Magazine Covers - Written Assignment

Final Exam Text – Magazine Covers

Part A –What makes a successful magazine cover?

 The major goal of a magazine cover is to attract the customer’s attention sufficiently to make the customer buy the magazine.  Consumers spend a very short time, perhaps just a glance, analyzing the cover to determine to buy or not.  The cover artist has to present to the customer a visual experience that says this magazine represents me and my lifestyle, or this is the lifestyle I aspire to, or that there is useful or important information in here that I need to know.  That is a lot of ground to cover with just one image.  As Gladwell points out in his book “Blink”, people make very complex evaluations with little apparent information. The cover artist needs to provide text or artwork that first gets the consumer’s attention and doesn’t  offend either culturally or intellectually.  Once the attention is there, then there needs to be substance to make the consumer pick up the magazine and say, “I need this”.   This doesn’t mean there can’t be text on the cover, in fact many covers are full of text, but it needs to be easily deciphered and relevant while making the consumer curious about the contents. This means that really funky typography would only be suitable for really funky magazines or special content. And color needs to be carefully considered to not offend customers or be inappropriate for the topic. The artwork needs to be compelling and suitable for the target customers. Lady Gaga might not be appropriate for Family Circle unless the content were about “bad influences on pre-teens” or the like.  Creating a memorable and successful magazine cover must be a very satisfying experience given the number of challenges that need to be met.

Part B – Discuss the four design approaches to magazine covers.

1-      Early Covers

Magazines have been around since the 1700’s, but they bore little resemblance to current magazines.  These early magazines were an outgrowth of a burgeoning book publishing industry. Consequently the covers looked more like a typical book cover with little or no artwork. Covers looked more like what we’d call a title or table of contents page. The Reader’s Digest used this model until 1998.  Magazine cover artwork consisted mainly of intricately stylized borders and classic motifs and allegorical sketches. It wasn’t until the mid-to late 1800’s that magazine covers were embellished showed up with generous splashes of artwork and cover lines.

2-      Poster  Covers

Poster Covers appeared in the late 1800’s and dominated the cover field until the 1960’s. A poster cover has been defined by Josef & Prijatel as one in which “there are no cover lines, or themes announced, and the image generally is not covered by the logo” [Magazine Covers & Cover Line: An Illustrated History by G. Crow].  These poster covers really focus on the artwork often done by well-know illustrators, engravers and graphic designers and minimal if any cover lines announcing a theme or article.  Many poster covers bear the signature of the artist. Poster covers by Norman Rockwell represent this type of cover, often presenting an easily identifiable evocative situation with little or no text. The picture tells the story. And the story may or may not be connected to anything in the magazine. One major variation of this type was Life Magazine with large cover art framed by an eye-catching logo at the top and a smaller footer.  Many covers featuring poster art feature well known celebrities such as Tiger Woods, John Lennon, Barack Obama or Osama Bin Laden to appeal to fans. While poster covers are less dominating today, they still can be very appealing and often turn up in specialized niches such as travel, food, gardening and art magazines. I talk about my copy of San Francisco magazine in the current magazines section below. This magazine often uses a super-sized image with little text for its food issues.

3-      Integrated Covers – Artwork blended with Cover Lines

Integrated covers became very common around the 1880’s. With this style the coverlines or typography were in mutually supportive roles to contribute to the artistic effect while arousing the interest of the customer. With many of these a large image was central to the cover, but text was placed on the image carefully and in complimentary colorations to support and enhance the message. It could be found in sidebars or as footers, in brash contrasts or in subtle shades.   Text placement and style varied as the magazines experimentations with form reflected the nation’s experimentation with cultural and lifestyle changes brought about by the depression, world wars, and post-war industrialization

4- Integrated Covers give way to an Overabundance of Text –

In the late 20^th century, text became more prominent to the point of where it caused the reduction in size of the photo and often consumed more page real estate that the image itself. Critics pointed out that there was so much text that the cover looked more like an advertisement than a cover.  Text ran over, into, above and all around the images. In some of these covers, the artwork is obscured and secondary to the over-abundant typography.   But, in actuality the cover is an ad, an ad to entice the consumer to buy the magazine.

 Some reflect on the state of cover art as reflecting the barrage of modern life that sometimes overwhelms us and the cultural and demographic glasses we wear looking at life.

Most of the magazines that I see using this style seem to be about modern life whether it be a music genre, fashion scene or technology gadget review. Those magazines that cater to the upscale good life such as Fine Gardening, Gourmet, New Yorker, San Francisco and it sister publication San Jose seem to follow the poster or modestly integrated cover styles. Perhaps they want to offer their readers a quieter, culturally rich respite of meaningful content versus the cacophony of an overabundance of sounds, images and lifestyle choice content magazines representing the hippest culture offer.  

