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Oh good lord.

Ever??? Bugger me.

I shouldn’t be too shocked I guess, when they do these public polls with movies you usually end up with Star Wars being voted the greatest film evah! These SF nerds clearly have a lot of time on their hands.

O.M.G.

Bloody hell.

You boys really need to get out a bit more… I guess what you are most annoyed about, is that a mainstream magazine won a public vote, on an issue of taste and design. I know you would have been much happier if any of the obscure and ‘too clever for their own good’ design mags had been shortlisted and had won. But real life isn’t like that, show the great British public a copy of eye, or dazed and confused or any of myriad of tiny circulation magazines that now exist, and they would laugh at what is confusing and self indulgant design. As Art Director of Radio Times I find your attitude to mass circulation and popular titles ‘awfully predictable’. I would be first to admit the cover that was chosen is probably not the greatest magazine cover ever produced ever in this country. But compared to what passes for ‘great design’ today it’s not far off. So if you ever have to sit down and think about a designing a cover that has to appeal to over a million people, spare a thought to those of us who do it week in and week out. With clear readable typography, clever visual ideas, (that don’t take a week to work out), and good old fashioned journalistic nous.

I don’t think anyone is criticising your cover design, Shem. It is what it is, and does a decent job of using the iconic Dalek in an election concept piece. The surprise expressed here is at it’s promotion to best ever UK front cover, something it patently isn’t and even you admit surprise at. LondenLee’s comment about SciFi fans hits the nail on the head I think.

For the record, this site follows all types of magazines, mainstream and niche, as the selection of magazines contributed to the alternative ‘Best Cover’ list shows. That set includes Rolling Stone, Vogue, The New Yorker and Time as well as examples of what you call ‘too clever for their own good’ covers.

Just look down a few posts here… Time, The New Yorker, Time Out…

No point in hand-wringing here – what does anyone expect to see in a public vote? If the question is “what is the best design”, you have to either ask designers who understand what that question means or explain to the public what they are choosing as they are not usually equipped with a definition of graphic design. The majority of people who voted for this will have voted because they like Dr Who – this is legitimate because people do buy mags on the basis that they like the subject matter so I see no problem with the result – just that the question might be flawed.

The public voted for the Dalek here. I doubt it had very little to do with the fact that it was on the cover of Radio Times at all.

Makes me wonder what the US public would vote as their/our best cover ever…

I have nothing against mass circulation magazines, I’m the AD of a popular science magazine in the States so I know all about pleasing the newsstand market and I’m no fan of trendy little magazines full of pointless arty photography either (yawn). What I was talking about was that of all the great covers they could have picked (including I’m sure some good Radio Times ones) they chose the one with the bloody Dalek on the cover.

First of all, well done Shem for entering the bear pit and secondly, while it’s obvious the Dr Who fans won the vote in this case, I agree with him that commercial considerations are rarely taken into account by some commenters on here. If we don’t serve our readers, we’re not really doing our job.

Now if THIS was entered…

http://www.radiotimes.com/content/magazine/mag238_220.gif

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