FOLIO: Section Blogs by Design and Production

Cover Critique: Time Out's Duct-Taped 'Sex'

Dylan Stableford — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:55:34 -0400

Time Out New York followed up its “sex issue” (“How Not to Promote Your Magazine's Special Issue”) with the anti-sex, err, anti-Sex and the City issue. The cover features a photo illustration of the show’s stars with their mouths duct-taped shut. It’s an effort to combat the relentless hype the HBO-hit-turned-movie has garnered (see Entertainment Weekly's latest cover, for starters). It also serves as a thinly-veiled shot to its bigger, more established (and, frankly, better-designed) rival, New York magazine, which last week plopped Sex star Sarah Jessica Parker on its cover, declaring “Sex is Back”—as if it had never left.

NAME: Tim O'Brien
TITLE: Illustrator, Rolling Stone
CRITIQUE: I subscribe to Time Out. They often have clever concepts on their covers. For me, a photoshop gag has to be well executed to work. I get that this movie is being talked about way too much, but duct tape over a woman's mouth, anyone's mouth is always sick. The trick can work visually, however, if the lighting on the tape matches the lighting on the women. In each, the model who posed with tape on their face for the photographer had one light source from the side and merely turned the head to match the head positions. The lighting on the photo of the Sex ladies is controlled and flat to minimize father time. The mix of both makes the tape too dark on the shadow side but works best on Cynthia Nixon, I guess. I would also have had the headline, "NO MORE SEX!" If I were in on the concept meeting, I might have pitched a photo of a torn and weathered poster on a wall in Manhattan with other images beneath it. New Yorkers show how they've move on in the small editorials written on posters in the subways. Perhaps it's too subtle though. Here [right] is how it might look. After doing it, I might like their cover more. Ha!

NAME: Dan Trombetto
TITLE: art director, FOLIO:
CRITIQUE: I was hesitant to comment on this one, because I felt my opinions might be swayed by the fact that I detest the show and its characters and I cringe whenever I see the trailers for the movie. So because of my feelings toward Sex, this image and concept immediately brings me some perverse sense of joy. Sure, the cover subject with a duct-taped mouth has been done a few times before—but this image does convey exactly how I feel about the franchise at this point. It’s probably safe to say that much of their target audience (New Yorkers) share these sentiments as well. And while I don’t think they were really aiming for a design award with this cover, it still probably could have benefited from a smaller color range. Maybe it’s the reds that aren’t mixing too well with the cooler pinks, lavenders, blues ... Color clashing aside, this cover still makes me happy.

NAME: Marco Turelli
TITLE: Art Director, Wine Enthusiast magazine
CRITIQUE: Luckily for TONY, they don’t have to rely on newsstand sales. I think that it is an adequate attempt at not much of a rebuttal to NY Magazine’s coverage. I’m sure that I could enjoy NYC Carrie-free 1965 times between Ave A and B alone, so I don’t think that the cover line really sells me on much. I’m sure readers in Jersey and Queens will be jumping out of their socks when they see this issue. Color palette is horrible. Off the top of my head I’d rather see a pile of designer shoes in a dumpster with the “no sex” cover line. Better than what looks to be stock shots of somewhat asexual, past-their-prime women. (Maybe it does work?) I’d give it two out of five stars, I guess.

What do you think? Leave your own critiques in the comments section below ...

PAST FOLIO: COVER CRITIQUES:
Rolling Stone's Barack Obama Endorsement
Vogue’s Lebron and Gisele
New York's Spitzer Cover

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Sex Sells

Joanna Pettas — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:21:01 -0400

Christianity Today’s March cover clearly shows a magazine trying to push boundaries, with white space surrounding the bold, red words “Christianity,” “Addicted” and “Sex.”
“Trying” is apparently the key word for Winslow Taft, senior art director at Mental Floss magazine, who says the cover is “very close to being great,” but not quite. His advice: “Hit the reader with the message hard and do not give them an abundance of white space to get comfortable around the image.”
But it’s not about a message, according to Christianity Today’s senior managing editor Mark Galli. “The article [it refers to] spends a lot of time showing how addictive sexual behavior is not just a moral or spiritual problem but has medical, biological and psychological dimensions.” Theologically, the apple doesn’t represent sin or sexual temptation as it does in pop culture, Galli says, but rather “temptation for man to live on his own apart from God.”
Devout subscribers may already know that, so mission accomplished. The average newsstand shopper probably won’t, so mission also accomplished. (It’s painful to type this but here goes: “sex sells.”)
Anyway, as always, here’s your chance to chime in:
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[EDITOR’S NOTE: Put your cover to the test. Send unique magazine covers to jpettas AT red7media DOT com]
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Buyer’s Remorse