Part C – Current magazine covers that stand out and the strategies used to gain attention.

We get a lot of magazines at my house, so I took a look at those on the table and picked out a few that really stood out and reflected the kind of covers discussed in the history of covers.  Here’s what I found:

Heavy on Artwork with some text:  San Francisco Magazine of Aug. 2010 

                This is truly an aspirational magazine.  It features good food, fine dining, luxury cars, and condos, essentially the “good life” San Francisco style.   The current issue features a mouth-watering plate of salad with veggies so fresh and appealing you can almost taste them.  What person in interested in fine foods can resist the appeal of these? The top of the cover boasts the title : The Food Issue with several lines of text with The Best Chefs, Taste the Future and Terroiriste’s Plot in a contrasting color and enlarged type.  Another cover boasts the topic:  The Best with an overlay of  “of the (Brave New) Bay Area:  Our 50 top picks from an implausibly bold 2010) and has a very large photo of the SF Giant’s pitcher Tim Lincecum. Each of these covers appeals to a customer’s desire to be a part of the good life and the food photography is really outstanding. Very compelling.

Artwork with no text or topic:  New Yorker of July 12 & 19^th

                New Yorker covers frequently evoke a chuckle as this one does.  It’s a picture of a group of bugs posing for picture with the NY skyline in the background.  At the bottom of the page appears the artist’s name, Koren.  It’s very cute and the picture tells the story without any words needed and brings to mind the summer season and outings and ants at a picnic, etc. It’s very appropriate for the season.

Celebrity-poster style Artwork - Vanity Fair for July and August 2010

                Both of these magazines feature a large image of a celebrity with a young Elizabeth Taylor on the July issue and Angelina Jolie on the August issue.  The nearby bold text (almost as large as the magazine title) announces the article about each celebrity.  Both images have side bars with additional, albeit smaller, text announcing other secondary articles. The images are compelling and caused me to take the time to read the cover, but I wasn’t compelled to sit right down and read the articles.  

Topical artwork and relevant text

                Smart Money – August 2010:  The bold text announces the topic: Going Global and the artwork while rather large, but simple. There are five foreign coins with the largest being the Euro.  The hand that is tossing them is a female hand with pearls and Chinese character tattoo.  This magazine provides financial advice without a lot of fanfare.  The cover reflects this “let’s get down to business” attitude while providing a lot of information on the topics covered. In this case the image is not overwhelmed by the text.  It’s easy to decide if I want to spend my time with this.

                The Atlantic:  FAT Nation – May 2010

                The is no guessing what the topic of this issue since it sports a very overweight Statue of Liberty and FAT Nation text across the belly of the Statue.  The word FAT is about ¾  the size of the largest letter in the title. A sidebar on the left lists other articles. Again an easily identifiable symbol and text announce the topic.  It does catch your attention.  I’m sure some folks might be appalled with the use of the Statue of Liberty, but the artist has definitely made the point of a “Fat Nation”.   

                Fortune: China Wants You – May 2010

                This cover plays on the image of Uncle Same wants you, but sports a Chinese male figure wearing the US adorned top hat against a field of bright yellow. This image plays with a lot of cultural symbols: Uncle Same, yellow China, fear of China, service to country and war.  It’s hard to mistake the meaning and implications of this very compelling cover.  The topic text is about ¾ the height of the magazine title.  Red medium sized text against the yellow background announces other main topics.  There is a lot of text to read suggesting a lot of “meaty” articles. While there is a lot of text, the image and it’s cultural meaning is not lost in a sea of text.

                Wired: Sergey’s Search & the Future July & August 2010

                Both these tech magazines appeal to a broad range of geeks. The covers are dominated by a central image.  In the one on search, Sergey (Brin of Google) is depicted as repetitive code stripes of DNA.  Surprisingly, you must read the secondary text under the image to get the full meaning. At first I thought it was about Google and Search and Google’s DNA or culture.  Instead the cover refers to Brins’ search for a cure for Parkinson’s disease. I think this cover takes a few more seconds to accurately understand than most others I’ve looked at recently.  It does play on the connections between Sergey and Search and all things technological, but it makes a turn into health research that is unexpected.  I would venture that many consumers of this issue were surprised to discover that the content wasn’t about Google’s search data or tools or business.

                The second Wired cover boasts in broad type The Future, with a smaller sized second line of That Never Happened.  Reiterating this theme is a right hand sidebar in large type of Why We Still Don’t Have.  Taking up the central position and the image of Will Ferrell dressed in a clean-room suit wearing headphones with antennas suggesting something outer-space like. This cover seems more consistent and meeting the usual expectations between text and image. The Using a comedian as the image suggests that some of the future ideas were not too realistic and suggests a reason for the theme of “never happened” While there is a lot of text on this cover it is not overwhelming and compliments the simple clean image.