think the Thom Yorke one was the best that year…

As for the ‘black’ question, Q had already had Macy Gray and Alicia Keys on covers in the previous few years, and plenty of women, so they knew what the sales consequences were, if any.

oh and here’s the cover in question

http://covers.q4music.com/Item.aspx?pageNo=6065&start=2003

As far as populist covers go, I’m a big sucker for Entertainment Weekly at the moment… http://www.ew.com/ew/inside/archive/0,,,00.html

Oh, well if we’re going down that route, I loved the recent Total Film cover, where the cover was a typical heroic Batman shot, and the polywrap had been defaced by the Joker.

Witness:
http://cgi.ebay.com/TOTAL-FILM-MAGAZINE-UK-BATMAN-SPECIAL-JULY-08-BRAND-NEW_W0QQitemZ220255678767QQcmdZViewItem?IMSfp=TL0807101256r21218

Apparently a feature inside was similarly defaced. Nice.

Here’s the inside feature. Low budget way of making your coverage stand out.

http://www.zimbio.com/Batman/articles/139/Dark+Knight+Featured+Total+Film+Magazine

Hey Andrew. The posters were meant to do a similar thing…
http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=22940
via http://www.binkythedoormat.com/binky/2008/07/its-all-part-of-the-plan-part-two.html

Ahh – I like that, thanks Michael. Very much along the lines of what 42 Entertainment does well, too.

I really disliked that Empire cover – it’s about as iconic as a musical birthday card. They went through a period in the early noughties of doing really great covers – I remember a great High Fidelity one… will have to see if I can dig it out…

Thanks Daniel, that John Cusack Empire cover was one of mine and took me a lot of persuasion at the time to get done – really glad you liked it!

oops! Just read its UK covers only, will rethink

RS – don’t worry about UK or not. The PPA Cover Vote is UK only, the magCulture ones is an alternative and can be from anywhere

that amelias mag cover that rob ryan did with the laser cut cover and a tatty devine neclace embedded in it was cool…

as was the first time creative review did a laser cut cover – all black with some design/advertising dudes in a real fine dotscreen

http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/product_info.php?cPath=1&products_id=12

I have to say the cover of NME with Beth Ditto is my favourite, In todays world of size “0″ this really stuck in people craw , and fair play to the lady for just getting up and doing her thing. Compared to the likes of The Kate moss in a crown on the cover of vogue, this actually stood for something other than “Hey look at the pretty person”

The one I never forget is Morrissey on the front of the NME in a lam~e shirt, waving a Union Jack with the healdine “Flying the Flag or Flirting with Disaster”.

Don’t forget John Heartfield!

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