Joanna Pettas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:55:48 -0400

reMarriage is the magazine for “Before, During, and Happily Ever After.”
I suppose that “before, during and after” remarrying is not as broad a topic as “before, during and after the bris,” nor as weird as “before during and after the funeral,” but the cover lines, “Bride’s Dress Dilemma: Pouf or Posh?” “Today’s Mix and Match Families,” “Losing Friends in the Divorce,” and “Stepping into Teenage Angst,” do suggest a freewheeling attitude towards content that most magazines, and nearly all bridal magazines, eschew.
reM doesn’t just tell us that not all marriages work out, they demonstrate it on every page with the unhappy union of Bodoni and Avant Garde, the quarterly’s two signature fonts. While both faces were indeed iconoclasts in their day, I worry that that’s not enough to overcome the substantial generational difference. Has Ms. Garde really thought about what it will be like living with a face 170 years her senior? Will life still be good when his pairs no longer kern?
Both fonts are used in the magazine’s flag, which does not merely rely on the oil and vinegar type combo to undermine the unity of the mark, but also mixes colors, runs part of the name bottom-to-top, and interweaves two letters in the otherwise loosely tracked logo.
Inside, the colors run to the murky, the grid use runs sporadic, and the use of rules runs generous. The muddy colors I would guess, reflect the editorial attitude—a thin patina of hopefulness over the rough terrain of a cynicism richly earned as youth faded in unhappy matrimony. “It may take years” for the shouting to subside in a new marriage warns the editors on page 9. On 11, the stepmom’s “Bill of Rights” urges small kindnesses that would seem modest by Gulag standards.
The articles are not awful, though most would benefit from tighter editing, and a bit less self-promotion on the part of the writers, many of whom are clearly trying to drum up business writing for a regionally-distributed magazine. And the design shows, if not exactly flair, a small spark, on occasion, though one that is often doused by a heavy handed approach. An article on merging established households has attractive imagery combined in an engaging way with call-outs for specific decorating problems and solutions. Too bad overlapping 20pt frames overwhelm the photographs, and the headline is given a gimmicky graduated screen that adds little interest to the design, and only dubiously connects to the topic.
Other articles, though, are a hodge-podge of stock art, tiresome tropes (the Bill of Rights is surprinted on a picture of a scroll) and novelty fonts. An article on the politics of merging families never settles on a column width, and is bafflingly illustrated entirely with pictures of cardboard boxes and scraps of floorplan.
All in all, the magazine isn’t pretty, but I do intend to leave it on the coffee table for the benefit of my father in law, who once introduced me as his daughter’s first husband.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Buy Jandos' new book!]
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Time Forced to Defend Another Cover

Dylan Stableford — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:55:52 -0400

‘There Can Only Be One'? Not this year.

Last week it was war veterans who were outraged over Time magazine's choice of cover illustration. (So outraged, that Time managing editor Rick Stengel felt it necessary to appear on MSNBC to defend the cover.)

This week, it's the New Republic.

Time's cover this week features a split of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

TNR claims that Time ripped them off:

We don't want to say that this week's cover of Time is a rip-off of our HillarAck cover that came out last month, but-oh, whatever-they totally ripped us off! All the way on down to the cover line, too: "There Can Only Be One" vs. "We Have To Choose One." Perhaps we should retaliate by putting a mirror on one of our future covers? On second thought ... no, that's a terrible idea.

Stengel's response:

If those wonderfully wonky folks at TNR (and I used to be one of them) watched a little more of the NBA, they would realize that the inspiration for this week's cover was the striking ad campaign the NBA is using for the playoffs. In fact, we say so on the magazine's index page. And in what is certainly a first, the NBA is doing a little cross-promotion with us on the cover. [See here]. But, then, maybe TNR thinks the NBA owes them royalties? Good luck getting a response from David Stern.

