{"id":6173,"date":"2019-11-12T17:05:34","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T22:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/?p=6173"},"modified":"2021-03-10T11:47:19","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T16:47:19","slug":"magazine-cover-design-has-never-been-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/originals\/magazine-cover-design-has-never-been-better\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Internet Made Magazine Covers Great Again"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 6<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Something is stirring on the newsstand, but you\u2019ll be forgiven for not noticing. After all, these days you need a flight delay or an overnight stay in some hipster hostel concept to find something even resembling a newsstand. But if you do find one, you\u2019ll see magazine covers that are popping with images and type and cover designs going for broke. And not just on indie and European mags (they’ve always been cool), but on mainstream, personality-driven, American titles you probably dismissed as formulaic, safe, incapable of real surprise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, those mainstream titles are bringing nerve and novelty to their covers, swerving out of bounds and flouting convention. In many cases, the magazine covers feature subjects in shapes, colors<\/a>, and sizes that have long been overlooked, shot by photographers too young to have developed a formula. The cover type is more inventive, the image crops are compelling, the energy is refreshing. It\u2019s Billie Eilish in her bedroom, Pharrell in a Moncler gown, Harry Styles\u2019 armpit, and just about every Lizzo cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cover is the most important page of any magazine (well, duh), but what made the cover so important was its function as a billboard; it is essentially an advertisement for all the other pages inside a given issue. And that free billboard would still matter, if only people still bought magazines. Single copy sales of magazines (as opposed to subscriptions) are roughly 10 percent of what they were in 2007. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s the good news, if only in the sense that magazines can stop creating billboards and just make great images instead. What’s lost in single-issue sales is made up for in creativity and swagger. Magazines are producing cover images that 10 years ago would have been relegated to designer\u2019s portfolios under STUFF THEY WOULDN’T LET US RUN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as print’s decline seems irreversible, the creative people still making the magazines are finding an aesthetic groove and embracing a fatalistic derring do that makes dying look like fun. So, is there a creative renaissance happening on the magazine cover, and if so, why now? We asked the people who make them. 
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The Sky is Falling. Sweet<\/em>. <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A funny thing is happening to magazines\u2014as consumers stop buying them, the people who make them feel less pressure to make covers that people will buy. And so they\u2019re abandoning commercial formulas that have dictated glossy magazines in our lifetime. Will Welch, who took over GQ<\/em> late last year\u2014arguably the worst time in history to take the helm of a magazine\u2014is finding an upside in the timing. \u201cResources are tighter,\u201d he says. \u201cBudgets are smaller, staffs are smaller, and there’s been a lot of difficulty in that. But the plus side is, and this is partially a credit to Conde Nast, I\u2019ve found incredible creative freedom in this era, and that applies to everything we do, but the cover is a place where you really see it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Japp Biemans, the art director of Volkskrant<\/em> Magazine<\/em> and probably better known as The Cover Junkie<\/a>, a site where he\u2019s been collecting, sorting, and celebrating magazine covers for close to a decade, has noticed a flush of innovation. \u201cMags now are more free to do what they\u2019re good at! Being creative. Being different. I think advertisers had them in a headlock. The newsstand was a headlock. They were afraid to do to controversial stuff. Now they can. The public likes more statements from their mags.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the Internet Killed Cover Lines <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the not-so-distant past, cover lines were believed to actually sell magazines. Promises of \u201crock hard abs\u201d or \u201can exclusive report\u201d or \u201cher most revealing interview yet\u201d was the difference between a strong-selling issue and a dud. And some publishers still focus-group cover variations for optimal impact. But nothing clutters, cheapens, and generally degrades a compelling cover image than a bunch of carnival-barking come-ons. At one point, you could find a dozen separate cover lines on Men\u2019s Health<\/em> or Cosmopolitan<\/em>, both of which, to be fair, sold a lot of issues in their day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But now, how a magazine cover does on Instagram is just as important as how it does on the newsstand (where actual money is still exchanged), so covers are less about competing for a shopper\u2019s $6.95 and more about creating a unified statement and an image that will pop on a phone. \u201cWordy cover lines used to be de rigueur<\/em>,\u201d says Elle<\/em> Editor-in-Chief Nina Garcia, \u201cbut we\u2019ve found there\u2019s more design impact when we use succinct, powerful phrasing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In fact, every editor and art director we spoke to talked about paring down magazine covers for optimal Instagram. New York<\/em> Design Director Thomas Alberty says, \u201cfewer secondary cover lines allow the cover to be more of a single image poster. It\u2019s cleaner.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it also allows you to maintain a tone that too many competing lines can erode. