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.

First, Time marks the week of 9/11 with a stark image of the twin towers before they collapsed. Every newspaper, TV station and website had led with a similar shot in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but by repeating it a week later Time was acknowledging the instantly iconic nature of the image. It also stakes a claim for the role of magazines as a more considered, if less immediate, medium. One of the few times the magazine replaced its red cover border with another colour. Thanks Warren.

A couple of weeks later, as the implications of the attack sink in, The New Yorker published this illustration by Art Spiegelman reflecting the darkened mood of the city.

Jump forward six years, and another New Yorker cover illustrates America’s changing mood as the financial cost of the Iraq invasion starts to become clear. This is a favourite cover of mine, the military hardware made from tax returns by Christoph Niemann is a clever and immediate visual explanation of a complicated idea.

That ends this selection of your favourite covers. The starting point was to provide an alternative to the rather pedestrian set selected by the PPA for their Great Cover Debate, the winner of which is to be announced tomorrow, Monday. I don’t intend to find a winner from these 25 covers but hope they act as an intriguing alternative to the PPA set.

Thanks to everyone who contributed, and apologies if yours didn’t get included. As promised earlier, the final set of 25 is available to be viewed at larger size on Flickr.