Forget the NBA. If anything, Time is guilty of cribbing a cover from a magazine much closer to its DNA than TNR:

As we pointed out on the FOLIO: blog last week, all of this supposed "controversy" doesn't always translate into single copy sales. Just ask Time.
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The Best (or Only) Use of Chiaruscuro On the Newsstand

Joanna Pettas — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:48:12 -0400

I was attracted to this issue of Hi Fructose because it had the best (or possibly the only) use of chiaruscuro that I’ve seen recently on the cover of a newsstand magazine. Hi Fructose covers the naive-by-choice school of art-making along with publications that include gallery or illustration-focused books like Juxtapoz, Beautiful Decay, and, to some extent, the grafitti mags.
No question, HiFruc has a cool collection of imagery ranging from work by people I’d want to hire as illustrators, people I would have wanted to hire if I still worked for a free alt weekly, and a few I’d be scared to be in the same room with. However, it also suffers from many of the excesses of the PunkArtMag "genera"—sometimes using artwork like backgrounds for type, or cropping painting in ways that damage the effectiveness of the imagery.
It is, of course, a delicate line between the button-down gallery-in-a-book approach of establishment art journals like Art in America and the free-for-all skater mag attitude that pubs like HiFruc ape. In the magazine’s defense, it goes native less frequently than some. The Kimidz(?) spread above, and Kukula (below) seem reasonably responsible blends of design and art elements. But not all HFruc pages are so easy to parse—it would be easy to miss the editorial page on the bottom spread because it visually blends into the ads next door.
Below: Brian Dettmer’s obsessively carved books would hold their own at the American Visionary Museum.
Below: The magazine could do a better job juggling the chaotic ads and art elements it publishes. Stricter advertising standards and more white space would both help.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Buy Jandos' new book!]
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How Magazines Treat Obama

Dylan Stableford — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:40:52 -0400

"In electing presidents we are also choosing stories," Newsweek editor Jon Meacham wrote in his March 31 letter to readers. "Obama's personal narrative is a crucial element of his campaign."

Meacham may be stating the obvious here, but it underlines one of the reasons the media seems to be so fascinated with the presidential candidate and all the different ways magazines portray him: the contender, the new hope, the impassioned speaker, the suave sartorialist, the debonair intellectual, the family man, the fresh alternative—even, as Tiger Beat reported, the senator who sings in the shower.

And on magazine covers, telling the tale of thousands of words, there's been an effort to capture them all:

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Green Issue Overload: Lay Off Condé Nast

Dylan Stableford — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:21:47 -0400

I rarely rise in defense of Condé Nast. Wired is an especially nasty competitor of Discover, even though their science coverage is a small part of their tech culture package. The New Yorker also competes with us for ad pages.

You have to give them their due, though. From my perspective, they are by far the most effective spokespeople in the world for the power of magazines. Their editors are industry giants who straddle the worlds of media, fashion and entertainment. Do you ever hear Anna Wintour or Graydon Carter whining to the trades about the growing influence of blogs or some other piece of Internet hype? I don't think so. I would be surprised if there were many tables set aside for bloggers at the Waverly Inn.

More importantly, every bit of Condé Nast's DNA is attuned to extracting maximum dollars from advertisers. As I pointed out in a blog post a couple of months ago, along with your 12x schedule, Condé can deliver an integrated program featuring Beyonce caressing your product online, polybagged and on national TV.

This is why the drumbeat on FOLIOmag.com about Vanity Fair's and the New York Times's green issues and recycled paper (or the lack thereof) is so off the mark. For better or worse, green issues aren't about public advocacy. Seriously, how can Madonna, who has a private jet and at least five enormous homes, be the cover girl for conservation?

The big publishers' green issues are about selling pages to advertisers who want to be associated with green content. And until those advertisers demand that their ads be printed on recycled paper (and provide the revenue that offsets the increased cost), the green issues will keep coming out on the same paper stock as every other issue.

In the meantime, please pick up the "Better Planet" issue of Discover on newsstands now. We are printed on FSC-certified paper and, after an extensive survey of our greenhouse gas emissions, purchased a carbon offset from carbonfund.org. You can also click over to our Better Planet blog or enter our Green Science Fair.