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to have a story about someone being assaulted by the President with, you know, Cheap Eats or whatever,” Alberty said. “That\u2019s self-defeating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Welch says cover lines are increasingly unnecessary. \u201cWe\u2019re doing fewer cover lines and not using up every little bit of space to sell what’s inside the magazine because we do that with our social handles and with GQ.com<\/em>. We have other means to promote everything that’s happening inside of an issue now.\u201d And it allows them to focus the cover on the main theme, like their recent New Masculinity issue, which required them to \u201cget one big idea across.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s new, cleaner covers put aesthetic distance not just from its recent past, but from its newsy, “OK Boomer” origins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRolling Stone<\/em> was always this strange, compelling hybrid of newspaper and magazine,\u201d Editor Jason Fine explains, \u201cand over time, the newspaper part has moved online.\u201d Fine explains that the 2018 shift from bi-monthly to monthly (and a change in ownership) loosened up what a Rolling Stone<\/em> cover could be. \u201cIt\u2019s a keepsake, something you want to hold on to. We have a whole online operation to do the news,\u201d he says, \u201cthe print magazine is more timeless.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Are Those Rules Again?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For an industry that talked about surprise and delight and finding innovative ways to make a statement, mainstream magazine-making followed formulas as strict and unwavering as a \u201890s sit com: famous (usually white), sex symbol \/ movie star \/ athlete \/ heartthrob in a color photo cropped at the bust, making eye contact, preferably smiling, wearing the latest offerings from top advertisers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Across Instagram, or wherever the newsstand lives now, magazines are breaking the old rules in a brazen, often glorious fashion. Elle<\/em>\u2019s Garcia contends that the speed at which graphic design trends are embraced and discarded in the digital age rewards the bold. \u201cIt encourages everyone to ignore the so-called ‘rules,’ to experiment, and think multi-screen. We are living in an image-driven culture,\u201d she says. \u201cWe all get inspired by things we see on social media, where the bolder an image is, the more it stands out. \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welch insists that despite Keanu Reeves in shades and black and white (once strenuously avoided on Conde Nast covers), and the \u201cIs That Brad Pitt?\u201d cover, conventions are always top of mind. \u201cI\u2019m very aware of the old rules. And it just feels good to like, be really clear on what they are and why they exist. And when we’re breaking them, I want to think about that choice. You know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everywhere is Everything<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Every editor and creative director eventually stopped seeing Twitter and Instagram and Facebook as revenue-stealing competitors and now see them as revenue-stealing partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But social media means that, as GQ\u2019<\/em>s Creative Director Rob Vargas puts it, \u201cyou\u2019re never actually taking a picture for just one platform. You\u2019re considering how the image will work in a variety of iterations. And there\u2019s the clear acknowledgement that most people will be experiencing these images on their phone, which is unfortunate because a lot of the photos have all this satisfying detail and color that gets lost on a handheld screen.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Elle<\/em>‘s Garcia is agnostic about how and where she reaches her readers. \u201cWe want these covers to be moments that connect with people wherever they see them, whether it\u2019s on the newsstand or on their grid. Having an image that\u2019s hyper-popular on social\u2014the October 2019 Billie Eilish cover (one of our three themed Women in Music magazine covers<\/a>) garnered 7.6 million likes when she posted it on her Instagram<\/a>. When it comes to brand awareness, that\u2019s invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, it\u2019s that phone screen that\u2019s driving this new wave of creativity. Vargas contends that phone has forever altered our relationship with images, or at least the volume at which we experience them. \u201cPeople are so immersed in images. They see thousands and thousands of images a week, and I think being distinct and establishing a specific brand identity is so important. If you see one person standing in a studio with a white background, you\u2019ve seen a million of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In a lot of ways, Instagram and Apple News and Twitter are lucky to have magazines driving the visual conversation and producing some of its most ambitious and arresting images. Because they may not be doing it forever. While none of the designers or editors we spoke to would concede any sense or mortality\u2014in fact, the Cover Junkie wrote \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of time, peeps will shout it out: #printisthefutureofonline\u201d\u2014there\u2019s a certain fatalism and respect for a dying art form that\u2019s drives innovation\u2014that if you\u2019re lucky enough to still be making magazines, you damn well make the most of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t argue the newsstand product isn\u2019t going away, Welch says. \u201cBut fuck, magazines are awesome. And while we’re while we’re still making magazines, let’s make them as good as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Print magazines are slowly dying, but magazine covers have never been more alive. An exploration of the new wave of newsstand creativity. <\/div>\n

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