September 14, 2008
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.
I usually avoid posting my own work here, and just about the only rule attached to this favourite covers game was nobody could enter their own work. But if you’re going to break rules why not break them all? Anyhow, the first cover seemed the perfect partner for the other two. I devised it back in 2001 for an issue of M-real magazine, using illustrator Austin@New to draw a cover that rather sarcastically followed a list of cover design rules compiled by David Hepworth. The rules are all illustrated on the cover, including the invaluable advice that the words hair, chocolate and sex are the most effective words to use on covers (though perhaps not when used together?). The logo in a red box is another rule, and one followed by both the other two magazines despite there being over fifty years between them.
Hepworth’s rules are a useful guide (I’ll have to dig them out and run them here sometime) but like all such lists are a guide not a strict list of orders. I still enjoy the paradox of the M-real cover following and flaunting the rules at the same time.
Neil Braidwood chose the Picture Post cover. It uses a large number (52 pages) to sell itself, one of Hepworth’s rules, while the portrait has the requisite eye contact with the reader. But being in black and white breaks the rules. The Face, meanwhile, gets it wrong by using green text.
Daniel Gray selected The Face cover, ‘I’m a sucker for The Face and Kate Moss covers. She did a few: one was a bit too young, one a bit too sweaty, whereas this one has the definitive Moss I-know-something-you-don’t look topped off with great hair, shot by Mario Testino’.