Happy Earth Day.
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Why Ridiculous Covers Matter

Joanna Pettas — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:04:36 -0400

If magazines like Vogue and Time keep it up, the Onion’s mock magazine covers won’t be so funny anymore—the real ones are getting just as ridiculous.
Gisele looks like a cardboard cut-out on Vogue’s controversial King-Kong-throwback cover from April, and Gwyneth Paltrow looks nothing like herself on May’s. On Time’s latest cover, the second ever to break the red border code, the American flag on the venerable Iwo Jima memorial is replaced with what looks like a cartoon carrot. That cover, not surprisingly, has generated a ton of controversy.
As one FOLIO: design panelist recently wrote: "What better way to sell magazines than to run a controversial cover?"
But controversial covers don't always increase sales. One of Time's most politically controversial covers—a cover featuring Ronald Reagan with a tear photoshopped on his cheek in March 2006—sold 106,700 copies at the newsstand, little more than 3,000 above the average during the issue's reporting period, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Sales, of course, is not entirely the point. It's nice to hear people outside the industry talking about magazines. It’s a reminder that print, and magazines in general, still have an impact on social culture. It’s also nice to see something other than a wall of smiling, airbrushed models and celebrities at the newsstand—something people can react to.
Hopefully for an ailing industry, that reaction will include buying.
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Vanity Fair's ‘Green' Issue: Another Waste

Joanna Pettas — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:43:09 -0400

There was no reason to expect that Condé Nast would actually display some sort of responsible environmental citizenship in the production of its third annual "green" issue for Vanity Fair. While they have a right to run their business as they see fit, they must also take responsibility for their lack of commitment to protecting the environment.
The fact is that while other magazines like Shape, Fast Company, Inc. and Every Day With Rachael Ray have made important achievements in environmentally responsible publishing, Vanity Fair and CN have only "talked green" in their articles.
Stories explaining what the Bush Administration should, or shouldn't, do; how mountain top coal mining is destroying communities and natural environs; oil drilling in the Artic; the necessity to act quickly in order to prevent climate change—all are important messages.
But where is the introspection and leadership? Who within CN and VF are pointing out that they themselves should be making an effort to reduce climate change, solid waste, deforestation and water and air pollution?
Do they make any mention of their environmental practices in the magazine? No. Is there information about their commitment to sustainability on their Web site? No. Are they at least using recycled paper? No, not even a smidgeon.
Graydon Carter is a tremendous force as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. He commands celebrity attention with his post-Oscar party each year (except this year) and helps focus his readers on today's environmental issues. Though editors-in-chief normally don't make paper purchasing decisions for their magazines, with his extraordinary personal and professional clout, Mr. Carter could and should use his considerable influence to bring about more environmentally-responsible production practices at VF. After all, the magazine is truly a reflection of himself.

Readers and advertisers are increasingly aligning themselves with companies that have a genuine commitment to the environment. Unfortunately, (with the very remote possible exception of Wired magazine) the way that CN decides to print their magazines completely ignores environmental responsibility, and may harm their brand over time.
But What Can Vanity Fair Do to Protect the Environment?
In November 2007, Every Day With Rachael Ray began printing on 85 percent recycled paper. During a presentation at the Publishing Business Conference in March this year, Brian Schwarze, the paper manager at Reader's Digest Association—Everyday's parent company—touted the benefits of their switch to recycled paper: each year they save 125,000 trees, 7,800 pounds of hazardous air pollutants, 380 garbage trucks of solid waste, and over 25 million pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent worth of greenhouse gases.
Reader's Digest and Rachael Ray may not have the same tenure as VF when it comes to publishing "green" editorial content. But, when it comes to making a difference and not just talking about being green, EDWRR makes every issue a "green" issue by using recycled paper. As a result, readers and advertisers have rewarded them for the achievements.
VF and CN can start by printing on more environmentally responsible recycled paper rather than environmentally harmful virgin-fiber paper. They can also work with their supply chain to implement an environmentally and fiscally responsible paper procurement policy that reduces emissions of climate change gases and protects forests. When they accomplish that they will be able, without hypocrisy, to publish green issues that motivate governments, businesses, and individuals to do their part.
[This post marks the eighth year in which I have offered Condé Nast my assistance and cooperation in helping them plan for environmentally responsible magazine publishing.]
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Missbehave's Eureka Moment

