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 20th 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 & 19th
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.