Joanna Pettas — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:46:20 -0400

I wasn’t there at the eureka moment that spawned Missbehave, but I imagine it went something like this:
Editor: “We need something different ... something like a magazine, but not like a magazine ... something bold, yet decisive ... wild, frilly and feminine, yet sturdy and down to earth with machismo and swagger ... a design that speaks Indo-European with an outrageous fake French accent ... [art director begins to look uncomfortable, time passes] ... something sweet, yet sharp….soft, yet dangerous…crunchy, but with a hot molten center…..[more time passes, art director begins flipping absently through a copy of the Village Voice] ... something grassy, with good legs, yet impudent and saucy ... [more time passes] ... something ... oh, I don’t know, WSY?”
Art Director [By now feeling hostile, yet caught off guard, never imagining that editor would ever stop talking stares at the random Voice page in front of her hoping for something—anything—to say. She points to a club ad—one of those single column jobs, in which every band name is as big as possible (in the case of a one-col, about 24 pt) set in a different wacky display font and set off with a smattering of rules and booger-sized pub shots]: “See this? see this?” she says. “Let’s take this ad and extend the concept to an entire magazine!”
The crazy thing is, it all kinda works. The type is such a delicate and sophisticated balance of the preposterous—a mash up of multiple eras and tastes pulled off with aplomb. More than that, the mix seems appropriate for this relatively new magazine. It would be misleading to call Missbehave a gender-bender, nevertheless the grrl-power title walks the line between Maxim’s swagger and Cosmo’s sexual sincerity a little more convincingly than most gender-focused magazines.
Missbehave’s models are less kempt, more ordinary, and more overtly sexual than the models that grace the pages of most women’s titles. Cover model Amber Heard’s hair is mussed, and her clothing is more revealing than flattering. On the inside, she poses, legs splayed on a beach ball. Generally, the magazine exhibits a disarming comfort with nooky that’s anything but Ken-and-Barbiesque. References include a fashion spread with furries (see Dan Savage if you don’t get the reference); and hook ups and extra-marital dalliances seem assumed rather than pondered. Yes, women’s magazines have plenty of bedroom advice and a bit of blue fiction, but it’s hard to imagine Cosmo running something like “DILF hunter.” Lede Graf: “Hugh Laurie, you’re 48 and you have needs. You live in L.A. your kids and wife do not. I don’t need a dry erase board, a bajillion years of medical school, and the Socratic method to suss out what you, my Dr House DILF (Dad I’d Like to Fuck) are afflicted with.”
In Missbehave, the editorial posturing can occasionally get to be a bit much—a quality it shares with men’s titles. Under the headline “How to be a Trophy Wife” is a stream-of-conciousness that begins: “Don’t pick at it! The scabs only last for four days, unless you pick at it. Stop. And even if the Restlyane bruise looks like you got a beer can heel-kicked into your nasolabials, you should never put Dermablend on your face. Unless you’re a local newscaster. Can I tell you something? Get your fingers out of my Cobb salad! No, really, ever since I swam with dolphins off of Lompoc, I find my twins—Valeska and Bentley—to be suppressive persons. They’re 8 now and it’s obvious they’re not so spiritual. We sent them to Outward Bound. We hope they catch autism. They’d be good at science.”
You know, I was hoping there’d be something I could use there. I’d actually like to be a trophy wife, but not if it means having to slog through this blather.
But some of the other writing, at least when you get through the off-putting ledes, is quite a bit better. There isn’t the editorial assumption that the reader is seeking self-improvement (or the appearance thereof). which seems to drive many women’s magazines, and that makes Missbehave both surprising and unusual. If there’s bluster there’s also a tone of self-confidence that the titles that orbit around fashion (people better dressed than you) beauty (people better looking than you) and celebrity (people richer and more talented than you) by necessity lack. Not that there’s none of that stuff here, it’s just kept to a tasteless minimum. It’ll be interesting to see how this title evolves.
A feature celebrates indulgence, although apparently the most indulgent thing they can think of is Taco Bell:
First spread of long fashion layout:
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Buy Jandos' new book!]
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Cover Critique: Vogue’s Lebron and Gisele

Dylan Stableford — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:10:43 -0400

Vogue’s latest cover—featuring basketball star Lebron James and supermodel Gisele Bundchen—was notable for a number of reasons. For starters, it was just the third time a man had appeared on a Vogue cover (George Clooney and Richard Gere being the other two) and the first African-American male to do so. But the magazine quickly came under fire for what bloggers and other media critics saw as perpetuating the ugly stereotype of a black man as the “wild, savage, white-woman-obsessed beast,” as Gawker Media blog Jezebel put it. (One even suggested that those supporting the cover do a Google image search for “King Kong” for a comparison.)
Below, FOLIO:’s roving panel of designers weigh in on the controversial cover.
NAME: Stephanie Faucher
TITLE: Design director, Computerworld
CRITIQUE: My first reaction to this cover when I saw it at the grocery store was that the two images were so oddly paired. Giselle's exuberant face and posture is just so unnatural next to Lebron's manly roar. She almost looks like a cutout. I honestly didn't think "King Kong," I just thought "strange." But since having read the various reviews and looked at the comparison photos, the resemblance to King Kong is uncanny. I can't help but wonder if Vogue didn't intend to spark a controversy over the stereotypical nature of this image. After all, what better way to sell magazines than to run a controversial cover?
NAME: Kelly McMurray
TITLE: Creative director, 2communique
CRITIQUE: I heard there was controversy over this cover and went to the newsstand to check it out. I was looking for a controversial headline or a photo inspired by an iconic film still. What I see is an athlete in an aggressive stance. In my opinion this is a case of the people/media blowing something out of proportion and giving more attention to something than it merits.
NAME: C. Winslow Taft, Jr.
TITLE: Senior art director, mental_floss magazine
CRITIQUE: I don't feel qualified to comment on what many contend to be the controversial aspects of this cover. However, taking all of that out of the picture and simply looking at it as a cover, I don't think this is one of Vogue's most creative or enticing covers. I'm eagerly awaiting some amount of Brodovitch or Henry Wolf to show itself again on the cover of these magazines that show so much experimentation in their ideas for upcoming clothing trends.
NAME: Jennifer Perez
TITLE: Art director, Perez Dezign
CRITIQUE: Doesn't every cover perpetuate stereotypes? The weirdest thing about this cover is how bad Gisele looks.
NAME: Tim O'Brien
TITLE: Freelance illustrator, Rolling Stone
CRITIQUE: I'm critiquing this cover AFTER the media began speculation about whether or not it's a racially insensitive cover. I have to think that this is a case of a cover where all who had a hand in it getting published; photographer to designer to editor all thought only of this as a fun, dynamic image. Should designers carry around a special filter to question whether a cover or image is going to be interpreted as being viewed as inappropriate? I think so. Once the issue is raised, whether or not it is based on the designer's real intent, it's all that is remembered. Often cited as Time darkening a photo of O.J. Simpson, Matt Mahurin years ago did with an illustration what he does to ANYTHING he illustrates—he created a sense of depth and murkiness that make his illustrations so unique. The contrast from that image next to Newsweek running the same source image made it look like Time decided to darken O.J.—this is ludicrous of course and since that cover, I feel these kinds of blind spots are not so common. Vogue is always a type nightmare. I wonder if people actually choose to buy it based on any promised headline on the cover? I think people who buy this magazine would do so even if they had fewer headlines and allowed their cover image to have more impact. As for the image itself, I agree that the most remarkable thing here his how this isn't a good shot of Giselle and her neck is quite wide. I keep imagining that shoot and how they had to look 'fun' and make all kinds of runs at being active.
NAME: Dan Trombetto
TITLE: Art director, FOLIO:
CRITIQUE: The racial/stereotype issues aside, I simply do not like the shot here. It feels awkward to me—like Gisele is toppling over, almost as if she is tripping over Lebron's size 15 left sneaker. It also feels like the cover lines aren't playing so well with the image. Feels a little congested.
What do you think? Leave your own critiques in the comments section below ...
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For Appealing Magazine Cover Subjects, Try People, Not Objects

Joanna Pettas — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:16:44 -0400

It can be harder than one might think to find an out-of-the-box cover for Face Up each month. This is especially true in b-to-b, since it’s not as simple as scanning the newsstand for a stand-out.
That’s why I was so excited to come across Functional Ingredients’ March issue, which looked to me like a young boy running on glass—but in jean shorts, like he was on recess at school. A person in every day life rather than an athlete running in an event, something we see all the time on the newsstand.
Turns out this annual issue usually features ingredients on its covers. Humans hardly ever make the cut. So the magazine went even further out on a limb and agreed to put their work to the test, offering the cover up for critique by FOLIO:’s Face Up panel of designers.
Overall, response was positive with some constructive criticism sprinkled in.
Now your mission, should you choose to accept it:
1. Offer your input on this cover by taking the Face Up survey (and a chance to win an iPod shuffle).
2. Offer up your magazine’s amazing, under-the-radar cover by emailing me at jpettas@red7media.com.
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La Fashionista Enfant

Joanna Pettas — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:17:26 -0400

I've written before about the propensity for satire at my old alt-weekly. But one ill-fated attempt at mirth at someone else's expense was a year-in-the-[not]-making spoof of the Washingtonian, a city magazine that, in my 11 years in D.C., has cycled through the same yearly schedule of lowest-common-denominator content over and over (and over) again. My old editor (whose name I won't mention) summed up the problem: "How do you satirize a magazine that satirizes itself every month?"
His words came back to haunt me as I tried to think of something to say about Baby Couture (the magazine that "puts the ‘coo' in Couture") funnier than anything that appears in the first issue. At least I assume it's the first issue, there is no volume or issue number to be found. That, in itself, is proof of inexperience. They have not yet suffered the wrath of a thousand librarians, who summon up the hostility accumulated during a life enduring the twin frustrations of customer service and government bureaucracy for just such oversights. No one does poison-pen like a librarian, and little raises their dander like the omission of essential cataloging information. They don't ask for much, they ARE JUST TRYING TO DO THEIR JOB!
So, I'll try to review BabyCouture with a minimum of snarkiness.
The cover hits two of the William Randolph Hearst trifecta, pairing babe Christine Costner with baby Cayden. Cayden? Now there's a name not chosen with those painful grade school years in mind.
Apart for the photogenic models, the image is not particularly suited for cover use. It has too much background detail forcing the designer to drop teasers into little nooks and crannies here and there in defiance of a logical hierarchy. Despite the typographical gerrymandering, much of the text is hard to read, thanks to both the picture and the achromatic pallet. The goofy type choices don't help-who thought kiddie handwriting would work with that ghastly wedding script? The awkward competition between cute and sophisticated remains unresolved on the inside as well.

Sensitivity to typographical conventions—from SIC-able smart-quote-driven errors in headlines such as “Flip ‘n Flop” which appears on page 14, right after “Wash ‘n Wear” on 13—does not burden the staff of of BC. They do have the whole product placement thing down though—Christina gets a 32 pt pull quote to wax poetic about her favorite brands. “Knuckleheads” is the winner for her little darlings, but she also likes “Diesel Kids and Baby Gap.”
The fashion plates are the usual pictures of children–though most are not babies. The oldest models, who are probably seven or eight, follow kiddie pic convention of imitating the jaunty poses of adult models, which sells, I suppose, the fantasy that if you dress your kids like little adults, they will quit acting so goddamn childish. In truth, it can go down like that—but only after the sort of parental behavior that can cast a pall over an entire 200,000 sq. foot suburban shopping mall, and possibly spark intervention from child protective services—potentially embarrassing for parents who shops at PradaKids.

I recognize that there are parents willing to invest $300 in ensemble outfits that will look great until the kid grows out of it in 6 months, or throws up on himself, whichever comes first. (Though in the case of my daughter Emily at that age, the smart money was on reflux.) But are there enough of them who aren’t already reading the Times’ SundayStyle section to support a magazine? And aren’t most of those Times readers there for yuks, not shopping advice? I guess time will, tell. Lets hope this title lasts until its Carters wear out ...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Buy Jandos' new book!]
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Editors vs. Art Directors: Part IV

Dylan Stableford — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:14:42 -0400

The editor vs. art director battle on FOLIOMag.com started with this Mark Newman blog post, continued with a follow-up and has been seeping into unrelated blog posts ever since.
Here's one of the more diplomatic comments, posted by a "Mr. McGuinness":
A magazine that has a staff that sees ‘editorial' and ‘art' as separate, opposing forces is a poor, poor magazine indeed. To be a great magazine the art director and editor must have equal power-but only of course, if they are completely on the same page. If not, the solution is a ‘Creative Director,' who is equally qualified in the visual and narrative, who has the best interests of the editorial whole in mind and who can reign the disjointed impulses of the art director/designer and the editor.
With that said, let's take a little break from all the tension and focus on an art/edit team that works together—or at least one that appears to:

Since September 2006, Esquire has been defying the principles of Coverlines 101 with its type-heavy and largely illegible copy barraging almost every cover. Design director David Curcurito says the concept, the "Vietnam Memorial" approach, was editor David Granger's, but Curcurito is the one who has been executing the design and refining the style month after month-a clear signal that it's working. According to Esquire, the magazine is consistently seeing stronger newsstand sales since implementing the new cover design.
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Cover Critique: New York's Spitzer Cover

Dylan Stableford — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:22:29 -0400

New York magazine is no stranger to controversial covers (see its Lindsay Lohan cover and accompanying, server-melting photo shoot a few weeks back). But when the story of New York governor Eliot Spitzer's shocking involvement in a prostitution ring broke early (Monday) in the magazine's print cycle (New York publishes on Mondays), it put the magazine in a tricky spot: it would be six days until it had its turn—six days of New York Post covers, blog posts, tabloid headlines and late-night joke fodder—to weigh in with a cover of its own. And it delivered a memorable, edgy one.

We asked some of our design friends to critique New York's Spitzer cover. First up, Tim O'Brien, the illustrator behind the subject of our last cover critique—Rolling Stone's Obama.

NAME: Tim O'Brien
TITLE: freelance illustrator; VP, the Society of Illustrators
CRITIQUE: The March 24th cover of New York Magazine is a funny and effective catharsis for the shocked New Yorkers. Swept into office with a wave of hope and enthusiasm, it was all undone by lust and hypocrisy. The cover image, an awkward shot of Spitzer shot from above making him look small is effective in shrinking a small man even smaller. Not knowing where to put his hands he forms a halo over his crotch; completely unintentional I'm sure but there it is. The use of white isolating his figure adds to the look, one that is reminiscent of the famous George Lois Esquire cover of Muhammad Ali pierced by arrows. The cherry on the top is a Barbara Kruger-esque sign and arrow that sends it over the top. Over the top is what this story is and the cover is perfect.
NAME: Laura Wall
TITLE: design director, Pace Communications
CRITIQUE: Wow. What a good reminder to NEVER run for public office. New York magazine held nothing back on this cover. It’s clean, powerful and probably award-winning. I’d hate to be Spitzer—how completely humiliating!

NAME: Anthony Ficke
TITLE: creative director, CAB Communications
CRITIQUE: Well, I must say I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to design, but to put it bluntly ... this is pretty ballsy of a cover. The power created from this cover is that you were able to sum up an entire nation's exact same thought with only one word! Nothing else needs to be said on the cover, yet you are compelled to read the story, if only to see what lines the author might have crossed. Most importantly, the goal of intriguing the reader has definitely been achieved. On another note, I really like that the New York logo breaks away from the edge to give a photo-negative feel.
NAME: Marco Turelli
TITLE: art director, Wine Enthusiast
CRITIQUE: Image and concept is brilliant! Will it sell magazines based on lack of cover lines and starkness of image? Who knows. Do I see it winning awards? Probably. Does Mr. Spitzer want to get away? You bet he does.
NAME: José Reyes
TITLE: creative director/Principal Metaleap Design
CRITIQUE: I appreciate how they showed a photo of Eliot in a way that was not disdainful, disrespectful or shaming—that would be too easy. Instead, they showed how everyone knew him—for better or worse—which makes for a much more compelling cover. An argument for the internal battle of personal restraint and what we allow the world to see vs. what we are capable of doing and hiding from others seems to also be a subtle statement that the editors are making with the smiling Spitzer. If so, well done. The cover, in my opinion, is provocative, clear, succinct, humorous and timely—perfect.
What do you think? Drop me a line [dstableford AT red7media DOT com] or add your own critiques in the comments section below.
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